For a weekend, a day or a week’s vacation away from the noise and excitement of the city, you’re looking for a mix of nature and the small-town-charm of a village where everything is easily accessible: culture, history, hiking, kayaking, gastronomy… Orford has a little bit of everything!
The village is at the heart – and the cutting edge – of living in harmony with nature, where you can feel at one with the flora and fauna and, if you have to, telecommute while taking breaks to make cuckoo clocks for the deer that stroll quietly through the village backyards .
For nature lovers…
The town is at the heart of Parc National du Mont Orford, one of 26 national parks governed by Sépaq, which makes access to the increasingly rare conservation and protection of nature extremely easy.
It’s a national park famous for its white-tailed deer, great blue herons and hikes that sometimes bring you across dinosaur-like turtles (which you shouldn’t approach, because they snap faster than their shadows).
The park’s hiking trails often lead to exceptional views where you can eat your sandwich (and take your garbage with you afterwards, of course), and you can also leave for several days, as you can camp in one of the 27 “Ready-to-Camp” cubes in the Stukely Lake area.
You can also go canoeing, kayaking, paddleboarding, pedal-boating, rock-climbing, mountain-biking… There are a thousand ways to immerse yourself in nature.
For more info and equipment rental rates, visit the Parc National du Mont Orford website!
For music lovers…
Orford is home to a renowned classical music academy and, in summer, to the Orford Musique festival.
But the music academy also welcomes artists in residence and its students give concerts all year round.
The setting, overgrown with nature, is as architectural and calm as a film, and you can’t help but wonder if you should have been a clarinettist when you go there to listen to music during the festival, because you don’t want to go back to town afterwards…
For gourmets…
Orford is also known for its gastronomic circuits and farms, where you can pick up fresh, local produce and enjoy agrotourism.
The Saveurs Orford agri-food circuit offers a list of places to visit that includes the Orford vineyard and its brewer “Canton Brasse”, a farm-to-table café and six farms that grow herbs, sunflowers, vegetables, fruit and livestock. For more info, click here!
Also in the canton is the iconic Abbaye Saint-Benoît du Lac – the best place in Quebec to pick apples in autumn, and which makes exceptional cheeses that look like they’ve been kissed by angels.
If you want to reconnect with nature and the terroir, or take a breath of fresh air in one of Quebec’s best-preserved, eco-conscious areas, this is the perfect road-trip – if you pile into the Communauto at 8am, you can have a sandwich sitting on a big rock overlooking Lac Stukely at noon with no problem…
Good osmosis with the natural world!