Viking Village to Colony of Avalon

Sunday, June 17:  Rocky Harbour – Hay Cove (L’Anse aux Meadows)

We filled up with gas and headed off about 9:30, checking out the parking lot at Western Brook Pond as we drove by:  no dog and no car from Nunavut, so guess the rescue mission was a success.  Port au Choix, about half-way up the Northern Peninsula from Gros Morne, is a Canada National Historic Site.  http://www.pc.gc.ca/portauchoix This peninsula has been home to four aboriginal cultures dating back 5500 years. The French settlements started in 1700 and the English in 1800 at Pointe Riche.  We managed to eat our picnic lunch without getting blown away, but just!   This is a very bleak and windswept coast.

  

Sandy Cove, Northern Peninsula                 Cape Riche Lighthouse, Port au Choix

At Flower’s Cove we talked with a local woman.  (The accents are getting stronger so it's harder to understand the dialect.)   We were surprised to see how well-kept and prosperous-looking the small communities appeared.  She said many of the people work in Alberta or off-shore on oil rigs, coming back to NL on their time off.  She also said the shrimp and lobster fisheries are doing well.  It was around here, in the Strait of Belle Isle, we saw our only “growler”, a large chunk of glacier.   

We arrived at Viking Village B and B, Hay Cove, just before 4:00 and quickly drove to the Visitors’ Centre at L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site.  www.parkscanada.gc.ca/meadows  where we caught up with Clayton, doing the last tour of the day.  He grew up in the village, and remembers the Norwegian explorer and writer, Helge Ingstad and his anthropologist wife, Anne Stine, who discovered the ruins in the 1960s.  They were responsible for determining this was the ancient Vinland  referred to in the legendary Norse sagas, discovered about 1,000 AD.
 

Our room is small but comfortable.  Somehow the queen beds we’ve had on this trip seem more like doubles (or are we getting bigger?)  Dinner at the B and B was hearty:  roast moose, potatoes, cabbage, turnip and bread pudding, and partridgeberry (lingonberry) square and ice cream for dessert; $16 each.  There are no TVs in the rooms so you are encouraged to sit around the living room and chat with the other guests. 

Monday, June 18:  L’Anse aux Meadows – St. Anthony’s – L’Anse aux Meadows

We woke up to rain and heavy wind, the coolest, dullest day yet.  We spent most of the day in St. Anthony’s and the Grenfell Historic Properties (www.grenfell-properties.com) showcasing the work of doctor-missionary Sir Wilfred Grenfell, who joined the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen to investigate the condition of the fishermen and their families on the Labrador coast starting in 1892.  He and his wife, Anne, devoted their lives to helping the people in the remote parts of the Labrador and Northern Peninsular Newfoundland coasts.  Dinner was at the Norseman restaurant in L'Anse.  Its creative, well-presented food, professional service and wind-swept sea view makes it one of the province’s best restaurants.  Jim had lobster, I had Roasted True Cod with tomato gratin, pancetta and baby spinach pine-nut relish.  Saw moose #4 and 5 today.

Tues. June 19:  Hay Cove – Gander

Our longest travel day, 728 km, just over 8 hours.  Sunny skies and the warmest temps we’ve had to date.  It reached 30 C on the TCH after we left Rocky Harbour where we stopped for lunch at Java Jack’s, a “deep-fry free zone”.   Pulled into the Comfort Inn in Gander about 4:30.  At last we have a king-sized bed. 

Wed. June 20:  Gander – Branch (Cape Shore, Avalon Peninsula)

Comfort Inn sure does have comfy beds!  But the desk clerk said we couldn't take it home.   Travel goes by quickly on the TCH…before we knew it we were going through Joey Smallwood’s hometown of Gambo.  Now I’ve been here, I want to read Wayne Johnston’s A Colony of Unrequited Dreams, an historical novel, and maybe the biography, Smallwood:  The Unlikely Revolutionary, by Richard Gwyn.  We passed many stony brooks and ponds as well as the inevitable rocky, scrubby terrain.  We purposefully drove by Come by Chance.  Once off the highway, our pace slowed considerably, taking our time to enjoy the sights. 

Our first stop on the Cape Shore section of the Avalon Peninsula was the National Parks Historic Site at Castle Hill,  (www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/castlehill/index.aspx) above Placentia, another area of dispute between the French and British.  The draw, of course, was the cod, which was plentiful in 1662 when the French founded the colony of Plaisance.  Today, the remains of the fortifications on top of Castle Hill are all that is left of France’s presence.  The British gained sovereignty over Newfoundland by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. 

After several hours walking around the site we worked up an appetite for a late lunch at a pub in town before heading down the coast to Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve (www.greatcanadianparks.com/nfoundland/cstmary/index.htm)  on the tip.  As we approached, the fog got thicker, and we wondered if we'd be able to see the birds, but apparently they have fog 200 days of the year, and you can still see them.   Our Cliffhouse B and B host, Chris, works there as a naturalist.  As soon as we walked in he asked where we were staying.   I replied “with you.”  He told us to stick to the path and avoid the steep cliff edges because “We won’t come out to look for you.  Well, maybe since you’re staying with me and haven’t paid me yet, I might come looking for you.”  Bird Rock was covered with Northern Gannets, Common and Thick Billed Murres, and Kittiwakes (which look like gulls to us.) Total distance driven today was 372 km.

Thurs. June 21:  Branch – St. John’s

Foggy, foggy morning; no view.  Breakfast is self-serve since our hosts go off to work early after a 5:30 a.m. jog!  We chatted with the other guests from QC and NS and didn’t get off till 9:00.

Today’s mission was to complete the Cape Shore and Irish Loop around the remainder of the Avalon Peninsula.  Fog drifted in and out of St. Mary's Bay.  We stopped to look out at Point Le Haye near St. Mary’s.  An elderly woman who walks up the rocky path every day told us we might sight Humpbacks near St. Vincent.  Sure enough, though just a fin or two.  They come back here from the Caribbean about this time of year to feed on the capelin (small smelt-like fish) which also brings the gulls.  Another stop was the Edge of Avalon Interpretive Centre (www.edgeofavalon.ca) at Portugal Cove.  Cape Race, where the Titanic victims were buried and the Myrick Wireless Centre that received the ship’s distress call are down a gravel road, untravelled by us.

We were hoping to see the iceberg at Ferryland, but when we arrived the bay was fogged in.  There was barely time to see the Colony of Avalon, (www.colonyofavalon.ca)  the oldest continuously occupied settlement in British North America.  The colony was founded by George Calvert, later Lord Baltimore, in 1621.  The Ferryland settlement was largely forgotten and its remains lay undisturbed for centuries until excavation began about 20 years ago.

 

Constructed of stone, the buildings have left substantial remains. Archaeologists have uncovered over a million artifacts to date – gold rings, Portuguese ceramics and other unusual objects – as well as a smithy, a stone-walled well, a sea-flushed privy and the "prettie street" described in very early accounts. There is evidence of earlier occupations by Beothuk Indians and Basque fishermen.  http://www.heritage.nf.ca/avalon/introduction.html

We finally got to see the iceberg, now a “bergy bit”, before we left.

Fri. June 22:  St. John's Airport where we're currently in a 7-hour flight delay due first to a storm in Toronto, then crew issues, and now fog.  We'll get out of here some time today.