Part Ten | Motorcycle Guide to Bonaventure

Ultimate Ride Episode 10

So this season during our annual fall ride .. we’re in the province of Quebec exploring the scenic Gaspé Peninsula.. with our ultimate goal to reach the town of Gaspe and it’s famous Percé Rock located about 650  kilometres North East of Quebec City where we started this adventure.. After a 3 days of solid riding on a pair of K1600GT’s .. we spent the final evening of this adventure in the town of Gaspe proper. Now on the final morning of our trip .. with only a couple of hours left before catching a flight back towards home…we decide to squeeze one last photo op in .. by making a quick 80 click dash out to the famous Percé Rock. A spirited ride that made this last dash well worth it.

Dave

Well Norm here we are 8:30 AM of day four of our ultimate ride and you insisted that we get up early this morning and push hard because you wanted to wanted to see a rock?

Norm

Absolutely.  We decided we wanted to eventually finish last night in Gaspé and as we were sitting there and looking at the map to see where we had gone I said it’s only eighty kilometers down the road and we’ve got to get to the place where everybody comes for a picture.

Dave

Right right so this is Roche Percé…

Norm

Right: Great Rock.

Dave

It’s fantastic.

Norm

Very cool, yeah.

Dave

It was certainly worth the ride, that’s for sure.

Dave

Um and we got up this morning in the commandant hotel in Gaspé.  It was three degrees, wet roads but it was really just a fantastic hour ride out here.

Norm

Yeah and typical to what we’ve been seeing here, as you’re riding a long the coasts  every now and again they’ll shoot you inland and you end up on this roller coaster road which was absolutely just beautiful to ride.

Dave

Yeah.  So the road itself, we took the one thirty-two and for the most part we were following the coast and uh it was sort of wide sweepers and then the last ten K into here… another roller coaster.

Norm

Great fun, exactly.

Dave

Yeah now tell me about this… so we’ve got the Percé Rock and we’ve also got Bonaventure.  What’s the deal with Bonaventure.

Norm

Bonaventure Island was expropriated… was purchased by the province of Quebec government in 1971 and they kicked everybody off the island and now apparently it’s one of the world’s largest bird sanctualries.  So if you’re a bird fanatic… another thing to do while you’re out here.

Dave

And if you’re into photography it’s just a classic shot.

Norm

Yeah, beautiful here.

Dave

So this really is the birthplace of Canada.  We’re talking about over three hundred years of history here and the town itself is just full of little motels and restaurants and clearly this is the  payoff at the end of the day?

Norm

Yeah, absolutely yeah, if this is one of your destination points, but again, if this is on the whole route that if you’re going to circle the whole peninsula you’re obviously going to go by this for sure so…

Dave

Yeah. So he sun has come out, we’ve hit five degrees, we’ve got a couple of more hours to go before we hit the airport…what do you think, we’ll go out and explore the town a little bit?

Norm

Explore that town and ride that coast again.

Dave

Well man, it was certainly worth getting up this morning for this.

Norm

Good stuff.

Dave

I’m glad you pushed us. Another Ultimate Ride.