Travelblips

For a brief moment today, there was no one on the entire continent of North America east of me. With it being Canada Day and all, I read that the museum’s etc were open at Cape Spear, North America’s eastern most point. So i decided to drive out there - figuring if nothing else, it would be interesting to see Cape Spear when the temperature was above freezing…

The drive out to Cape Spear was uneventful - but changed since my first drive there in early January (and apparently not captured on this blog!). The first time I drove there, the road was lined with snow and partially covered in ice. Now it was cleared, potholed and lined with lush green bushes and trees. Purple lupin and yellow dandelions also dotted the open grassy patches. There is something … captivating about the wild beauty of the north. Immaculate lawns are nice, but there is a definite beauty to the unmowed green grass with flowers - even if some of those flowers are weeds!

Cape Spear itself was quite busy (unsurprisingly) with lots of families there all taking in the historic landmark. The weather couldn’t make up it’s mind though - fog lazily curled over the sea, rain threatened from the west and sun shone between clouds from the east… And the wind blew ceaselessly, but unlike January’s wind, this wind was warm and sticky.

Given the buildings were open today, I made a beeline up a wooden walkway (largely obscured by snow in January, now pleasantly surrounded by grass and dandelions…) to the new ordinary-looking lighthouse and two white wooden buildings at its base.

The building to the right was the heritage museum. I stuck my head in and saw a few pictures of naval charts and old photographs as well as a little model display of how the old lighthouse building had grown over the years as the light keeper’s family had grown. But then, in the 1916 the light house was converted to oil and then electricity in 1920. ore to be found about the history at the Parks Canada website…

It took me all of 2 minutes to exhaust the museum and go to the other half of the building which had been converted to a shop which was doing brisk business with all the aimlessly wondering tourists and locals. I found a mug that declared it had come from the Eastern most point in North America and thought what the heck and bought it…

I then exited and crossed to the other building opposite which housed an extensive collection of water colours and oil paintings of various lighthouses around the island of Newfoundland Apparently the artist (and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t note his name) painted all the lighthouses on ‘The Rock’ and then donated them to the Coast Guard Aumni Association. They were colourful and artisitic as well as technically rendered somewhat perfectly…

Behind the art gallery, lots of people kept walking up to the new lighthouse, your standard tapering cylinder. I wandered on up to the building on top of the hill with its distinctive red and white domed top - the original (and restored) Cape Spear Lighthouse. Today, it was also open and I was able to go inside and see a nicely preserved from presumably when the Cantwell family lived there back in the 1800s/early 1900s. Every time I sees snapshots from the past, I just can’t get over how small human beings were just 100 years ago before our food become so plentiful as it is now (albeit, a fact being debated right now…).

Upon exiting the original lighthouse, I walked a little ways past and took some pictures of both the old and new lighthouses juxtaposed, as well as of the fog rolling over the steep rocky coastline to the south. A lone fishing boat faded in and out along the edge of a fog bank just off the coast.

I then meandered on the grass and gravel tracks down past the old barracks with the Very Large Canon barrel (with scratched graffiti) pointing out to the sea. Eventually I found myself at the fence point where a cross has been placed with the names of people who didn’t believe that to go onto the rocks below meant possible death as the waves pounds down and then sucks everything back out to sea…

However, unlike January, there turned out to be another smaller trail below the rocks and another fence (no longer blocked off by treacherous snow and ice I guess…), so I walked down and wedged myself in the corner of that fence.

And at that moment, there was not one single person on the entire continent of North America east of me. I was the eastern most person all of Canada and the US… Pretty quirky feeling!

Rush over, I took the ‘low path’ back to my car and let other people take over the title of being the eastern most people in North America…

Popularity: 7% [?]

High fuel or not, I was gradually going stir crazy being confined to one little town. Would I spend more on a drive into the country side or in shops? The answer was easy… So I consulted the book, “Tails of the Avalon” by Gard and Neame who describe 31 hikes around the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. Due to the time of the day and (despite all the hoo-hah about global warming) I was really in it for the drive (well… it’d been 12 years since I last owned a car..) rather than the hike. As it turned out, that was a good thing…

So with the sun still high but at a lower than midday, I set off for Salmon Cove and a little hike to see the remains of a community called Blow Me Down. The drive began pleasantly enough along the Transcanada. I set the cruise control for the speed limit and settled back to watch the Newfoundland countryside cruise past me along with all the cars cruising past me…

The last time I ventured out this way was in February (gosh! that long?? No wonder I was stir crazy!) when there was still a lot of patchy snow around. Now, 3.5 months on, not much had changed… the snow had gone, the lakes were now blue instead of white but the countryside was just as brown as before. True, there was a very pale sheen of green dusting the bushes so it is possibly spring will arrive in Newfoundland in the next week or two (soring in June! So late!!!)

