French Bicyclists Ride Lake Superior
Caroline Labrunye (left) and Maëva Barbaud are biking from Montreal to Vancouver. They dipped into the United States at Sault Ste. Marie to ride along Lake Superior's South Shore.
For our April/May issue, I wrote a piece titled "Big Lake Bike Heaven," about the bike boom and visitors drawn "from afar – far afar – for biking vacations."
And the proof is in the pedaling, as it were.
Take this recent example: Late last month, we here at the magazine heard about a pair of French women* bicycling in the region and invited them to our office in Duluth.
* Coincidentally, this was just days after an unrelated French bicyclist visited us during his ride around the world. Clearly, the French have a long-running thing for Lake Superior.
When we spoke to them, the duo – Maëva Barbaud and Caroline Labrunye – had just finished biking the South Shore of Lake Superior, part of a summer-long ride from Montreal to Vancouver. More than just a grand adventure, they hope to improve their English on the trip, too, though they already speak it quite well.
Here are a few excerpts from their conversation with LSM Editor Konnie LeMay and me.
On Lake Superior
Caroline: It's really, really, really nice.
Maëva: The Lake looks like an ocean. I live on the west coast (of France), near the Atlantic Ocean, and it looks like the same. It's amazing. ... It’s just this landscape is beautiful.
Caroline: Most of the time we are inside the land, but each time we go to the Lake…
Maëva: It’s a pleasure to see again.
Caroline: It’s always different. You are going to the Lake Superior, but it looks like it’s another lake because it’s been a week and you’ve already seen the Lake Superior. And we don’t feel like we're in front of a lake. It’s like the ocean, like on the coast.
Maëva: We know it’s the biggest lake, sweet lake, in the world. It’s nice to see that once in my life.
On the weather
French Bicyclists on Lake Superior's Spring
On the people
Caroline: Every day is kind of an adventure because we meet new people every day.
Maëva: And we don’t know what happens.
Caroline: We arrive in a town and we don’t know where we’re going to stay, but it’s going to be dark in two hours to find a place for the tent, and we meet people. “Hey, do you want to come to my place?” I think the big adventure, what we were not expecting, is to meet so many people and they just say, “Come in,” and they are not afraid of us. They just want to help us.
Maëva: They are open-minded.
Caroline: People just have been so nice.
On the food
Maëva: We tried pasties. We didn’t try poutine in Canada because it was too fatty.
Caroline: We went to the Cold Stone Creamery. It was nice, we don’t have those kinds of places.
Maëva: In America, everything is bigger. Drinks, dishes.
Caroline: We went to a nice pizzeria (in Duluth). We haven’t eaten so much pizza in the USA. We saw a really fresh pizzeria. It was called Vitta Pizza. It was like normal-sized. Even the bread, we are used to good bread in France, and the bread was so good.
We wish them all the best during their travels. Follow the adventure on their Facebook page and website.