We flew into St John’s Newfoundland, via a direct flight from Gatwick and stayed for a couple of days to find our feet. Public transport is not so prevalent but St John’s is quite walkable, albeit, hilly!
We arrived in the middle of the Canada games and also an Arts Festival, so it was quite busy.
First day and the heavens opened, bringing much needed rain to St John’s, but it didn’t put us off! We managed to spot the Jelly Bean houses (even the mailboxes and a bird box were coloured!),
visit the war memorial,
get some great tips for our road trip from Monet at the information centre and do a tour on the 10 stop Hop On Hop Off bus. We did get off at Cape Spear – the most easterly mainland point of Canada,
home of 2 lighthouses (the old one is the oldest surviving in Newfoundland and was manned by members of the same family for over 100 years) and also has some second world war fortifications. It’s a beautiful spot, even in the rain.
The next day, the skies cleared, so we got the bus to Signal Hill visitor centre, then walked up the hill via Queens Battery and up to the Cabot Tower
where Marconi received the 1st transoceanic wireless signal. The views over St John’s are fabulous.
Then, off down the trail to Quidi Vidi, a fishing village (you can go cod jigging here!), which funnily enough also has a good brewery!!!!
We finished the day back in downtown with a quick trip to see the last train in Newfoundland (no trains running anymore)
and accidently came across the historic Newman Wine Vaults, one of the oldest structures in St John’s and where you can learn about the link between Portugal, England, and Newfoundland (Newmans Port).
The next day the sun came out and we picked up our hire car to start our road trip. We headed up to the Bonavista Peninsula for a 2 night stay in the lovely old fishing village of Trinity – beautiful traditional, colourful wooden houses overlooking the bay with Fort Point lighthouse in the distance.
Hurricane Erin then brought in some rough winds, grey skies and a drop in temperature so the woolly hats and coats came out and we headed to the tip of the Peninsula. First stop was Elliston, root cellar of the world! There are loads of root cellars here, built into the ground to store all the root vegetables!
However, there is also a puffin viewing spot here and oh we were so lucky to see not just hundreds over on an island but a handful close up where we were standing – such a very special moment.
Then we headed up to Bonavista Lighthouse and the spot where John Cabot made landfall in 1497. Spotted more puffins in the distance and seemingly they will leave in the next week to float around the sea until they return next year to mate.
From Trinity we had a long road trip up the road to the islands (once off the Trans Canada Highway the roads can be a bit rough) to Twillingate. Near the top the road literally joins several islands together via bridges and causeways. We arrived just in time to have the last seats at the Twillingate dinner theatre and enjoyed a good meal, excellent company and an hilarious show – Newfoundland music and skits. Just what was needed after the long trek up. Next we visited Long Point lighthouse at Crow Head. The keepers had to wind a 50lb weight every hour for the light to turn!! It’s automated now.
Our next stop was Rocky Harbour. Another long road trip, which should have been through some stunning scenary but sadly it was covered in smoke from the Nova Scotia wildfires 🙁 Rocky Harbour is within the Gros Morne National Park. Another lighthouse (Lobster Cove) with a very well presented history of what life was like there.
Twillingate – Harbour Lights Inn
Then, on up the coast, this time with the sun shining, so we could see the Long Range Mountains and another couple of lighthouses (bit of a trend here!) – the smallest one we’ve seen so far was at Cow Head
and then on to the Point Riche lighthouse at Port au Choix where we stayed over night.
On our journey up we stopped at the wreck of the SS Ethie
and the Arches Provincial Park, where 3 rock arches rise out of the beach!
Temperatures again hot erratic from 24 degrees and sunny one day to 10 degrees and raining the next!
We managed to catch sight of a small herd of Caribou before heading north.
We cut inland along the Grenfell trail – lovely scenary (between the showers), Andy spotted a moose but it had gone by the time I lifted the camera and the sun managed to come out when we arrived in St Anthony. We took a short trip up to – you’ve guessed it – Fox Point lighthouse, quite a short squat one this time with beautiful views across the bay.
And………there was an iceberg – ok a small one compared to the giants they get here but as it is very late in the season we didn’t expect to see any at all.
We then had a lovely dinner at the Lighthouse Cafe, and lo and behold, we spotted 2 whales playing in the bay. What a wonderful way to end our 43rd anniversary.
The temperature rose again to 24 degrees and we had sunshine and clear blue skies in St Anthony – a perfect day for driving through tiny coastal villages on the way to L’Anse aux Meadows, an historic site where an excavated 11th Century Viking settlement can be viewed. There is an interesting reconstruction of sod buildings here and you can see some of the current excavation teams still working.