I turned off Highway 1 at Highway 75 and headed north towards Bay Roberts and Carbonear. Once again I was captivated by the coves lined with houses with ample space between buildings. After years of living in and around cities, it amazes me that someone can live 1 hour away from the ‘city’ and be in the middle of a laid back community with nothing but scrubland, grasslands and forests inbetween the small communities.

Eventually HIghway 75 turned into Highway 70 and at this point, like last time, the book failed me mere kilometers from my destination… Last time it was a vague ‘turn at the traffic lights’ - which traffic lights??? There were at least 3 in town! This time I wasn’t even told where to turn - just a little mention about the former provincial park of Salmon Cove.

Luckily, the trail I was supposed to be hiking was drawn on a loose topographic map on which Highway 70 was marked. So I started hastily working out where I was relative to the streams we were supposed to be crossing and the lakes. And at the last minute, I swerved down an unmarked road and… found myself on a narrow road winding betwen houses which looked like an ordinary suburb - but they had sheep and goats in their front yards…

And then… I was at Salmon Cove Sands Park - a tiny wooden booth with peeling paint advertised it was going to cost $2 per person, $4 per car or $25/week to get in. It was boarded up so I drove into the empty Salmon Cove Sands Park. There was a vast grassy expanse, a few wooden pagoda’s, a cluster of picnic tables and a bit of grassland. I parked my car and wondered down to the beach.

Salmon Cove Sands was a nice beach with grey sands. It was sheltered from ocean nasties, but a strong southerly wind blew in from behind anyway. An little stack poked out of the middle of the island and some birds were nesting on its grassy top. I took some photos of the tiny blue waves rippling up on the sands then turned to try and find the Salmon Cove Trail.

At first I walked up past the little wooden hunts which housed the public rest rooms and found a little stepped trail leading up into the trees and past a binless ‘Oscar’ the rubbish bin. Some people thoughtfully left some litter on top of the bid lid, now suspended above the ground by Oscar’s wooden cage. Quickly, the trail widened into a green meadow with a picnic table.

I looked at my book and thought I’d come up on the meadow described in the book rather quickly, but gamely walked through the meadow to the alder trees mentioned in the book. However, after stumbling along a few trails which dwindled out within 10m, I realised this was possibly not the Salmon Cove trail. Shame… I could see an iceberg just outside the cove  but couldn’t get a photograph from here due to the density of alder bush…

So I walked back down to the main entrance road and started to walk back towards the houses of Salmon Cove. I kept looking for a trail that snaked up the hill, supposedly 300m past the carpark. It began to look grim when all of a sudden I saw a slate covered track about the width of an ATV (and probably a more ancient cart). I turned up this and began the climbing the ’steep trail.’

This time, the trail proved to more closely align the description in the book. I indeed did climb up along a trail lined with tall-for-Newfoundland trees and raspberry canes (sans raspberries sadly…). I hit a gate which wasn’t mentioned, so I went through it. I never did encounter a Y-junction where I should have stuck to the left fork.

At the top, I entered a meadow as described, but alas, it was on the southern side of the hill. I walked to the top but a fence prevented from venturing further north into the alder bush to investigate the chance for a photo op of the iceberg. Instead, I turned back to the vast panorama of Conception Bay, with Bell Island straight ahead and a few small and distant icebergs scattered around the bay.

I then ventured along the trail described to the right of where I had entered the meadow. The book described it as faint and disappeared into some alder bushes - but not to worry… it would reappear at the next meadow. For me though, I seemed to stroll along a well-developed trail in a never ending, but stony meadow. With the fresh spring grass, it looked good for grazing, but not for growing anything.

I never did see the trail go between an old fence and a broken stone wall, and thus somehow missed the ruins of Blow Me Down.  Shame… Apparently there are 10 “Blow Me Down” rocks in Newfoundland and all occur near a spot where a steep headland plunges into the sea.

However, the trail did wander close to a steep headland with some rocky stacks below. I eventually concluded these were Folly Rocks and thus I must have missed Blow Me Down. I looked back, but couldn’t really spot any one collection of rocks which might be the actual community.

