Self drive holidays in Quebec

“Poutine – it’s delicious, though I was in two minds trying it,” says Simon Mills, remembering his first self drive trip to Quebec. If you were to drive along the bank of the vast St Lawrence River for three hours between Montreal and Quebec City, you could pass some 20 different restaurants serving poutine on one road – and countless more if you took a little detour.

Our Canada self drive expert from our partner Native Escapes was glad he took the poutine plunge in the end. The unofficial dish of the province – a toppling tower of fries, gravy and cheese curds – is best scoffed with gusto, not nervously picked at.

It might not be the reason you’ve come here, but it’s emblematic of a region where food and drink should be high on your priority list. The Quebecois culinary sensibility is ever-present as you drive from town to town, and it’s easy to sniff out, whether you want poutine from a roadside trailer or vegan ice cream from a creamery.

“In the summer you get a lot of things like food trucks in Montreal and you tend to stumble across microbreweries,” says Simon. The rest of the year, look out for signs for érablières – maple plantations where ‘sugar shacks’ sell delicious syrup-based dishes.

The birthplace of Cirque du Soleil, Baie-St-Paul is pleasant and creative, with plenty of art galleries and a contemporary art museum. Whilst there are great cheese shops and restaurants, correspondingly numerous hiking trails will still endeavour to lead you out into the surrounding forests of the Charlevoix region.

Pleasantly walkable – so long as you don’t mind the odd cobbled street – Montreal is Quebec’s second largest city. The 17th- and 18th-century buildings around the Old Port now house boutiques and shops selling Montreal-style smoked meat – Canada’s version of pastrami. The Notre-Dame Basilica’s moody blue interior makes it one of the loveliest religious buildings on the continent.

If you’re going to build a hotel that prominent, then don’t be surprised when it becomes one of the most photographed in the world. The Château Frontenac dominates the skyline of Quebec City’s UNESCO-listed walled old town, where the buildings make it easy to mistake for a European town. Just outside the city is the impressive Montmorency Falls, right on the highway.

Looking at a map, the St Lawrence River appears to be in the process of unzipping the province, opening out into what becomes the largest estuary in the world. Historically a thoroughfare for many Indigenous peoples, it’s the route of one of the nicest drives through the province – the Route du Fleuve between Baie-St-Paul and La Malbaie, west of Quebec City.

No, Norway hasn’t the monopoly on fjords. This flooded glaciated valley, 100km long, starts at Lac St-Jean and feeds into the St Lawrence River. Where the freshwater meets the seawater, whales meet and mingle too – you may even see them from the shore. This is the most southerly point in the world for spotting Arctic-dwelling belugas, though their numbers have dwindled.

Quebec, like the rest of Canada, is a very easy place to drive, with little traffic and good roads. Knowing some polite phrases in French will go a long way, and speaking a bit of French is useful outside of the main tourist areas. Road signs are in French, by law. French and Quebecois are considered mutually intelligible – though slang and accents might cause mutual confusion.

Quebec is two different countries in summer and in winter, when snow transforms the landscape. Whilst the big cities can be visited year-round – Quebec City and Montreal have some brilliant winter festivals – the best time to go whale watching in Saguenay Fjord is from August to October, and the best time to drive is from late spring to early autumn. The fabled autumn colours start in September, or October if September has been warm, and colour the banks of the St Lawrence River.