2019 Terre-neuve et Labrador

June 25 th Our last day in St. John’s was spent walking around the harbour and adjacent downtown area. We lunched at the resto on the right. View up from the harbour. And we drove south to visit the camping ground at La Manche where we planned to camp on the 26 th . On the way came across this pond at the side of the road. As we drove we saw fog rolling in off the ocean several times. June 26 th The weather did improved enough to spend our last night in NL camping, one reason was to dry out our tent and other equipment which had been sitting in the car soaking wet since that last night at Terra Nova. La Manche campground is near the site of a village of the same name that was relocated after a storm destroyed the infrastructure in the narrow bay where it was located, and which gave it its name. The visit to the village site was one of the high-points of the trip for me. After a 2 Km hike- in we came upon the remains of the...

June 24 th We started the day with a visit to Memorial University then after moving to our new AirBnB we explored north of St. John’s. Flatrock has striking rock formations in its small bay. Cape St. Francis is reached by a very rough gravel road (supposedly onlt for 4x4s but the Yaris made it through like a real trooper) and is the most easterly point of North America, meaning the sun rises there first. There was another small iceberg off-shore. Next was Bauline a tiny village at the end of a very steep descent... but at least the road is paved. Earlier I forgot to talk about the composition of the passengers on the Bella Desgagnes. At the departure from Rimouski and at the first ports on the north shore the passengers were almost all pensioners, there were few exceptions, but during the stops at the villages we picked up some native families and there were suddenly a couple of small boys that were running about and a couple of teena...

June 22 nd Our first visit to downtown St. John’s. It was a blustery day, cloudy, spitting rain and a wind that nearly blew us over. When we came out of a café into the wind that pushed us back the way we came and we passed by a guy in a T-shirt and shorts we realised we would not pass for natives. We wandered around downtown...  to end up at The Rooms, which is the provincial Museum of Art and History. It is perched on a hill overlooking the harbour and with a view through the harbours entrance towards the Atlantic... where there was a little iceberg today.  The building is striking and the exibitions were interesting and well presented. We lunched at the museums restaurant which was rather fancy... but the food and view were excellent. After that we did the laundery... essential for the campers that we claim to be.  There are houses built into the hillside at the north end of the harbour, in this photo taken from there you can see the Rooms domin...

June 20 th We caught the 10am ferry at Stag Harbour, there was a long line-up so we were happy to get aboard. From Farewell where the ferry docks we drove on what was supposed to be a scenic loop along the coast via Musgrave Harbour. It was a bit disappointing because a lot of it was inland and all we saw was more trees on both sides of the road... like the route from Gros Morne to Grand Falls. There were some coastal sections and we saw an iceberg in the distance. We continued down to Terra Nova National Park and set up our tent for a 2 night stay. We were in the Newman Sound campground which is huge but nicely arranged so that most of the sites have some privacy. The season has not really started so there are few campers and the coffee shop-store is not open and none of the normal activities have started. The sites here don’t have fire pits or BBQs. There are some communal ones not too far but since we couldn’t buy firewood it was not a big problem. June 21 st We trekke...

--------------------- June 18 th We packed up our wet tent and other equipment and headed off for Fogo Island. The Trans Canada Highway is nice but very little traffic. We stopped off at Grand Falls and discovered that the pulp and paper mill was closed about 10 years ago and it has been totally demolished. As we approached Fogo Island it started raining, which reinforced or decision to skip the camping for tonight, instead we found a cottage in Stoneville not far from the ferry where we are staying the night. June 19 th We caught the 8:30 ferry from Farewell to Fogo. We started our exploration of the island while keeping an eye open for a place to spend the night. Our first stop was Deep Bay and Bridge Studio, one of the four residences for invited artists spread around the island. The studio is situated on a pond after a slightly challenging walk up the hills of an almost lunar landscape. All of the studios are in isolated environments and feature striking architectu...