Travelblips

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.

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