Gaspesie Route 132: Sainte Anne des Monts to Perce

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Sainte Anne des Monts

   Sainte-Anne-des-Monts is the gateway to the Gaspésie National Park, on the north coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, where the St Lawrence River widens into the Gulf and the Chic-Chocs mountains rise abruptly behind the shore. The town is a pleasant, working place of about five and a half thousand people, with a church, a fishing wharf and a main street running along the coast. Behind it, the road to the park climbs into the mountains, where a herd of woodland caribou, the last south of the St Lawrence, survives on the high plateaus.

   Read the complete Sainte Anne des Monts write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Sainte Anne des Monts is where the day begins. Next is Gaspe.

2. 2. Gaspé

   Gaspé is a town of around fifteen thousand at the eastern end of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, built around a deep bay where, in 1534, Jacques Cartier is said to have come ashore and planted a cross claiming the land for the French king. Mi'kmaq people and Iroquoians of the St Lawrence had long lived and fished here, and the name itself is a Mi'kmaq word for the end of the land. It is a good start for a ride around the peninsula on Route 132, which in this area means a loop of nearly a thousand kilometres right around the coast and back.

   Read the complete Gaspe write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Gaspé comes up about 201 km into the recorded legs. Next is Perce.

3. 3. Percé

   The rock at Percé is one of the most photographed things in eastern Canada, an enormous limestone wall rising out of the Gulf of St Lawrence, hundreds of metres long, with a natural arch at one end cut by waves. Another arch collapsed in the nineteenth century, in 1845, leaving the stack known as the Obelisk beside it, and the whole structure continues to erode slowly. The name means pierced in French, and from the village you can walk across the sandbar at low tide to the foot of it, though checking the tide tables is not optional.

   Read the complete Perce write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 270 km.