July 25 – Riviere-Ouelle to Trois Pistoles

Bike log: 136.8km, 656m of vertical, avg. speed 27.5 km/h

Great name for the town, eh? We are staying at the municipal campground here – it’s a really nice campground. One of the better ones in a while.

We were pretty surprised to wake up this morning and find that the weather had turned a bit chilly! What a huge change from just a couple of days ago. I was wearing longs sleeves for much of the day, even a windbreaker shell at one point. It was overcast the whole day, although it did not rain. There was also a mild headwind the whole day, which built stronger as the day got on. It seems that the “uncommon” weather, which we have experienced quite a bit of, is often accompanied by an east wind, while the “more normal” weather comes with a westerly wind. Rain on the prairies, cold through the interior of BC and northern Ontario, really high humidity in Ontario, were all like this, whereas when the weather got back to what the locals said was more usual for the time and place, we have been getting west winds. I guess that is what is meant by prevailing winds, although so far I have had 25 days with dominating headwinds and 11 with tailwinds (the rest being calm, crosswinds or a mixture). Not sure if that’s unusual or not! The good news is that when it is a tailwind it tends to be a good strong one.