Reflections of Newfoundland

Today we rose early and pedaled the last 12 km of Newfoundland to the ferry at Port Aux Basques. Nigel’s out on the deck of the ship scanning for seabirds and I figured I’d do a quick post reflecting our experience of Newfoundland (free wi-fi onboard!)

We’ve been pedaling around Newfoundland for a month now. We hadn’t originally anticipated it taking us quite so long, but the hills and the cold made the going slow for these two inexperienced cyclists, and we took some fortunate detours (I wish we could have taken more!).

Nevertheless, we met some incredible people and saw some incredible places.

Many people who do trips across Canada go from sea-to-sea: British Columbia to Nova Scotia. I think that in doing so they are missing out on a fantastic and unique corner of Canada. Those that do come here on trips like ours often only stick to the TCH and be done with it, often taking off again as soon as they reach St. John’s.

My advice?

Take more time for Newfoundland if you can, and get off of the highway! This place is awesome, but you have to step off of the main track to see it. The Trans Canada was only recently built in Newfoundland, in the 1960’s (Newfoundland only joined Canada in 1949), and it cuts through… well… a lot of boreal forest and bog land. This place is all about the coast. Taking the time and the energy to go down the side roads to places like Twillingate, Bonavista, Rocky Harbour or Trepassey, and meeting the people that live there will easily be the best part of your trip, and worth the extra leg muscle on those big hills!

The national parks here are beautiful too. We only scraped the surface of Gros Morne while looking for Rock Ptarmigans, and Terra Nova for the Boreal Owl. We missed Cape St. Mary’s and it’s resident seabird colony entirely. We’ll be back to explore more!

Thank you for having us Newfoundland!

I’m going to go join Nigel on deck to look for seabirds…