Luckily, most everyone speaks at least some English and I can still read French pretty well.
There are lots of Acadians on the islands and the Acadian Flag is the most common by far. It is a French flag with a yellow star in the blue stripe.
There are some Quebec flags to be seen too but far less than the Acadian. The Quebec flag has four French fleur de lys.
I'd say that 99% of the tourists on the island were from Quebec. I saw a handful of license plates from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and I really looked.
I rode down to the southern end of the island chain along a thin sand dune with lovely beaches.
The highway that runs the length of the islands is part of Quebec's Route Verte bicycle route system that is found all over the province.
How cool is this?
The big issue all week has been bad weather with rain and ridiculously strong winds (le vent). I can ride a headwind as well as most but there have been a few days where it's been hard to walk with sustained 30 mph winds gusting past 50. Riding that is just tremendously unpleasant so I've hung out in campground shelters waiting for things to calm down. Two days ago, I went down to the beach to watch and photograph the kite boarders. A good day for them is a really bad day for me.
A few days ago I took a boat trip to Isle d'Entreé, the only island not accessible by road. It's a lovely place with around 100 anglophone inhabitants.
There is a 174 meter Big Hill to climb on the island with fantastic views towards the rest of the islands as well as back towards Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.
This is looking up towards the summit of The Big Hill.
Views towards the other islands.
Summit benchmark.
The towns on the islands are quite lovely with houses painted in vivid colors. There are tons of nice beaches that are surprisingly uncrowded. This is a great place to hang out and relax.
I met Natalie and Marian on the ferry coming to the islands.
They stayed at the same campground as me for a few days and were kind enough to invite me over for dinner and a board game about the islands. Thanks for your hospitality, girls!
The winds calmed down enough
(15-20 mph) that I rode up to Îsle de Grande Entree and back yesterday. What a gorgeous ride!
Along the way, I stopped at the salt museum that is sponsored by the local salt mine. It turns out that the entire island chain sits on top of salt domes that are maybe 100 feet below the surface at the shallowest and go down thousand of feet or more. The salt was deposited from shallow seas and then covered by sediment millions of years ago when this area was down by the equator. Because the salt is less dense than the surrounding material, it slowly pushed upward forming huge domes with sediment on top. The domes that rose above the surface of the sea became the string of islands now known as Les Îsles de la Madeleine. I've read about islands formed by coral reefs and hot spots in the mantle but never salt domes.
I got up early this morning to ride down to Cap a Meules to catch the ferry back to Prince Edward Island.
This is the fishing harbor.
Loading the ferry. I got to get on before all the cars.
This was the view of Îsle d'Entreé from the ferry on the way back to PEI. The Big Hill is on the left.
Goodbye Les Îsles. This has definitely been one of the highlights of my trip!
Location:Îsles de la Madeleine
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