Ontario and Quebec Self-Drive Holiday, Canada

Fourteen nights from Toronto to Montreal, self-guided and tailor-made, overland across Ontario and Quebec with no domestic flights involved.

Avoiding the internal flights is a deliberate choice rather than an inconvenience: the distances here are drivable, the roads are good and the two provinces make more sense seen in sequence than in two separate blocks.

Toronto opens it, then Algonquin Provincial Park, one of the oldest protected landscapes in Canada, with walking trails and canoeing available on lakes that are the reason the park exists. Ottawa follows, with a guided food tour of the ByWard Market, then the Thousand Islands by Gananoque and Kingston, where the St Lawrence widens into an archipelago of granite outcrops with houses on them. Quebec City comes next by way of Montmorency Falls, with a day out to Ile d’Orleans and its farms and artisan producers, then the Fairmont Tremblant in the Laurentians, and Montreal, with a guided tour of the Jean-Talon market.

The accommodation throughout, the rental car with loss damage waiver and unlimited kilometres, all the listed activities and guided experiences and the specified meals are included; flights are not. Several of the hotels are eco-certified. The price shown is per person excluding flights. Fifteen days at this price is good value for the amount included. Late September and early October bring the autumn colour, which in this part of Canada is the main event, and the summer months are warmer and busier. The food tours in Ottawa and Montreal are a sensible way into two cities that are better eaten in than looked at, and Algonquin earlier in the route is the quiet part of the trip before the cities arrive.