GNBR East Day 17 - Trois Rivières to Sorel-Tracy

47 miles, 571’ climbing

Sept 8, 2026

Hôtel de la Rive, Sorel-Tracy, Québec 

We left our hotel under sunny skies during what appeared to be the morning rush of kids getting dropped at school and people headed to work. We read that the metro area has 160,000 people. There were lots of neighborhoods of houses with huge grass lawns. It looks like a really nice place to live. Later we saw some icy winter pictures of the city and thought winter would be challenging. It does seem to be a good part of the country for lawn mower salesmen. Even in small towns we’ve seen huge, freshly mown lawns.

After 7 miles, we stopped at a boulangerie for breakfast and coffee, another friendly place. We continues west on the Chemin du Roy / Route Verte 5 that we’ve followed since leaving Quebec City. Up until this morning it followed the St. Lawrence River and there was a large freeway not too far north, so that only local traffic was on our highway. After breakfast we crossed under the freeway which went closer to the river. Our route turned inland but was still flat. 

We stopped for a break at the historic store in Le Brun, a lovingly restored general store with shady outdoor tables. Our route turned off the highway which had a lot of traffic, and we traversed past homes and farms on a small paved road. After 40 miles, we turned south off the Route Verte 5/Chemin du Roy. It continues to Montreal on the north side of the Saint Lawrence. We read that the south side of the Saint Lawrence is a more peaceful ride into the city, roughly following Route Verte 3 per random sources on the internet, so this is what we chose. We headed south to the ferry at Saint Ignace de Loyola which took us to Sorel-Tracy. We were early for check in at our hotel, so we stopped for lunch. Afterwards we made our way thru town to our hotel, another early stopping point.