I then turned and walked up a rocky stream which looked like it might also be a trail up through a grassy (and stony) field. At the top, the trail turned into a well-gravelled road which looked like it might be where the farmer loads his stock onto trucks. I walked back down it (at least getting a glimpse of the iceberg beyond Salmon Cove), which eventually joined up with the road I had driven in on. So the last small leg of the walk took me through the village of Salmon Cove and its sheeps and goats. A few retired men hung over fences gazing at their livestock or tinkering with gardening tools. Some said hello, others just started.

Back at the carpark, now around 7.30pm, it was rapdily fillig up with people now going for an evening stroll along the beach…. I walked far enough to make sure there wasn’t some magical and marvelous event occurring on the beach (there wasn’t) and then got in my car and retraced my drive home.

Popularity: 50% [?]

It’s billed as the Hike Spectacular! The one that has to be done from St John’s! It’s an extraordinary hike along the Newfoundland rugged coastline! And at the very middle of the hike, is The Spout, a freak of nature, fresshwater being blasted up into the sky as a result of sea water rushing into a subterranean cave…

I’d actually done a hike to The Spout, in winter, just after an icestorm. At that time, it took about 2.5 hours to get to The Spout as we snowshoed directly east from the highway. But today we were going to start from Bay Bulls in the south and walk northwards to Shoal Bay - the longer coastal route. It’s billed as a ’strenuous hike’ which takes about 5-8 hours. For some reason in my head, that translated as about 6 hours, maybe slightly longer with stops for photographs….

The day begun uneventfully - a rare sunny spring day in Newfoundland. My daytripping friend and I drove our separate cars to the Shoal Bay car park, set at the end of a culdesac with a few houses. I parked my car there and we then jumped in her car and continued on down to Bay Bulls to start our little afternoon walk.

It was a perfect day for a hike - temperatures only hovering around 15C, a slight nip in the wind, but nothing a windbreaker didn’t block. Icebergs dotted Bay Bulls, and a little green tour boat distantly circled around one of the bergs before tootling on around the southern headland opposite us to another grounded iceberg. We didn’t walk very far before coming across a large bay made entirely of gently dipping rocks, fragments of sea ice rippling up the sides and 2 big icebergs sitting in the middle. We stopped and took some photos.

Just past the bay, the trial wove slightly inland as we began skirting some steep cliffs. Every now and then we’d pass a steep narrow cleft in the cliff and invariably there would be a needle-like stack in the middle of it, with some nesting birds and colourful lichen. More stops for photographs!

Eventually we wound our way around the eastern extent of Bay Bulls and began heading north along the coast line to The Spout. The number of icebergs began to drop off slightly, but there was still the odd small one grounded near a deep cleft in the rocks. More stops for photos…. We came across a small lonely lighthouse with a door only tall enough to allow someone to crawl in. More photos…
Finally, my companion went:

“I’m hungry….”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Hmmm. Around 1pm…”
“Let’s stop then!” I agreed.

We found a patch of brown grass (no spring greenery yet!) out of the wind and broke out lunch. After lunch, my companion broke out a map so we could sus out where we were and how far we had to go.

“I think we are here…” she said, pointing a point barely any distance past the car.
“Surely we’re a little further north than that?” I asked.
“Hmmmm. No… There’s the lighthouse… there’s that headland…”
I looked at the map she was holding. “And where is The Spout?”

She paused for a moment, then swapped to the map underneath. “About here,” she said, pointing to a point about half way up the page. My eyes popped! We’d been hiking for about 2 hours and we’d barely rounded the corner and started north according to the map - it looked like we had an awful long way to go!
“Er, I guess we’d better get going then!” I said, hastily packing up my stuff.

And so we resumed out trek northwards. The skies overhead began to get covered in some thick high clouds and eventually the temperature dropped sufficiently that I put my windbreaker on and left it on. But the sun kept breaking through gaps in the clouds so my sunglasses alternated between being carried or on my nose.

The trail snaked up and down little valley’s and hills, wandering through groves of birch trees yet to bloom, past sea stacks with lots of placid white nesting birds, through spruce tree forests and across windswept tundra. And always, never far from the steep, jagged cliffs! Every now and then we’d hear a bone-shaking ‘WHUMPH!” as a wave slammed into the base of a cliff below us. At one point, as we admired a bald eagle on a stack covered with orange lichen, we both commented that this really wasn’t a hike for those with vertigo issues… The track was never ‘unsafe’ but the cliffs were awfully close a lot of time!

