Sun. 4th October ’26
We are amid autumn colour season and have a vision of a red house in amongst the trees with autumn colours. We head off with this goal in mind but any good photos of the trees in autumn are a win in our book. Our route today takes us inland to Saguenay partly along the south bank of the River Saguenay and tomorrow we head back along the north bank to Tadoussac on the corner of the River Saguenay and the St Lawrence River. It is at Saint Simeon we have our last view of the mighty St Lawrence River for a couple of days where we sit with our coffee flask and take in the view.
We get our first glimpses of the River Saguenay at Petit Saguenay Quay after a quick stop at the Window of the Fjord where we refuse to take the photo it is designed for. We are finding it hard to get our heads around where the rivers freeze over in the winter as it all looks so calm with water flowing at present. The River Saguenay is much smaller than the huge St Lawrence, and more like we would expect a navigable river to be. We will just miss seeing the Queen Mary 2 again as, apparently, it will be passing along the river to the town of Saguenay and back in two days’ time.
The covered bridge in L’Anse-St-Jean may be more familiar to Canadians on the old $1,000 note which was in issue from 1954 to 1992. [Ed. CAD$1,000 is today around £550. Back in 1954, it was worth the equivalent of $12,000. I can’t imagine too many people owning one!] It was built in 1929 and still used as a road bridge. The village is officially designated as one of the most beautiful villages in Québec. Having now visited we can see why and it has several cafes which made it a good lunch stop.
Claude also mentions L’Anse-de-Tabatiere lookout, which is not far off our route and looks like a short walk to the viewpoint. It is so useful having our AI generated itinerary, as it does save me doing the research in guide books and online of where we should stop and where to just drive by. We do have to be a bit careful of the AI itinerary as it can cram too much in, even for us. Also, the order of stops is not always accurate and we did missed a couple of places early on in the trip. Now I review the itinerary the night before to fact check and determine what is realistic to achieve.
For our daily exercise we head to Parc National du Fjord-du-Saguenay, still debating if we had enough time and energy to climb up the (steep) 3.5km path up to the 8.5m high statue of Notre-Dame-du-Saguenay (thank goodness for auto suggestions to help with typing all these long names!!). At the entrance to the park, I tentatively show my Annual pass for Parks of Canada but am told this is not Canada, this Is Québec so pay up another fee (it was only 10CAD each so the price is irrelevant. The phrase rings very true and it has stuck with us as we continue travelling north in the province of Québec!! I was relieved when we decided the climb was too much for this afternoon and we settled for a stroll through the trees in full autumn colour and then along the riverside down to a jetty. The views out along the fjord really are stunning and we take a few moments to take them in. It again gave us an(other) opportunity to play with autumn tree and leaf compositions. It will take hours to go through all our pictures all and maybe give inspiration for next year’s photo club exhibitions in Spain or UK. 