The benefits of staying put

 ... at Sainte-Flavie.

On the Wednesday of our flying trip, after some consideration, we decided not to fly. The weather was fine. We could have returned to our plane and taken off up the coast to Ste-Anne-des-Monts, or across the peninsula to Bonaventure, or for a short hop to Rimouski, to walk around one of those places, but we were both feeling either too lazy or too content that day to make such an effort. The option of spending a whole day just relaxing by the immediate shore was more appealing.

Rest and simplicity is often the best choice to make, so I find. Are we getting old?

So we walked along the shore in one direction in the morning, dabbling in the rockpools, gazing at the watery blue horizon from the benches, and in the other direction in the afternoon. Back and forth again in the evening. We bought lunch from the fish 'n chips van and supper at the restaurant at M. Gagnon's Centre d'Art. 

 

I read the information boards on the waterfront telling of the grandes marées of 2010, the high tides in a December storm that destroyed several houses near the shore, and visited the Galérie d'Art du Vieux Presbytère, next to the church that included an exhibition of posters by an artist of international repute, Sébastien Thibault who lives further up the coast in Matane. One symbolic image was for a series of concerts at the Pierre-Boulez Saal in Berlin:

 

 

 

At the end of the day we sat on the pier with the local anglers and the francophone tourists (francophone in all but two cases), watching the sun go down. 

 

That easy programme did us the world of good.

Seen under shallow water

On the pier at Ste.-Flavie

On each evening that we spent in Sainte-Flavie we observed the villagers of our generation coming out to socialize at sunset. Here are some of them sitting together at the village end of the pier, a really happy bunch of friends. They burst into song a few moments after I took this photo.

At Mont Joli without a car

Visiting the Gaspésie requires planning ahead. We booked the accommodation, got that right, but should have checked that its facilities were as advertised. On Tuesday morning we discovered that the promising on-site restaurant at Mon Joli Motel is actually closed this summer, because the management can't find enough staff. No matter, the restaurant at Le Gaspésiana, competently managed by Mme. Geneviève Raîche and upgraded in recent years from a mere motel to the status of a proper hotel offering une panoplie de services pour votre plus grand confort, was open and accessible a short walk away, so we breakfasted there for the duration of our stay. The restaurant has been thoroughly renovated, with panels in place to keep guests socially distanced. Here's a picture of us sitting at a window table there on our last morning in Ste.-Flavie:

We made a slow start to the Tuesday, strolling down the road to the Gagnons' Centre d'Art to see Le Grand Rassemblement once more, which includes some wooden rafts. 

My insides were slightly upset that morning, so I spent an hour or so lying down in our room, not eager to search for any lunch yet. Eventually I was ready to walk back up the hill to the airport with Chris so that we could pick up the car I'd booked online, and start exploring La Mitis, the local region. Unfortunately again, the car was not forthcoming: nobody was at the rental office and we hadn't received a message from the rental company either, although they swore they'd sent one. They're based in Rimouski, half an hour's drive away, so we couldn't walk there and complain. We had a none-too-productive phone conversation with their rep during which he asked for a photo of Chris' credit card to be sent. Chris was not willing to do that! He sent a message of complaint.

Well, this is not a bad place to be stuck, we decided. Mont Joli might be worth seeing too. We could get there on foot.

We could avoid traffic on Rte 132 by following the Rte de l'Aéroport and the Blvd Jacques-Cartier in a straight line towards the the imposing church on the hilltop, Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes. By this time I was beginning to recover my appetite for lunch, but there wasn't a restaurant to be found — sadly the places that used to be there have all gone out of business — and just past the Avenue du Sanatorium, when we were about to give up and go back to a Tim Horton's we'd caught sight of in the distance, I thought of asking for help from a shopkeeper. I went into an artists' supply store also selling pottery, Céramiques de la Mitis, where a nice lady recommended we either call a taxi (she kindly gave us the phone number) or walk for 20 minutes (it actually took us five minutes — drivers rarely estimate a walking distance correctly) down the Av. du Sanatorium towards a pub on Blvd Gaboury, called Le Frédérike. Chris used the Maps app on his phone for reinforcement. It was too late for lunch, too early for supper; we lingered there for a satisfying mid-afternoon meal; I ordered spaghetti with meat sauce from a menu with plenty of choice. The meat sauce had a good quantity of chopped carrots, onions and herbs in it, which I appreciated. The Olympic Games were showing on the TV screens, few people sat at other tables and a heavy rain storm went through while we ate.

A la croisée des chemins

The once lively town of Mont Joli now looks run-down. It seems to offer multiple car maintenance services but not a lot for tourists, apart from its murals, collectively called Les Murmures de la Ville, which are wonderful. The Ville de Mont-Joli lists 36 stopping points at which you can admire its works of art or heritage buildings.

Mont-Joli vous propose d'explorer ses rues, de rencontrer ses citoyens, de découvrir les richesses de son patrimoine, d'admirer les couleurs qui habillent ses murs ...

We didn't encounter many citoyens, but I took pictures of some of the captivating artwork. The painting below is by Marcel Gagnon's son, Guillaume Gagnon.

Le Château, phare de Mont-Joli

L'evolution des communications à travers les âges

La médecine de campagne

Hommage à nos héros d'hier et d'aujourd'hui

Then we walked the 4.4 km back to Sainte-Flavie and for future reference we note that there's no grocery store here, although we picked up some small snacks (they sell packaged drinks and locally-made nougat, baguettes, honey products, nuts, salad veg, sauces, soaps, T-shirts) at the Épicerie & Boutique annexed to Le Ketch. The rain storm cleared the air, giving way to a lovely evening and another limpid sunset across the water.