We also did the beautiful Birchy Nuddick trail here spotting partridgeberry and squashberry plants along the way. Our hostess in Port au Choix made delicious jams from these berries so it was lovely to see them in the wild. On our way back we stopped to try moose burgers – rather nice actually, before heading back to the lighthouse to see if there were any more whales. Sadly, none, but the iceberg had moved into the bay area, tipped over and the locals think it has grounded as it hadn’t moved since the morning! Finally, we popped into a tiny museum in the gift shop which provided an interesting display of life on the northern penninsula of Newfoundland including the wildlife (including a polar bear), the tradition of mummering at Christmas, what happened during the resettlement years, and explaining the tiny roadside vegetable patches that we have seen along our journey.
Then we started our way back down to Rocky Harbour, this time via the Viking Trail that hugs the coastline. It was a clear day so we could see the coast of Labrador across the Gulf of St Lawrence. We stopped off at Flowers Cove to see the thrombolites as we’d seen some in Western Australia – the ones here are huge in comparison!
Anyway, the reason we came back to Rocky Harbour was to do the Western Brook Pond boat trip in the Gros Morne National Park – and boy, we were so glad we did. The sun was out so we had clear views of the stunning Long Range Mountains. Western Brook Pond was a fjord many years ago but is now landlocked and even though it is 16km long and 165 metres deep it is called a Pond! There are thousands of “ponds” across the Rock (Newfoundland), some are called ponds, others lakes but we’ve not got to the bottom of which is which – size doesn’t seem to come into it. The boat trip took about 2 hours and we even dropped 2 hikers off at one end to start a 4 day hike (with a permit and a guide only)! Brad, Jamie and Chris on our Bontours boat were very entertaining and informative and we’d definitely recommend this trip. There’s a 2.7km flat walk to get to the boat but you can pay for a golf buggy to take you there as well.
We finished the day off with a lovely meal at the Buoy and Arrow before repacking for another long drive in the morning.
On Labour Day we set off on our way back to St John’s. The sky was clear so we got to see the stunning scenary through Gros Morne on the road back to the Trans Canada Highway – you could even see the Tablelands in the distance – one of the few places on earth where you can see the earth’s mantle.
We didn’t see any of this on our way up due to heavy smoke from the Nova Scotia wildfires. We stopped off at the little town of Botwood to see if the Flying Boat Museum was open, but sadly, for Andy, it was closed.
The town has some lovely murals, though, and we also learnt about the Killick anchor. It’s like a basket with a weight/stone in, and the bottom has spikes on and is useful if there is nothing for a conventional anchor to “dig” into.
Then it was on to Gander, where we stopped for a couple of nights.
Gander has a fascinating history, oh, and is home to the North Atlantic Aviation Museum, so Andy got to see his planes!!! There is also a fascinating exhibition in the International Lounge of Gander Airport – from its history during World War 2, to it becoming the “Gateway to the World” and it’s famous visitors during the golden age of aviation, to its amazing feat on Sept 11th 2001, landing 38 planes and the area looking after 7000 passengers! Depicted in the musical “Come from Away”, which sadly we missed by a couple of days.
We also popped down to Gander Lake to see the Silent Witness memorial for the Arrow Air flight 1285R crash, the worst on canadian soil, and also paid our respects at the Commonwealth War Graves.
Our final day saw us back on the TCH 1 back to St John’s. We did have a little side trip to ….Dildo! Fascinated as to how a village got this name, we decided to investigate. It’s a pretty village on Trinity Bay, and thanks to the townfolk and their Mayor, it has a hollywoodesque sign on the hillside!
There are various theories as to how the name originated:-
An aboriginal name for ‘still waters’
An adaptation of Portuguese, Spanish or French word meaning ‘delightful’ or ‘two islands’
But the one we liked was a local legend that states one local fisherman asked his friend, “how about this harbour for shelter from the storm?” to which his friend replied “twill do” or “dil do” and from this came the name Dildo!
From there, we returned to St John’s to find 2 huge cruise ships docked! So much for a quiet drink and final explore, but we did make it back in time for Happy Hour at Yellow Belly Brewery!!
And so we say farewell to Newfoundland.
We’ve travelled 2902kms (1803 miles), experienced very varied weather, driven long distances on some rickety roads, met the most friendliest of “Newfies” – all wanting to know about us and offer little snippets of local information for our trip, seen lovely scenary and wildlife but have got a bit fed up with fish and fried foods!! Oh, and we managed to miss the “Screeched In” ceremony! We’ll miss the lovely lilt of the Newfoundland accent, a sort of gaelic, canadian mixture with some cracking sayings.
Now on to the next leg of our adventure…..
Where we stayed
St John’s – Murray Premises Hotel (an old converted fish processing building)
Trinity – Rosewood Suites
Rocky Harbour – Wildflowers Inn & then Stay at Gros Morne
Port au Choix – Jeanne’s sunrise B&B (fabulous homemade jams)
St Anthony – Grenfell Heritage Hotel (old nurses residence)
Gander – Quality Inn