A journey to Quebec's Eastern Townships-Knowlton, Three Pines country

My travels for the past few months have not been exotic.  I have been to Victoria and Uclulet and Whistler but in August I finally got back onto a plane and went back to Montreal.  On August 1 I flew to Montreal and spent Wednesday night with my friend, Val, and then the next day at night at my friend, Linda's and then I headed to the Eastern Townships where I am from originally.

My first stop was at the Eastern Townships Tourism centre off the Eastern Townships Autoroute where I took this picture.  It had been dry in Vancouver but not here and everything was lush and green.

I had decided to stop in Knowlton but managed to miss the turn off (it may have said Lac Brome rather than Knowlton)so ended up taking the next one and  ended up on interesting back roads.  I couldn't help but imagine criminals lurking in the woods from a Louise Penny mystery.  And this is where her famous series is based.

It is lovely countryside.  That is Brome Lake just ahead…

Soon I was in Knowlton, now officially Lac Brome (the Quebec government likes combining towns and sometimes giving them new names).  This part of Quebec, the Eastern Townships just north of Vermont, was settled by English speaker settlers.  In this section many were actually Loyalists from the states.

And this is where author, Louise Penny, now lives, although the first home of her and her late husband was just outside another nearby town, Sutton.  If you are not familiar with her books, the fictional town where her main characters live is called Three Pines.

I was shocked by how busy it was in the town, but the last time I was here was last year at the end of April, definitely not tourist season.  I wanted to visit Brome Lake Books, which had moved into a new building since my last visit.  This is great bookstore.

I liked this Three Pines sign outside and the bench is dedicated to Louise's husband, Michael,  who died last year.  The owners of the store were early supporters of Louise's writing and she has been a great supporter of the store as well.

As you can see it has a pretty setting as well.

And you can see there is a special section devoted to Louise Penny's books.

I ended up buying some favourite soaps with Eastern Townships scenes and book bags for gifts for my cat sitters.  And then for lunch I confess I had a maple walnut ice cream cone ( we are now in sugar maple land).

I stopped for a picture of Brome Lake before I took a quicker route back to the Autoroute.  Long ago I spent a few days at a cottage on this lake.  

I thought it might be useful to provide you with this map.  As I was leaving Knowlton and my next destination was North Hatley which you will visit in the next instalment of this blog!