A self-guided bike tour offers the best of two worlds. You get the equipment and support provided with a group tour, but the freedom to take things at your own pace. Our recent Randonnée six-day self-guided bike tour in Québec’s Eastern Townships was picture perfect and pretty much hassle free.
About the Eastern Townships
“Pretty.” I must have uttered the word a dozen or so times a day as we cycled and explored this southeast region of Québec about half way between Montréal and Québec City. Located in the Appalachian foothills and running along the U.S. border at Vermont, New Hampshire, and Main, the terrain is dotted with glacier-formed lakes, deciduous forests, and picturesque towns and villages.
Originally inhabited by Algonquin tribes, English loyalists, the Scottish and Irish were the first to settle in the area from abroad. After 1840, there was a wave of French colonization, which eventually made Francophones the majority of the population. This history makes for an interesting mix of cultural influences.
How a Randonnée Self-Guided Bike Tour Works
Unlike a group tour where you travel along with the same bunch of folks from place to place with a head guide, self-guided tours are a lot more independent. In the case of Randonnée Tours, the company designs the route you will take (there is room for flexibility) and chooses your accommodations at each location you visit.
This was our second Randonnée tour. We did a self-guided cycling trip through the Puglia region of Italy a few years ago. We were curious to see how our Italian experience would compare to a tour on our home turf in Canada.
The area manager for the tour is your go-to resource should you need any assistance along the way. Our area manager for this tour was a local fellow named Nicolas. He met us at our B&B starting point to give us our bicycles, make any adjustments required, and to orient us to the cycling route. Nicolas brought a bottle of local rosé wine to drink and fresh strawberries to nibble during our meeting. We liked him immediately.
For each day of the tour, Randonnée provides a route description as well as turn-by-turn instructions for how to get to your end destination. Each bike comes equipped with a handlebar bag and a waterproof pouch that holds the instructions flat across the top. This is handy for glancing down to see where the next turn is coming. They also provide GPS data for the smartphone app MapMyRide, which was invaluable if you hit a bit of trouble following the written instructions or go off route to explore on our own and need to get back to the tour route.
On this tour, we stayed for two nights each in two of the accommodations, but otherwise moved from B&B to B&B along the way. A taxi picked up our luggage and moved it to the next destination where it waited for our arrival. It’s so effortless (well, other than the cycling part).
Accommodations
One thing we love about Randonnée tours is not having to worry about finding places to stay. We know we’re going to get a quality experience. On both our trips we were impressed with where we stayed along the way. All of the accommodations on our Eastern Townships tour were bead and breakfasts and all were lovely, offering exceptional breakfasts, hospitality, and amenities.
Breakfast at La Maison Drew in Magog – an example of the tasty and always elegantly presented dining at all of our stops along the tour.
Les Boisés Lee Farms in Stanstead (below) was once the estate of the wife of the the co-inventor of insulin, Frank Banting. We slept in the Lady Banting room at this stunningly beautiful B&B, which also featured an in-ground pool and expansive grounds.
Picturesque Peddling
The Eastern Townships feature 365 kilometres of cycling trails! It’s pretty much a cyclist’s dream. This tour stays on cycling paths the vast majority of the time, which means you don’t have to worry about traffic, and you’re immersed in nature and beautiful scenery.
The terrain is mostly “undulating,” which has become the code word Steve and I use for going up and downhill a lot. When we did a cycling tour in Greece, our rides consisted of long, winding uphills and then descents that at times lasted an astonishing 10 minutes. It was grueling, but very different than the up-down-up-down topography on this tour. Not sure which I prefer. In the end, it’s all a great workout and makes the extra calories that come with vacationing inconsequential.
Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac is a first stop on the tour. This monastery is worth a visit for its stunning architecture and for the cheese and cider the monks produce and sell on site.
This general store in Georgeville is typical of the various pit stops we took to grab a snack and get our bearings for the next stretch of cycling. Isn’t it adorable?
We kept our dining experiences low key for the most part, but this seafood dish at the swish Péchés de Pinocchio restaurant (translation: Pinocchio’s sin) in Magog was incredible.
We spent Canada Day in North Hatley, which was all decked out in red, white, and maple leaf flags. North Hatley was the most romantic town we visited with an abundance of flowers, quaint boutiques, and cozy restaurants.
Stanstead is the first border town I’ve ever visited. It is literally a town split in the middle of the Canada-U.S. border. Cruising down Canusa Street (how clever), houses down one side are in the U.S. and on the other side in Canada. We had to be careful exploring the town for fear of accidentally stumbling over the border. There are lots of warning signs not to do so and we were told to carry our passports with us in case we did have to report to border services.
Don’t pass the planters! You’ll be on the other side of the border.
Our last stop on the tour was the university city of Sherbrooke.
We went on a bit of a poutine bender (local Québec dish of French fries, cheese curds, and gravy) and determined our favourite was at Chez Charlie.
Sherbrook has a fabulous self-guided mural tour. The murals feature various aspects of the city’s history and the tour challenges you to find various “hidden-in-plain-sight” characters, which would be fun for kids. Okay, we found it fun too. The mural art is amazing.
Self-Guided Bike Tour of Eastern Townships – The Upshot
This was a great way to explore the Eastern Townships. The extensive cycling path system in this region is phenomenal making the bike an ideal vehicle for getting from place to place while enjoying the tremendous scenery.
There are various taxi services that will transport luggage as well as bike rental outfits so you could very well design your own tour with little hassle. Randonnée, however, offers a bit extra piece of mind with access to the area manager and advanced booking of exceptional B&B accommodations. The tour is well organized and ran without a hitch from start to finish.
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What a great way to do a bike tour. I love the concept. And Quebec’s Eastern Townships are such a pretty place.
Self-guided tours are perfect for us. We’re not hard core cyclists so it’s nice to know there is someone to call if we run into any difficulties — especially in a country where we don’t speak the language.