June 9th, 2008
Earlier this spring I had talked to Mark Rossignol, friend and owner of CPT here in the county, to scope out some tough terrain for training on some of his long bike rides. Mark is a rabid cycling fan and is often out on his road bike for four or five hours at a time. So late last week Mark tells me about some hills he had found north of Madawaska, across the border. “You’ll love it” he says, “just like the french alps.”
We loaded up at 6:30 in the morning Saturday and crossed the border into Edmunston. After staging in an abandoned parking lot we set out on bikes. Maybe we didn’t exactly tackle the french alps, but Mark’s hills didn’t dissapoint. We started climbing straight away up the Chemin du Pouvoir. 20 minutes of mostly steady climb, not bad. Down the back side took us by the infamous ’Club Katase’ (as far as I can tell putting a strip tease bar in the middle of the woods is a strictly eastern North American thing) and into the next climb Chemin du Toussaint. On the descent into St. Joseph we were nearly derailed by a stampede of cows. It was a big event, the whole town was standing in driveways, watching the herd being run straight through main street from pasture to pasture. After a brief pause we started the Roussel Martin, the biggest climb of the day. At this point it was feeling like the alps. Maybe it was the cows, or the farmland, or the hills, it felt good. We descended the Chemin du Lynch and after a short break of easy riding along the Madawaska River, we started up the Chemin St. Michelle, the final climb of the day and the toughest. After a long day in the saddle, we descended back to Edmunston.
Maybe not quite like Chamonix, but New Brunswick does have a european feel. Going into Edmunston a person can take a stroll down a walking street, have a real cappucino, sit in front of a cafe. And the countryside does have the fresh manure smell of an austrian hillside. It was a good ride.
