What can we say about Newfoundland? It has a gob-smacking view around every corner. The people are very friendly. And it’s windy. Very windy. If you overland Newfoundland in the right season, you’ll (allegedly) see lots of icebergs, puffins and whales. But even without those, it’s extraordinarily scenic. For us, overland Newfoundland involved reaching a milestone at a lighthouse, finding an old aircraft wreck, getting very stuck in some mud, running from a hurricane, visiting the port of Dildo (well you’ve just got to haven’t you?) and taking at least a million photos of the Island. And did we mention it’s windy?
South West: Fog Light and Horns
We arrived in Port Aux Basques on the ferry from Nova Scotia and adjusted our clocks with a half-hour, yes… a half-hour time zone change🤷♂️. We’re in the south-west corner of Newfoundland Island and the coastline here continues with the beautiful beaches and rocky-headland lighthouses that we saw in the rest of Atlantic Canada.
It’s easy to become fascinated by these striking structures on almost every headland in the region. Despite the advances in hi-tech maritime radar navigation systems, lighthouses remain an operational feature of keeping ships safe from the rocks. And as any overlander who has chosen to park for the night by an operational lighthouse will have learned to their cost, it’s not only the light that fulfils the warning role… there are fog horns too! Very, very loud fog horns, hooting a warning at apparently random moments throughout the night 🙄
Gander Revisited
Heading north then east across the centre of Newfoundland, we passed through the town of Gander. Now… there isn’t much to recommend Gander to the passing tourist, but we had it on our agenda. Gander airport used to be a regular overnight refuelling stop for the old RAF C-130 Hercules aircraft in-bound from UK en-route to anywhere in North America. In our former lives in the British military, we had night-stopped in Gander, stayed at Sinbad’s Hotel and spent evenings in the not-so-salubrious Flyers Bar across the road. For Ascoteers with similar memories to us, we can advise that Sinbad’s is still going strong. Sadly, perhaps not surprisingly, Flyers Bar is no more but lives on in the memories of the many RAF crews that passed through over the years.
Larry and the Milestone
Over at the east coast near the capital St John’s, we hit a bit of a milestone in our overlanding journey: Cape Spear (yes, another lighthouse) is the most easterly point not only of Canada but of the whole of North America. Back in June 2020 we reached the most westerly point of Canada in The Yukon at the Alaska border. Now we are chuffed to have driven all the way across this ginormous, beautiful country to reach the opposite extreme. Feels like a bit of an achievement really 😊. As the crow flies, it’s a mere 5,200(ish)km between the two points. We took a lot more than that (what with all the sightseeing and Covid palaver detours and whatnot).
At Cape Spear it was a gorgeous warm, sunny morning, but it wasn’t to last. On the horizon was a visitor to be known as ‘Larry the Hurricane’. Met Office tracking of chaps like Larry is pretty accurate these days. We watched for a few days on-line as Larry forged northwards up the New England coast towards Atlantic Canada. There was a chance he might veer out to sea before he got here, but nope… turns out he was making a bee-line straight towards us. Bugger.
We considered our options: (A) find a sheltered spot and hope for the best, or (B) drive away to a calmer spot out of Larry’s path. Had we just arrived in St John’s and not ticked the boxes of what we came to see, we might have considered Option A. But actually, we’d seen everything that mattered to us in the area. And there were government warnings of significant property damage there. Hmmm….
Some years ago in Africa we spent a very rough night in Cuthbert and learned a thing or two about overlanding in storms. First, we learned that although our Cuthbert is a hardy little chap, and he’s pretty stable if we point him into wind, parking-up in a hurricane-force gale is no joke when you’re in a plastic box on wheels. Secondly, one of the biggest storm-risks is collateral damage. That night in Africa, we peered out the windows to see whole roof-panels, chimneys, tree branches and other indiscriminate items flying randomly around the neighbourhood, smashing into whatever lay in their path of new-found freedom. Luckily Cuthbert escaped unharmed that night, but we’ve had that experience in mind every time we look for a place to park in a storm.