However, by the time we got to the stack with the Bald Eagle, the fog which has been sitting far far out to sea was clearly starting to edge up behind us and the sun was becoming slightly more patchy.

“How are we doing? We must be nearly there!” I exclaimed. It felt like we’d been walking for hours - and we probably had.
My companion rummaged in her backpack and pulled out the map. After much umming and ahing, she finally declared we were maybe another 2-3 km away! I nearly fell over (and not a good place to do that!). “Seriously??!!” I exclaimed.
“Ahh. Yepp. I think so,” she replied.
“Aiii… This walk is longer than I thought!” I exclaimed.
“Looking that way,” she calmly replied.

But we didn’t set off immediately because at that exact moment, the sun came out and the flog retreated momentarily and we were able to get some pictures of the bald eagle with an iceberg behind it - possibly not one of the more common occurrences in the world!
When the bald eagle flew off, we packed our camera’s and began hiking over hill and dale along the coastal edge again. About 40 or 50 endless minutes later, we finally got to The Spout - just as the sun came out again!

We spent a spectacular 20 minutes or so there, taking photographs and enjoying the spectacle as the water whumped up the blowhole. I was quite impressed with how much snow had melted since I had been there 3 months ago!

Before there had been a cone around the edge of the blowhole which one could go up to and peer in, but now, it was a hole in a flat piece of rock. Fortunately, the wind was blowing in from the east so we were able to get quite close to it on one side without getting wet - but not close enough to peer in (safely) as I had last winter…

At this point, I bravely asked my companion what the time was… Five o’clock. Erck! I almost didn’t want to know how far it was! “And er… how about how far have we got?” I timidly asked.

“I’m not sure… (more map consultation)… its about 6km to the turn off to Shoal Bay, and then I think… its about 3-4km along that trail.”

Hmmm - another 6km to get to the end of the trail, which meant we’d already walked about 10km, and then some indeterminate distance to the car. Ok. Guess we’d better get going!

As we hoisted our bags back onto our backs, 2 other people danced down the rocks to The Spout. By the time we’d got to the torrent of water which flowed into and created The Spout, we’d encountered another 2 hikers! It may have been just after 5pm, but clearly we weren’t the only ones ‘just getting there!”

And then just to hammer home the fact our timing at The Spout had been perfect, as we rounded the first headland away from The Spout, the fog rolled in permanently and irrevocably! I don’t know if the coast was as spectacular from that point northwards, but we didn’t see any more stacks afterwards and it was really only Queen Mary Bay, another endless hour or two after The Spout that presented any interesting scenery. Definitely recommend coming in from the south if you are only going to hike half way in and return to a single car!

So it was with relief we stumbled onto the cart track which led back to Shoal Bay and my car. By now the sky was darkening to a grey colour and we were vaguely concerned that the forecast rain might happen before we got to the car. It was 7pm.

At first the cart track was miserable - as billed. A stream of fresh water flowed down over most of it, and either side was dense scrubby alder bush and mud. In the end, we just limped through the flowing water. It also seemed like the track relentlessly climbed ever gently upwards…. I was tired of ‘up’ by now!

After a very long time of paddling, we got to the top of the hill and the road widened slightly. “We must be nearly there,” my companion commented. “I can see an opening to the left.” A few minutes later the opening turned out to just be a valley. We trudged onwards.

Finally after a very very very long time of the road gradually widening to be about 2 car widths, we did get to the end - just as the last bit of light faded from the sky. It was 8.50pm! Our 5-8 hour hike had taken us 10 and bit hours - and we still had the 15 minute drive down to Bay Bulls to pick up my companion’s car and then the half hour drive back to St John’s.

By the time I got home, I did not want to move from the comfort of my car seat… It had been a very long day. The hike wasn’t as strenuous as some peaks I have hiked up in the past, but the sheer unexpected distance - and the discovery at the end that the trail to the car which is NOT included in the distance was a good 6.6km - had exhausted me!

But dang, our timing had been good on that trail and I think we saw it almost at its best (a little more spring greenery is the only thing that would have made it better, although I don’t know if we would have seen the icebergs then…)

Popularity: 68% [?]

