GNBR East - Ottawa

 0 miles, 0’ climbing 

August 20-22, 2026

On the evening of August 20th we flew into Ottawa with the plan to ride the Great Northern Bikepacking Route (GNBR) from Ottawa to Quebec City. Afterwards we want to pedal along the St Lawrence to Montreal. Our plan is to ride at a moderate pace and take days off in each of the three large cities we pass through so we can spend some time exploring the sights, history, and culture. Neither of us has previously visited this part of the world.

We arrived in Ottawa at night and caught an Uber XL to our hotel, the Lord Elgin, which was really well located. We were even able to get a late dinner in their restaurant. Our room had plenty of space for our two large bike boxes.

Over the next two sunny days, we assembled our bikes and put on the bags, disposed of the boxes (the front desk insisted on doing it for us). We took busses and the metro to the local MEC to get fuel for our camp stove, we bought groceries for the ride, we watched boats go thru the locks from the Rideau Canal to the Ottawa River. We peeked inside the ginormous Fairmont Hotel, we walked around parliament hill, the seat of Canadian government. We looked at public art, walked Sparks street, a charming pedestrian zone. We took a historic walking tour of Bytown and Lower Town, walked up Major’s Hill to see the art and the view and enjoy a beer. We spent a couple hours in the fantastic national gallery, had dinner in a historic Irish pub that was brought from Ireland and reconstructed, rode water taxis across the Ottawa River, walked to waterfalls that turned out go be a dam, had dinner in a waterside pub, and had a dip in the pool at our hotel. We stumbled onto a kids’ break dancing competition. We each felt obliged to buy a short sleeved shirt because it was so warm and humid.  We did all that, not in that order, in two very full days. We found Ottawa charming and scenic, very much worth a visit.