Paddlers’ paradise

A few strollers step along the boardwalk on the city’s elegant little waterfront. Some chattering, in French, echoes from a moored sailboat. But mostly, at this hour, in this city of 5,000, on this southern end of Lake Memphremagog, near the Quebec border, things are hushed.

Newport, Vt., is not to be confused with Newport, R.I.

“Yes, Newport is sleepy,’’ confirms Ruth Sproull, owner of Little Gnesta, an inviting bed-and-breakfast in a 19th-century house, a short walk from both Lago and the waterfront. Sproull, a Midwest transplant, moved to Newport last year because she liked the city’s location in the rural and wooded North Country.

“Most visitors I see are in bed early, so they can be on the water or bike trail early,’’ she says. “My guess is no one visits Newport for a night life.’’

Paddlers, sailors, motor boaters, and anglers have many choices here. The area is replete with lakes, ponds, rivers, and fast-moving streams. The prize, though, is Memphremagog. The lake, 30 miles long, 25 of them jutting into Canada, got its name from an Abenaki Indian word suggesting “big waters.’’

Among those visiting Newport are the scores of intrepid paddlers who use segments of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail that runs through the city on its 740-mile-long string of lakes and rivers from the Adirondacks in Old Forge, N.Y., to Fort Kent in Maine.

Those canoeing east, end-to-end along the trail, find in Newport a welcome dose of civilization after a 6-mile portage into Memphremagog. Other paddlers with less time for long trips use the city as a base for day trips.

But what the city really sees is anglers. Thousands of them visit each year to fish Memphremagog and its tributaries for trout, salmon, pike, and bass. In winter the lake is dotted with shanties.

And Newport each July celebrates its lake heritage in still another way: with an “Aquafest,’’ a week of swimming, log-rolling, sailing, and other events.