So for Larry’s arrival, we decided to head west, inland outside his predicted path. We found a spot out in the bush well away from anything that might feasibly become airborne debris and it worked! It was a bit windy (nothing unusual for Newfoundland 😉) but we had peaceful night. Next day we continued further west around the central-northern coast.
Tuck Stuck
During our time around the stunning Gros Morne National Park, we took a tip from Facebook and headed down a dirt road from Trout River to Chimney Cove just outside the park. “Woah!!!!” we hear you cry… “Hang on a minute… ‘a tip from Facebook’??… what on earth were you thinking?” What can we say? We like exploring. The track turned out to be steep with loose rocks and rough in parts, but plenty wide enough for Cuthbert and nothing that any decent high-clearance 4×4 vehicle couldn’t cope with. Well… up until the end… that is. Right at the end, just as the trail opens out into the river estuary, there is a mud-hole.
The hole didn’t look too bad, so we decided to give it a go. It turned out to be much deeper on one side of the hole than the other side. ‘Giving it a go’ wasn’t our best overlanding decision ever. Poor Cuthbert’s back axle got stuck-in deep. A quick winch operation got us moving again but then after exploring the area, we had no choice but to go back the same way. And obviously we got stuck again. This time Cuthbert was sitting at a slightly more precarious angle of tilt. At times like this, the fine line between ‘fun’ and ‘stress’ blurs a little 😂. Nevertheless… once we had found a tree sufficiently substantial to winch from, we were quickly on our way again. Phew.
Photo-fest
Some of Newfoundland’s most famous seasonal attractions are icebergs, puffins and whales. We did see a whale, but disappointingly we were too late in the season for puffins and icebergs (actually we heard there had been no icebergs here this year anyway, so that made us feel a bit better… global warming anyone?). But even missing these attractions, Newfoundland still has many highlights and is very much still worth a trip late in the season.
For us the highlight-spots of Newfoundland (in no particular order) are Bottle Cove, Fogo Island, Bonavista Peninsula, Gros Morne National Park, New-Wes-Valley Loop, St John’s area, and the far northern Peninsula around L’Anse Aux Meadows (Viking Land) and Conche/Englee areas. Oh… and let’s not forget the little port town of Dildo… yes really… it’s a thing 😳
There are fantastic hikes for all abilities around the whole island. Our Top Three faves were the Lion’s Den Trail on Fogo Island, the Skerwink Trail near Trinity, and the short but steep hike through a truly enchanting forest to a fascinating wreck of an RB-36 Peacemaker aircraft from 1953 near Burgoynes Cove.
Rather than overload this post with a trillion photos, we have put most of them on a separate page CLICK HERE for a link to the overland Newfoundland photo galleries.
We’re sure there’s much more great stuff that we didn’t get to see, but after three weeks touring the island, we headed over to St Barbe to get the Labrador ferry next morning.
A different ‘stuck’
Oh, I’m sorry… did I say ‘next morning’? I meant three days after arriving at St Barbe port! We cruised into the port on Monday afternoon expecting to sail Tuesday morning and parked-up on the dockside. But overnight the wind picked-up. By morning the white-top waves were looking pretty energetic outside the harbour walls. We’re going to sail in that??? Gulp! The wind was so strong we could hardly walk to the ticket office.
It was no surprise, and more than a little relieving, to learn that sailings were cancelled. There was to be an update in a few hours, so we should stick around and wait. So we waited. And waited. Every few hours another delay. All day Tuesday. Then all day Wednesday. We battled the wind to take short walks around the area, took advantage of the free wifi (always a good thing, free wifi 😊) and chatted to truck drivers who were stuck like us. Eventually… ta daahh! Finally on Thursday morning the wind calmed down. We couldn’t get on the first sailing at 05:30 hrs (who the hell wants to get up to join a queue at 04:30 anyway?) but we got a spot on the 10:30 sailing. Labrador… here we come 😊