It turns out that Quebec has bike paths all through the countryside all over the province -  they go by the name La Route Verte and they're beautiful. The most popular of is called the Petit Train du Nord, an old railroad track turned bike path, north of Montreal. I've seen similar things in other cities so I'm sure they exit outside of lots of cities.

It was one of those things where i was hooked right away. I didn't really have a choice. Every trip has been different, but here a couple of my favourites.

3 Tee-Pees 3 Nights

After taking the Train to St. Jerome, we biked up along the Petit Train du Nord and slept in Tee-Pees every night. The complete ride was about 200 Km and took 4 days several days. Shea was scouting for next years cycle touring routes and plans to run this tour in 2016.

Bicycles and Beats: Aim Electronic Music 

My first trip was out to the first edition of the AIM Electronic music festival near Oka. It was 60 Km, without clips on my pedals yet at this point, and I still had juice to dance the might away. Being the first year of the festival, it was the best time to go. Everyone there was super friendly and the music was great. It rained on the way home and all the buses where full but our friend Jarrod lent us his wheels to get back in town for an appointment. 

I thought biking for 6 hrs would be so tiring that i wouldn't be able to dance, but it was quite the opposite. It gave me energy similar to a runners high, but more.

The Eastern Townships & Shazam Music Festival

Heading East from Montreal you can ride through the easter townships. It's gorgeous and the paths along La Route Verte are sometimes even paved. We had a quick stop off in the town of Chambly for blanche de Chambly beer. Unfortunately they don't entertain guest at their brewery. Instead we headed to the Farnam Brewery for a brew Dunham Brewery for a quick pint. At the Dunham Brewery we noticed a sign for the Shazam music festival and decided to hitch hike with our bikes. It took us about 15 minutes to get a ride from a local lumberjack in his truck.

ShazamFest included beaus organic beer, camping, skateboard, life music and even wrestling on the Sunday. We wouldn't have been able to make to Montreal in a day so we got a lift with one of the bands in their tour bus and finally got some shut eye.

7 months later

It hasn’t even been a year since buying my touring bike from Shea’s shop and I’m addicted. It's been great to get so much exercise and spend time out of city. I’ll shortly be landing in Buenos Aires for 6 weeks of cycle touring across Argentina with Shea where we'll be blogging on instagram (#VeloVoyagers) and our tumblr travel blog . See you there!

• Learn what's different about a touring bike
• Follow our trip around Argentina on Instagram
• VeloVoyagers Travel blog
• Learn about cycle touring weekender trips from Fitz & Follwell