One hell of a day

Sunday morning and I wake thoroughly refreshed. I was sent to bed at 9.30 (by pretty much everyone) as I could not keep my eyes open. So now I am awake before everybody else, so head to the dock to read the papers (not the Sunday Times, you can’t have everything). It’s very early, so there are lots of bugs around, but I’ve been here before so have come prepared, I have bug spray, I tuck my trousers in my socks, pull my hoody down over my face and I probably last 30 mins out there!



After a leisurely breakfast, just as we are about to depart, the rain starts. Oh don’t worry says Anne, the weather never lasts around here. She’s probably right. I think we towed the rain cloud with us away from Saint Sauveur all the way back to Montreal.

It starts to rain really hard, the climb in reverse is now a slippery scary downhill. I cling onto my brakes for dear life. Suddenly we get to the 17% gradient hill, only now it is an uphill for us. I’ve been telling Stuart that I’m going to walk this bit, but he’s amazed to see that I just keep pedalling. My thighs are burning and my heart feels like it is going to burst out of my chest, but I keep going and I make it!




What I then have to confess to Stuart is that I actually didn’t think I could stop without falling off! I was pedalling so slowly, that I didn’t think I had time to yank my foot out of the pedals before I would have toppled over. Once the climb had started I was locked in!
We finish the rest of the scary decent, rejoin the Petit Train du Nord and have only cycled about 11km in total, when we reach the Prevost Halt. I demand a break from the rain (it’s very heavy) and we go inside just to drip really.

My feet are soaking, and I find that I can wring quite a lot of water out of my socks.



I would happily have traded my PJs for my wet weather booties, but we hadn’t realised the weather would be so bad.

It’s another 12km to St Jerome and we stop for a cup of tea. By this time I’m manky.



We probably sit for an hour and a half in the café, with our clothes drying out, just watching the rain sheeting down, hoping it would slow down



The rain doesn’t slow down, but Stuart says, it’s a sunny day somewhere. In fact it’s a sunny day inside his head. (This is why I love Stuart. However, inside my head it’s just as wet and miserable as it is outside!)

Having dried off a little bit we reluctantly venture outside again, and are just as wet as we were before within a few minutes. It’s 40km to the metro and the rain doesn’t ease up at all.

There’s a French phrase for raining cats and dogs. “Il pleut des cordes”. Today the cordes are slamming horizontally into my face. My face stings.

We crazily decide to take the shorter route home again (missing out 15km to get out of the rain quicker seemed like a good idea), but today in the gloomy darkness and heavy wet weather the highway takes on a whole new aspect. What was unnerving yesterday is today quite frightening. We use the sidewalk wherever possible and have to take tremendous care at junctions. Not an experience to be repeated.

We pass through the “still picturesque despite the rain” town of Sainte Rose and decide against stopping for lunch. I fear that one more change of clothes will leave me nothing but my PJs for the journey back on the metro. These are flowery, pink ribbony, no denying they’re PJs kind of PJs. We keep cycling.

One good thing about today, is there’s nobody else on the cycle paths (and why would there be?). So Stuart and I can cycle side by side. We chat about how today is the kind of day where you should be sitting in front of a log fire reading the papers, and promise ourselves that when that day happens we’ll look back on today, and be grateful to be inside the warm and dry.

Eventually, finally, soggily we make it back to the metro



It’s been one hell of a day!



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