After a bit of discussion we decided to give it a try and headed over to the harbour just below the butte.
After a bit of a bumpy ride in order to give us our thrills our driver and guide, Michel, proceeded to give us a tour of the Lagoon. The next hour passed quickly mostly thanks to Michel's entertaining and knowledgeable banter. The lagoon isn't the most spectacular part of "Les Îles" but we got to see a few seals before they swam into the water.
Returning to the harbour we got our final rock and roll ride then headed over to the Coast Guard base to have a look at their Arun Search and Rescue vessel appropriately named Cap aux Meules.
My picture taking brought out one of the crew curious to know who was interested in a CG boat so we chatted with him for awhile about working on the islands for the Guard. Turned out he was also a cyclist who often rode his bike to work as the crew all lived at home rather than at the station during their work cycle.
The boat ride had built up a hunger so we set up our picnic just under the butte and munched on Sarah's yummy cheese sandwiches on multigrain bread. We then finished it off with an excellent coffee and apple/cranberry cake at La Brûlerie d'Chez Nous.
After our dessert, we decided to head over to the other side of Fatima to check out the bike path we bypassed the other day when we raced back with our fish booty. Turning on to Chemin des Caps we came across a glass boutique that looked promising so we stopped to check it out.
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The artist was out on a bike ride but her chum was minding the store and gave us a tour of her atelier, which was full of various ovens for heating/fusing glass as well as an area for sandblasting glass. Definitely had me salivating looking at this dream workshop compared to my tabletop stained glass area at home.
We picked out a couple of items hoping they would survive the rest of the trip until we got back to Montreal and then continued on our way. We stopped at Plage de l'hôpital, which for some reason is also called Dune du Nord.
At the entrance to the beach there was a large wood building with toilet facilities. The rest of the building seemed empty but when we looked in through a window we saw this:
Strangely, there was no panel anywhere to explain why this whale skeleton was on display in an empty building. Was it beached on a nearby shore?
Still pondering this question we rode around trying to find the start of the bike path using the map in the tourist guide for directions. We took one road that ended at a campground but the person we asked had no idea what we were talking about.
We headed further down Chemin de l'hôpital and took a gravel road that ended at the woods with a grassy trail that seemed to be where the map indicated the bike path started. So, we followed it into the woods though the path was more mud and grass than path. We had to walk our bikes all the time until after a couple of kilometers we finally came to another gravel road and got the hell out of there.
We eventually got onto Chemin de la Belle Anse and came across a huge parking lot for the Sentier Cyclo-Pedestre.
Too bad as much effort wasn't put into the Sentier as to the parking.
We had our fill of biking for the day and headed home. Back at the Auberge I mentioned to the person at the desk about our adventure trying to find the path and she said that the path had been closed down because of erosion along the cliffs and showed us a cycling brochure that indicated the route in that area as following the road. I said it was too bad their "up to date" tourist guide had a map that still showed an off road path, which was no longer in existence.
We put the bikes away, got cleaned up and walked down the road to The Facterie seafood restaurant that provided an excellent meal exactly as advertised. We were very happy to finish the day on a positive note even as we walked home in the misty night thinking of the expected stormy weather forecast for the next day.
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