Northern Gaspé Many road-trippers know the Cabot Trail that circles Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island, but the 800-kilo‑ metre highway around Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula is just as beautiful and just as dramatic, with a French accent. Like the Cabot Trail, Highway 132 is best driven counter clockwise so you stay closest to the water. The south shore is the most populated: the road is wider, with towns catering to vacationers who come for the comparatively warm and sandy beaches, and continues to the tourist destination of Percé Rock.
Beyond Percé, the highway twists and winds through the rocks to Gaspé, the largest town in the area, and then it seems to unflex and relax along the northern Gaspé shoreline as it returns to the more populated regions of Quebec. Along the way, it rises and falls with the hills beside the Gulf of St. Lawrence before finally dropping back down to the water. Small villa‑ ges offer fine Quebec cuisine and handicrafts, but this is primarily a well-tended market road, built to service the fishing ports of the coast.
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