Sur la Côte aux Moutons

View from our balcony

I'm writing this on the balcony of our room at the Mon Joli Motel up the hill from Sainte-Flavie, with a magnificent view of the sunset over the St. Lawrence fleuve, shimmering in the twilight. The water is mauve, the clouds indigo stratus, the remaining sunlight golden. The hill we are up is locally known as the Côte aux Moutons because of Marcel Gagnon's concrete sheep that are grazing on its steep slope, with a concrete shepherd and sheep dog alongside, part of the motel property. I have mentioned them before in this blog. And a few hundred metres along the road is the Grand Rassemblement of concrete people processing onto the shore from the seabed. This evening we walked over to check that they were still intact. They are.

Finally, this morning, we got away from Ottawa. As recently as Saturday, I didn't think this would happen, because it looked as though torrential rain would be falling all over this part of the world, and there's not much point battling through storm clouds for the sake of a wet stay in the countryside. So we had cancelled the first night of our stay. Miraculously though the weather system moved through eastern Canada sooner than forecast and just as unexpectedly dissipated into occasional showers, with sunny skies in its wake. So I promptly rebooked our room here.

Setting off over the Ottawa, looking east

Countryside near Trois-Rivières

Wheels up at 10 a.m. for a worry-free ride to Trois-Rivières, following the course of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers downstream past Montreal. The IFR route, more or less direct, actually takes us north of Montreal. We passed Petrie Island, the two ferries at Cumberland and Rockland, the Chutes de Plaisance, Papineauville, crossed the Rivière Rouge, saw Lachute in the distance to the south, Lac Simon to the north, all familiar sights from previous occasions. Visibility was good, so I noticed the Montreal skyscrapers too. The mountains of New York State and Vermont were sheathed in cumulus. Trois-Rivières airport was a busy place this morning, as the ATC man warned us, with so much traffic in the circuit that we had to do a go-around on our first approach, because the plane ahead of us didn't pull off on Taxiway Charlie as they could have done, to let us land, but kept on the main runway all the way to Taxiway Alpha. Chris got annoyed about that and when he approached as Number Three in the Circuit for the second time round he pointedly asked the Unicom Operator whether or not Taxiway Charlie was available, thus giving a strong hint to the pilot in front of us this time to move out of the way asap. That worked. Another unexpected phenomenon was the sudden drop in the crosswind as we descended below tree top level, which slewed us sideways for a moment, but my skillful pilot recovered rapidly and landed successfully on the centreline, on one wheel. I gasped, but he didn't.

Reaching Trois-Rivières

The plane was refuelled from a gas tank that had a very realistic plastic eagle perched on top of it. The usual eating place, Le Pilote at the airport, is closed on Mondays, but luckily we'd checked first and knew about this, so had brought a packed lunch, that we ate on a bench outside the terminal building.

On the ground at Trois-Rivières

About 15 minutes into the 2nd leg of our flight, Chris had to make an embarrassing confession to ATC at Montreal Centre: he had dutifully written his allotted clearance onto the "scratch-pad" of his tablet and had read it back correctly, but hadn't thought to press "Save". The clearance thus disappeared from the screen and he had to repeat the process otherwise we wouldn't have known in what direction to fly after the Quebec VOR. Another lesson learned.

This flight was longer, 2 hours 18 minutes, and we went through a surprisingly cloudy area just beyond Quebec city; ATC even asked if we wanted a diversion "around the weather" but the darkest clouds were south of our route and no lightning was showing on the StrikeFinder. We didn't lose our views of the scenery nor of the fascinating, changing clouds to the south as we flew past Montmagny towards Rivière-du-Loup, over the mouth of the meandering Rivière Ouelle, over a sphagnum peat moss farm with its russet fields and an extensive windfarm. Between Rivière-du-Loup and Rimouski comes the attractive stretch near Saint-Fabien and then we have almost reached our destination with the Mont Joli runway visible in the distance just beyond the bluffs above Sainte-Flavie.

On the ground at Mont Joli, by means of the Zoleo Communicator placed on our tail wing, Chris sent a message by satellite to our friends and relations, including George in Australia, to let them know exactly where we are. A couple of the airport officials came over to greet us and help us refuel (at great expense), one of the men telling us that he'd moved here from la grande ville — Montreal? — for the sake of a more peaceful existence, and that in winter it is really quiet in these parts.

Approaching Mont Joli airport

 

View of the runway from the base leg

We decided not to bother with a car rental or taxi; there was no one at the airport offering either, in any case. We therefore walked down the road with our luggage, a little further than I'd remembered but of course it's easier if you aren't encumbered. No trouble checking into the motel because we had a reservation although two other couples who arrived at the same time as we weren't so lucky, pas de disponibilité. One couple was travelling by motorbike and all of them, positively pleading for a room, but in vain, seemed exhausted by the long drive. On a roulé toute la journée! I hope they found somewhere to stop before much longer.

In the early evening we were also lucky to get a table at the local microbrewery, Le Ketch, painted bright red, with its eponymous, bright yellow ketch parked in the yard in front. The blonde beers they served us were excellent, the atmosphere relaxing, and we ate Beyond Beef (vegetarian) burgers, also good. The fries were a bit soggy. The buns were decorated with little paper parasols.