On today’s episode of “biking around trying to find ice cream”, we take you to Varennes,
a town of 25,000 people on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, about 30 kilometres
from downtown Montreal by bike. It’s an excellent day trip for people looking to get
out of the city and cover a reasonable but not exhausting distance, with each way taking
about two hours at a moderate pace. You’ll see charming and historic village-style neighbourhoods,
first in Boucherville and then in Varennes itself, and separation from car traffic is
overall very good. If you’re considering your first off-island bike trip, this route
is a really accessible option, probably on par with Chambly, a similar distance route
that’s also easy to recommend.
The first stage of this trip involves leaving Montreal and going through Longueuil. We took
the Jacques Cartier Bridge, which has a bit of a climb that’s always more of a pain
at the end of the day when you’re crossing it to come back to Montreal. In Longueuil
we took the Desaulniers Linear Park before crossing over the highway to end up on the
river trail. If you’re coming from further west in Montreal you can get on the river
trail sooner by going through Saint-Lambert.
This river trail, which is called Promenade René-Lévesque where we crossed onto it,
follows between the Saint Lawrence River and Highway 132 for just under seven kilometres.
The noise from the highway might have been annoying if it lasted longer but with the
distance of this trail it wasn’t a big deal, although it was a good reminder as always
of the giant death machines that live among us. You can cover this section pretty fast
if you want because it’s completely straight and uninterrupted, although there are various
lookouts and rest stops with benches to take in views of the river and the islands, including
the Boucherville Islands National Park. As a side note, those islands are accessible
by bike using one of the river ferries, to get around the fact that the Lafontaine bridge-tunnel
is for motor traffic only.
At the end of this river path the highway goes away and you merge onto a relatively
low traffic road going along the water [Boulevard Marie-Victorin]. This is a really enjoyable
stretch of cycling because you get to use a smooth paved multi-use path built into the
road but fully separated from car traffic by concrete. There’s a lot going on along
this stretch, including ferry stops with fountains and other amenities, interesting houses, and
the old downtown of Boucherville with a marina and beach area, plus churches and other old
buildings. The only real downside of this part of the trip is that there are many walkers
and runners on this section of multi-use trail so you might need to use the road if you’re
really focused on speed, although we didn’t encounter any major problems, especially in
the morning.
This section of path through Boucherville lasts for about six kilometres before turning
into a park and then onto a small road going through fields. We did see one car slowly
moving through here but it’s clearly mainly used by pedestrians and cyclists. One important
draw of Varennes from our perspective is all of the interesting house styles, and this
starts close to the edge of town with this unique looking Victorian restoration house,
built five years ago on top of a more modern-looking house. You can follow its progress from about
2012 to 2016 on Google Street View, and whatever you think of it, the owner was clearly having
a lot of fun with the project. What do you think of the house, love it or list it? Tell
us in the comments.
We continued through to the waterfront park and then to the older part of Varennes, which
was a really enjoyable experience, especially going down the narrow Sainte-Anne street,
which has lots of historic and old-style houses. In addition to the massive 1800s small town
Quebec church that would have dominated the cityscape even more 150 years ago when it
was built, there were a few small chapels scattered around that seemed interesting.
We spent a decent amount of time biking around this older part of town, enjoying all the
interesting and often colourful houses, including this blue duplex, or blueplex.
From the waterfront you can actually see Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in the distance, which makes
sense because Varennes is only about as far east as the eastern tip of the island of Montreal,
but it’s surprising because this town feels very removed from the city. In Quebec history,
Varennes is notable as the birthplace of Marguerite d'Youville, who founded the Grey Nuns of Montreal
and who has public squares in Montreal and Quebec City named after her.
Varennes also has a newer, more suburban side of town that’s not as interesting from the
perspective of houses or other buildings, except for the library, but it does have a
surprisingly complete bike network by suburban standards. In certain places it comes at the
expense of sidewalks, which is unfortunate, but it made cycling around town pleasant and
seemed to be pretty well-used by the locals. Like many others that day, we got our ice
cream on our way out of town.
That’s all for our trip to Varennes. There was a time last year when we were really interested
in pushing ourselves and seeing how much distance we could cover, which culminated in a grueling
full-day bike ride to Trois-Rivieres. Maybe at some point we’ll have that interest come
back, but for now we’re enjoying these moderate distance rides that allow for a bit more relaxation.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to bike and subscribe.