Sunday 7 August 2011

Day 87: St. Margret to St. Edourd (The Million Dollar Question)

Up early for a wonderful breakfast with James and Juanita (we heartily recommend Juanita's blueberry cucumber smoothies).






The morning ride was not scintalating... New Brunswick scrub forest with simple white houses bordering the road. Ahh, but sure enough we found a wonderful market and community breakfast at the community centre in Kouchibiquack (spelling) about snack time.



Then a long stretch of slogging into the wind through scrub to the coast. A beautiful ride along the shore to St. Eduard and it was time for the nightly camping challenge...



A bit of backstory is needed to provide context for this evening's challenge. About half the nights we have had a creative campsite: under a car port, next to an ice cream shop, in a high school, at a farmer's market, with the cows, at a solar farm, at the bike shop or in some wonderful person's yard.
The other half the time we end up in a campground populated by RVs and campers. In BC there were reasonably priced provincial campgrounds (though the facilities were not great). The Prairies have wonderful free campgrounds in the small towns (they deserve applause). Western Ontario has great provincial parks. About Sault St. Marie the trouble began and from the Bruce pennisula east there was the nightly fiasco unless a creative solution was in the works.

The problems can be categorized as unpredictability and injustice. So typically we pull up to a campground office and two people go in and everyone else waits to hear of our fate on the road. Are we biking further or not? In Quebec all the raging and negotiating cell to Ginny because her French is the only one able to appreciate the subtleties of the individual situation. This brings us to the injustice. Until Ontario an expensive campground was 30-35 bucks which we were fine to pay though still pricey for a little grass and a bathroom. RVs paid $35-40. But then they started saying that five people had to have two sites. $60-70- ridiculous, especially when a monster RV was paying $40. Other places have "tent rules". You can put six people in one huge tent but you can only have one tent a site so we need three sites for0 our three petite camping tents. One place it cost $30 extra unless Shane slept in our tent. Other times we put the third tent up covertly at dusk. The biggest scene was in Trois Rivière where there was such a ruckus that the campground manager took us to his backyard. So back to tonight and St. Edouard...

As we approached the town we were hoping for a small friendly fishing village. Instead we started seeing tons of RVs everywhere in yards on the shore. We quickly realized we were approaching a beachy tourist locale, not a fishing village. There were so many RVs that we suspected cottages were renting out their yards to them. Then we saw the first of the two possible campgrounds in the town. Our hearts fell into our hands. It was the biggest and ugliest RV park we had ever seen. Despite being on the coastal road, it was in the scrub alder on the inland side with RVs, packed like sardines as far as you could see- and more were turning in (there was a heated pool but for the life of us, we couldn't figure out why anyone would enter such a place)... We continued in a state of despair, only one place left and camping by the side of the road was not possible in this madhouse. We saw the sign from a distance- gulp. The.sign said Chez Maury- Vignoble et Ferme.


What was this about? We looked to the inland side and there was a cute old farm house, a barn and a comfy grassy field. To the water side was a beautiful ocean beach.


No fighting was necessary, one site was suitable for all of us. And after a great swim in the warm water of the Bay of Chaleur, we were invited in for a free wine tasting as this was also a vineyard! The gregarious owner made us very welcome, speaking slowly so we could understand the French (we were the only Anglophones in the group and he did not speak English... For a major portion of New Brunswick, French is the public first language). Only Ginny understood most of it but the rest of us put on a good show, smiling, nodding and laughing with everyone else when it seemed it was a joke. The wine was great and Leah was in heaven with the blueberry and strawberry dessert wines. So we didn't pay for a second site but they happily had us for bottles of wine for gifts. What a great place, pleasantly busy with space for all and a wonderful friendly atmosphere. The million dollar question is why most everyone else chose the mega RV park?... Hmmm.

Distance: 80.74 km
Time on bike: 4:41:04
Average speed: 17.2 km/h
Distance from Vancouver: 6985 km
Start: 8:30 am
End: 5:00 pm
Wind: South east (medium-head)
Conditions: Sunny


Cheers
- The Warpotay Team

No comments:

Post a Comment