Quebec’s Eastern Townships Offer So Much

We are just back from a thrilling and enjoyable visit just over our northern border to the Eastern Townships of Quebec.  I can’t overstate how easy and inexpensive a trip like this is, mostly due to a very fortunate currency exchange that puts all of Canada in the 30 percent on sale rack. Wow.

But the best part of any visit to Eastern Canada is the friendly people you meet everywhere and the lack of crowds. This has to be the mantra of the whole area…it’s just not crowded, despite offering world-class food, views to kill for, and a fascinating interplay of history and current affairs.  And it only took us 3 1/2 hours to drive there from Massachusetts.

The trip was filled with interesting diversions, from a local Benedictine Abbey tour to a historic house where the first residents lived on the lake in Magog.

I had originally gotten the idea to come here when some residents of Newport Vermont, which is at the very bottom of big lake Mephremagog, told me about the town.  They pointed out the big contrast between Newport, which has had some tough times, and the thriving tourist magnet up north.

Our visit included several other towns in these, the Eastern Townships or Cantons D’est of southern Quebec. The towns were created in squares, so each is similarly shaped. Dunham and Sutton are among them, rural towns of under 4000 residents that attract tourists with shops and restaurants and fun activities.

Velo Volant was one of them. It’s a series of yellow recumbent bicycles strung up on a wire that you pedal through a 2 km woodland aerial path. You’re up high, and slowly propelling yourself along the track.

It’s quiet, and the birds mix with the stream for a calming feeling as you move through the forest. It’s the opposite of a zip line and that’s just perfect for me!

Farm food is big here, and at Espace Old Mill, we were served a unique four-course tasting menu that combined delicate flowers and the bounteous vegetables from the field forty feet away.

 

Each dish needed a few sentences to describe, adding to the casual time of the meal and its duration, just under 3 hours. No rush here, and the little parcels of complicated foods the kitchen sent out were indeed filling as a full plate.

We met a farmer who shares her B&B with guests on the weekends, called Au Pied Leve, a working farm with 1000 guinea hens, flocks of chickens and geese, and big highland cows and pigs. The six-course meal she shared with us was all from the farm.

Find out more about Eastern Townships on GoNOMAD.com