In sunny St John’s today (I know - local readers would laugh at that - but it really is sunny today after a week of pea soup fog which rendered anything beyond 100m invisible!), there is a sight I usually associate with the UK: men standing around in shorts and no t-shirt, weilding a beer bottle as they talk amongst themselves.

Now, for the average woman, nothing can be more unappealing than seeing a group of men with pasty white skin and rotund bellies preening under the sun rays, ‘catching a bit of colour.’ I will give the Newfoundland men credit for not going as far as wearing socks with sandles as they flaunt their less than athletic physiques, but thats about the only distinction between them and their British counterparts across the atlantic (who were probably engaging in this visually criminal act a month ago).

And the women? All neatly done up in 3/4 length cargo pants and short sleeve t-shirts with discrete sandles. If its an unsightly bit of white and untoned flesh, then its been discretely hidden.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, if I was a die hard watcher of American spawned movies and TV (and I probably am more addicted than I should be) then in the Hollywood real world, the men are all covered up with only a hint of a muscled shoulder appearing in a shadow cast on the wall, and the women are all walking around in bikini tank tops with a loose bow threatening to come undone at the mere glance of a guy.

So what is it about Hollywood and its ’sex sells’ attitude that means women in the movies are more disrobed than their male counterparts, but in real life, as I walk down the street, the women are all discretely dressed and its our less than buff male counterparts out there flaunting the flesh? I doubt there are many women (some, but not many) who would be brave enough to stand in a park with nothing on but a bikini top and tight shorts, holding a beer bottle as their broad expanse of rippling white flesh soaks up the sun’s rays… But men do it all the time. And these same men, don’t seem to want to see men doing it on the big (or little) screen.

Ah well. For now… I guess I shall have to except that I may be 7,500km away from London, but by golly, some things which one would hope are forgetable and non-culture transferable, are sadly, in existence - Despite Hollywood’s best efforts to ensure men all walk around completely covered up while the woman sprawl around in a state of serious undress!

Popularity: 77% [?]

It is a rather peculiar thing, but the further north you go in the world, the less people seem to wear in the cities. For me, stinging rain, sleet, a wind chill factor below zero degrees celcius (-32F) all rather suggest I dress warmly. But as I’ve roamed the streets of such northern cities as Glasgow, Edinburgh, and even walked along the Thames River in London on a cold winter day, I’ll pass young people dressed in a pair of cotton 3/4 length jeans, a t-shirt and maybe a thin fleece half open hoodie.

At least in the UK, it was a phenomenon which seemed largely confined to youth, and in particular, extremely image conscious teenagers. I guess walking around dressed like Michelin man hardly let the opposite sex know you had rippling abs or voluptuous breasts, even if the temperature is -10C. Still seemed like madness to me - even at the tender age of 15 or 18, I think I would rather have been dressed warmly outside if it was the middle of winter, as any conversation I’d engage with the opposite sex was most likely going to be rapidly moving inside to somewhere warm!

So when I moved to Canada this year, I don’t even recall seeing many teenagers out on the street - they were all in the malls, wearing their thin hoodies and t-shirts. The few rebel university students seen scrambling over the snow-covered sidewalks, were usually appropriately dressed for the sub-zero temperatures and everyone else was covered from head to toe in protective clothing…

I thought that was refreshing - until spring came. In this part of the world, spring is defined more by the absence of snow on the ground than anything else. The temperatures are still cool - rarely exceeding 5-6C - whether it is sunny, rainy, foggy or windy. But all of a sudden, no one was dressing like it was winter anymore… It was like a collective wave of belligerence has swept over any Newfoundlander of any age and by golly, they are going to dress as if its spring no matter what!

So yesterday, when I took one look through rain/sleet smeared windows and bare-limbed trees thrashing violently in the wind and decided to go for a walk, I promptly put on thermal underwear, fleece and waterproof outerwear.

As I walked the nearly desolate streets of St John’s, I passed a few souls, and every single last one of them was wearing jeans, t-shirt and a fleece hoodie. Sometimes the hood was up, sometimes it was down, exposing the head to the sleet and wind. I  don’t know how they could do it… It was sleeting AND windy! I felt terribly overdressed compared to them, but then… I was strolling along quite comfortably and not huddled over and practically running to my destination.

Well, its an optimistic approach to spring. I wish I had the guts to dress like that and pretend its spring, but I think I’ll stick to breaking out my brighter coloured outer rainware and pretend I’m adding a splash of spring colour to the grey backkdrop instead!

Popularity: 82% [?]