Days 15 and 16: Berthierville to St Marc des Carrieres.

Day 15. Berthierville to La Mauricie National Park.

117km/73m, 6hrs12mins, 18.8kph/11.7mph, 457m/1485ft of climbing.

Terrific day today. On the road by about 0730, because I was expecting it be a fairly long day. That worked out well, too, as I took advantage of the first section being very flat to pile on a bit more pace than usual. 25km in the first hour - pedestrian on the road bike but electric on this - and about 35km, more than a quarter of the day's journey, by 0900. Very good for the morale to have made that much progress so early in the day. And I'm starting to see the physical benefit of putting in all these miles, I felt strong all day and able to press on at a half-decent pace.

A day of two halves, one might say. The first 60km through flat, largely arable, farmland. Lots of quite attractive little farming communities, the style of much of the housing now distinctly French. Then a gradual transition back to the wild, with the birch and pine forest first infiltrating and then entirely supplanting the agricultural land. Roads quiet everywhere; I believe it's the last day of a holiday weekend, so maybe that accounts for it. Weather overcast for most of the day...

Until Shawnigan, that is. It's a fairly substantial town north of Trois Rivieres and I stopped there for lunch. About five minutes after restarting it became very dark. I had just about enough time to don the rainjacket and switch on my rear light when there was a crash of thunder and the rain began to fall. And such rain. Rain of an intensity I have very rarely been out in, and have certainly never ridden a bike through. It was a deluge, a torrent, an inundation. C'etait incroyable. Fortunately it was also relatively brief - within about 15 minutes it eased to being merely heavy, and after half-an-hour it had stopped.

It gives me a chance to do a couple of product reviews. First, sealskin socks. For the benefit of the uninitiated, these are socks with a waterproof Gore-Tex liner that are meant to keep your feet dry even if your shoes get wet. I've used them for a while on the bike in UK winters and in general they work OK. However, I can now advise that in extreme conditions the rain simply runs down one's leg in such quantity as to get into the sock from the top. And once inside, the efficiency of the Gore- Tex liner means that it can't get out again! So one rides along for a while with one's feet encased in plastic bags full of cold water. This is not great, but makes for an entertaining spectacle at the roadside as the passing foreign cyclist stops and empties his socks!

Second, and in complete contrast, Vaude waterproof panniers. Despite the downpour, all my gear remained perfectly dry. Remarkable.

So, to my destination for the night, which is a campground in La Mauricie National Park. Just a small park, as the nice man at the entrance advised me when he pointed out that the campsite I had reserved on-line was 65 kilometres from that particular gate. A bit like entering the Yorkshire Dales National Park at Skipton and being told your accommodation was in Reeth. Since I had already covered 112km that day, I gratefully accepted his suggestion that he switch my reservation to a campsite just 5km away. And very beautiful it was. Another tranquil, solitary night in not-quite wilderness. And with one's food hanging in a tree, of course.

Day 16: Parc de la Mauricie to St Marc des Carrieres

103km/64m, 5hrs17mins, 19.5kph/12.1mph, 406m/1320ft of climbing.

Zig-zagging back south today, back into farming country en route to Quebec City. But on departing La Mauricie, a word in praise of the Canadian National Parks people. On the basis of my experience so far, these places are brilliantly managed and strike a superb balance between the tight regulation needed to protect the near-wilderness environment and the latitude needed to allow visitors to explore and enjoy it. Difficult to see how it could be done much better, I think.

It had rained heavily overnight but was dry when I got up, and my luck held. It constantly threatened rain, and at one point I took cover in a McDonalds, of all places, as a specially black cloud approached - memories of yesterday - but though I frequently rode through places where it had rained very recently, barely a drop fell on me. And the weather brightened as the day went on, so that for the last couple of hours I was riding in brilliant, and hot, sunshine. And for that couple of hours I even had a following wind, my first of the trip. it doesn't half make it easier.