Part Seven | Motorcycle Guide to Ste. Anne des Monts

Ultimate Ride Episode 7

So as you know, this season during our annual fall ride we’re in the province of Quebec exploring the scenic Gaspé Peninsula with our ultimate destination, Pearcé Rock programmed into the GPS. We started out on this adventure after picking up a couple of BMWK1600GTs from a BMW dealer in Quebec City. A couple days of solid riding have found us criss-crossing through the mountainous mid-section of the peninsula, we wound up in the small city of Ste. Anne des Monts on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. Today, after two solid days of sun and fun, we’re making the final push for Gaspé under some less than perfect conditions.

Dave

Well Norm, here we are, Day 3, at Ste. Anne des Monts and, you know, it’s four degrees, so we’re going to have a bit of a brisk morning. It’s cloudy but according to the weather channel the rain has stopped so I’m optimistic it’s going to clear-up today.

Norm

Oh absolutely, the weather man’s always right so we can count on that happening today.

Dave

Absolutely, absolutely. But we chose this spot, to do the stand-ups this morning because we’ve got that classic church behind us here at Ste. Anne des Monts and we’ve got the St. Lawrence right in front of us. So uh, let’s talk about how things went over the last two days and how we wound up to be here. So we started out yesterday in Rimouski?

Norm

Yeah we kicked off with getting back on the twenty and then making that decision as we were talking a lot about decision points so we took the one thirty-two to go through the center of the Gaspé Peninsula as opposed to the north shore. Made our way down one thirty-two, um which was okay until Anqui but then after Anqui we hooked up with the Matapedia River and then it was just beautiful riding for the next sixty-five K down into Matapedia which brought us to teh Baie des Chaleur which we scooted along…

Dave

And the scenery there was certainly, sorry to interrupt you, but the scenery along there was just gorgeous.

Norm

Yeah. Every time there was actually a different scene, every time you came around a different corner so different landscape as we moved our way toward New Richmond. And New Richmond we decided to take this, the park road which we’ve heard so much about…

Dave

The two ninety-nine…

Norm

It was absolutely beautiful.

Dave

It was a roller coaster ride for the last two hours of our day yesterday through the park. It was fabulous. So, great riding, great scenery… today, it might be tough to get a bit of scenery this morning. We’re off to Gaspé and what’s the route for this morning?

Norm

Well, now we’re on the north shore route. So we’re back on, like you said St. Anne des Monts. So we will head down one thirty-two. It’s a short distance and originally thinking that the weather would be beautiful and sunny and nice, we would have stopped a bit and explored so this is a little bit of an exploratory day but obviously with the weather it’s going to be a little difficult but we’ll make the best of it and shoot our way to Gaspé but I’m sure, riding the coast, the coast is not where you want to be on a crappy day but we’re going to do it anyway but we’ll see what it delivers to us.

Dave

So one last tip, if your staying at Ste. Anne des Monts just keep this in mind, it’s not a big place. No Comfort Inns, no Travelodges , just a couple of small motels, so make sure you book in advance and not a lot of restaurant choices. I was very surprised. There was no real pure village here, it’s kind of spread out.

Norm

Yeah, it’s just sort of a pass through zone for the traffic. Although the hotel we found luckily had a good restaurant.

Dave

Well let’s pack ‘er all up and maybe put the rain suit on… nah.

Norm

Nah.
Dave

We’re good to go.