Ride Day 7—Blanc Sablon, QUE/Labrador

Day 7/RT 25—Thursday, July 8
Labrador Day Tour
10.7 miles
St Barbe NL to Blanc Sablon, QUE, and then on our bikes up a hill to Labrador
Dockside Motel

Tour Guide Description: Today we take a boat ride to Labrador. The icy channel between the island and the mainland is home to whales, seabirds, and occasional icebergs. Remarkably different from Newfoundland, Labrador's coast is treeless and extremely rugged. We return back to the island in the late afternoon.

We’d packed our lunches last night, so were up at 6 to a breakfast of oatmeal, coffee/hot chocolate.

It was cold and foggy when we arose and made the short run to the ferry dock. We’d been told to expect cold and wind in Labrador, so we were wearing/carrying warm clothes. The crossing was too foggy to see any whales and the fog did not lift until we sighted land. Labrador, in contrast to Newfoundland, was warm and sunny—in the 80s.

Parking our bikes with the cars on the ferry

Gary, Atlantic Canada Cycling president and ride leader

Andrew

Barbara and Aki--Claude in blue behind them, Barry in orange

After an hour and a half, we docked at Blanc Sablon, a small port in Quebec. Here’s what the route guide said about the time:

Note that the boat docks at Blanc Sablon which is actually Quebec! It is on Eastern Time (1½ hours difference)! The ferry dock area, however, in recent years has been using Newfoundland Time. Note also that the northern part of Labrador where some radio broadcasts originate is on Atlantic Time (½ hour difference). Do not be confused by radio broadcasts as they may be from this other area. 

Clear as mud. All told, all we had to do was keep our watches on Newfoundland time and ignore all else.

Blanc Sablon as the ferry docks

Hauled-out boats at the entrance to the Blanc Sablon Harbor

As far as my French and my research goes, Blanc Sablon means "White wind-blown sand"



To get to Labrador proper, which has only 50 miles of paved highway (Île au Bois to Red Bay), we had to ride the curving QUE coast for a mile or two and then climb a mile up a steep set of hills. Virtually everyone walked except Heidi, and she somehow managed to ride up. She’s young and has the energy and strength of fifty. One couple didn't even bring their bikes and decided that this was a day for hiking. On the way to the hills, we spotted what we thought were plovers but what turned out to be killdeer. Very odd as they were not making the killdeer sound we know.

Road signs on the  way to Labrador

This is the road we had to climb to get to Labrador; doesn't look like much of a climb in this photo, but it was; that's some riders at the bottom of the climb

Andrew helping Suz up the hill to Labrador

Our ferry heading back to NL

When we got to the top, pursued by blackflies, we had a grand vista of the port at Blanc Sablon and could see our tiny ferry chugging back to Newfoundland to pick up another load of passengers.

We pedaled another quarter mile and found Ancilla at the “Welcome to Labrador” sign. She volunteered to take photos of us and our bikes at the sign.

Susan and Suz are welcomed to Labrador; the jackets are to keep off the blackflies, which were thick

We made it!  Ancilla wanted us to hold our bikes over our heads in triumph; Ha! We could barely get them off the ground

We were thinking of riding to the closest Labrador town—L’ Anse au Clair—to spend some time there, but when we got to the sign announcing this little seaside town, we saw that the town was in a hole at the bottom of a long, steep hill similar to the one everyone had walked up. The blackflies were getting worse and we didn’t fancy sweating our way back up that hill, so we turned around and rode back to the ferry terminal, which was nothing more than a small restaurant, gift shop, and ticket counter.

Hill down into L'Anse-au-Clair

At the top of the hills we’d walked up was a sign announcing that the grade was 9%. Perhaps it was, but it seemed a good deal steeper. The ride down was a bit scary with potholes and turns. I took care descending. Suz walked her bike down. I took a photo of her from the bottom where I waited near some interesting rocks that I knew would perk her up.

Suz cautiously walking her bike down the Labrador hill that we had walked up; I rode down and took this photo

Photo taken on the way back to the ferry terminal; the round wooden object left is a trash receptacle; most houses had wooden receptacles shaped like this; one wonders how clothes ever dry in this climate

The rocky escarpment rising at road's edge



Cottongrass

We then parked our bikes at the terminal and walked to the shore south of it. There were lots of smelt (caplin) dead on the shore. Later Claude showed us some photos he’d taken further south in the small QUE city of Bonne Espérance where they were harvesting thousands of these small silver fish.

Dead smelt (Newfoundlanders call them caplin) on the beach near the ferry

On the beach we also found an odd plant called Sea Lungwort. It lay on the sand, its pink and blue flowers on the ends of prone stems with curly bluish leaves. The beach rocks were quite wonderful and Suz collected many. Some were aggregates with colored pieces of other stones in them. Others contained great swirls of quartz.

This plant was actually at the top of the climb to Labrador. It is Roseroot.

Unnamed succulent

Sea Lungwort

After beachcombing, we returned to the terminal and sat at a table with Arlene, who claimed to have ridden to L’Anse au Clair, but we knew that she’d turned around and waited in the ferry terminal when she saw the hill she had to climb to get there. I don’t believe that she even got to Labrador. She is fond of sampling the local food along the route. Later Aki sat with us and proudly displayed the hand-knit Labrador cap she'd bought in L'Anse au Clair.

Aki with the knit cap she bought in L'Anse au Clair

Joanne, Claude, and Heidi either at the Blanc Sablon ferry terminal or at the restaurant in the St Barbe motel

Speaking of food, I bought a small jar of bakeapple jam in the gift shop. The word "bakeapple" is anglicized from the French “baie qu’appelle” meaning “What is that berry called?” In Norway they call these berries cloudberries. Both countries treat these pale orange berries as something very special because they grow one to a low plant and are scarce but very tasty.

Internet photo of people gathering bakeapple berries; these berries are called cloudberries in Norway

Small stems of bakeapple berries

On the way back to Newfoundland, we saw three humpbacked whales. Quite a sighting. Claude got a photo of a tail.

Much enlarged humpback whale tail on the way back to Newfoundland

Our return ferry, Apollo, ready to take us back to NL; we'd come over on a different one but I cannot remember its name

Back in St Barbe at the Dockside, I ate pan-fried cod and Suz ate deep-fried cod in the motel dining room.

Newfie vocabulary:

Many pronounce “th” as “d”: “Me mudda and fadda, bod of dem live in St Barbe.”

drung—narrow rocky land

gamogue—silly trick

nish-fender—easily injured

slieveen—a sly, deceitful person

slinge—to skip school or work

squabby—as soft as jelly

Facts

• Most populous trees: white and black spruce, balsam fir, birch, red pine, aspen, poplar
• The pitcher plant is Newfoundland’s floral emblem
• Snowshoe hares and chipmunks were introduced, as well as moose
• Labrador’s caribou herd is one of the largest in the world
• Caribou, black bear, beaver, lynx, red fox indigenous
• Polar bears visit the Labrador coast, arriving on ice floes