Started the day with yet another amazing breakfast, including sweet and sour sausage with crepes for the non- vegetarian. Elvis has left the building through the 9ft front doors.
A steady drive along Route 20 for about 80 miles to Drummondville along very straight roads, it had only about 4 bends in whole distance, with minimum speed limits well as a maximum.
Heading for Ulverton Woollen mill - mais ferme (but it was closed) - but at least the covered bridge was open.
Richmond was next - Victorian houses with slate roofs.
Through Windsor with it's canyon, boulders and waterfall.
No tourist information site found yet.
Lots of farms, including one with a multitude of antique farming bits and bobs for sale on the roadside and stretching right back beyond to the barn doors. Could have picked up something to go with our plough.
Fifteen miles further on...Sherbrooke is very much a university town. Parking up we encountered some hippie type people picking berries from the landscaping bushes around the tourist office. They popped up from amongst the bushes to offer us a sample of some 'black mouth berries' - 7 times more Vitamin C than Kiwi fruit apparently, and they really do make your mouth black. We'd never heard of these before, they looked like blueberries. One of us took them up on their offer, even though they said they were a bit bitter and dried your mouth up - and indeed they were and they did! On leaving them their salutation was 'Enjoy nature'. Only on later reflection did the adventurous one consider the possibility of it being an ill-advised action. Writing this some 6 hours later it seems they we're OK after all!
They were very helpful in the tourist office in suggesting things to see in the area and we left with a hundred weight of leaflets and maps (not very sustainable I know). Attractions in town included 'wall mural' walk, spread throughout the town, we managed to see some (8) but not all. On our circuit of the locality we initially walked through a very affluent part of town with many boutiques; even the tattoo parlour looked elegant, if that's not a contradiction. Suddenly, a couple of steps further on, we were in what appeared to be the Soho of Sherbrooke, with sex shows and boarded up shops. We made a quickish U-turn. Back to the car and out to a lovely park where there were sculptures made completely out of compost, moss, and ceramics. Eric wasn't too scared of Cedric the giant moss sculpture, but later he went a bit too close to the dragon ... But we managed to rescue him.
The road to Magog was another straight one, but was a ribbon development full of mall type shops , with at least 5 egg restaurants- all with a play on the word egg in their name - Eggspresso etc, and one called EggsOeuf.
Booked in to the B&B and went on a discovery drive to North Hatley for a picnic by Lac Massawippi, plenty of midges around but we were only bothered by a pretty stray cat (well perhaps not stray as it looked in very good condition). Back for a stroll and some window shopping in Magog, a rather swanky place with lots of restaurants and upmarket boutiques - luckily these were all shut by this time. Quite a popular place with terraces in the restaurants overlooking the marina, and lots of boat houses. One restaurant had a table with an oblong fire in the middle of it - live music too.
A random selection of the days pictures.
Two of the 14 wall murals in Sherbrooke
Eric using the giant moss sculpture's nose as a slide
The covered bridge at the closed woollen museum
The dragon compost and moss sculpture - can you spot Eric in the picture below?
Eric makes another friend
Lady Howard - owner of the park
North Hatley picnic spot
Magog marina on Lac Memphremagog
The boathouses at Magog
Time for bed - Zzzzzzzzzzzz