Eastern Canada With Campgrounds

Fourteen nights in a motorhome round Quebec in a circle from Montreal, with the campgrounds booked ahead. The appeal here is that it feels less like North America than anywhere else on the continent.

Montreal opens it. Old Montreal has cobbled streets and seventeenth-century stone buildings, the Notre-Dame Basilica is extravagantly decorated inside, Mount Royal gives the view over the whole island, and the Jean-Talon market is among the largest open-air markets in North America.

Quebec City follows, and the comparison the operator makes to Europe is fair rather than promotional: the old town is walled, the street plan is French colonial and the language of daily life is French. Walking it is the point.

Beyond the two cities the trip turns to water and forest. The St Lawrence here is wide and scattered with islands, the canoeing is on lakes still enough to mirror the trees, and the walking runs up to lookouts over the valleys. Moose and beaver are both protected in the areas the route passes through, with the beaver dams usually easier to find than the animals themselves. The Saguenay fjord closes the loop, cut by ice over a hundred kilometres inland between cliffs several hundred metres high. Canadian Affair include the flights, the motorhome, the pre-booked campgrounds and the listed attractions, with fuel, insurance and meals separate. The price is per person. The operator’s published outline is short on specifics, so the detailed routing is worth requesting before committing to dates. Autumn is the season to aim for if the dates are flexible, since the hardwood forest along the St Lawrence and the Saguenay turns as comprehensively as New England’s and draws a fraction of the visitors.