Continuing on from our praise of the ferry. We had a buffet dinner to complement our G&T. Buffet dinners are bad for diets! It forced me to eat salmon, beef, ham, pork cod and maybe a vegetable or two. That wasn’t too bad but then I was dragged screaming and yelling by some invisible force located at the desert table. Here I was compelled to try the apple pie and ice-cream, lemon meringue pie and some petite-fours. Lyn on the other hand seemed immune from these forces and ate quite sensibly.
We had a great nights sleep in the cabin, with a nice gentle rocking motion from the sea. We woke up at a civilised hour and went in search of breakfast. Yet again there was a buffet, but I learnt my lesson last night and stayed clear, instead we settled for coffee and a muffin.
There ferry was very quiet, with only 150 or so passengers on board out of a maximum of 750.
On leaving the ferry we took the long route up to St Johns, touring around the Avalon peninsular. Unfortunately due to some last minute changes we had to make to our routing to accommodate ferry times we have left ourselves a little short of time in the St Johns area.
The weather started off fine, but slowly degenerated into drizzle and rain, but for the most part the visibility held up and we got to see the scenery.
View From the Passengers Seat
The roads started out OKish, but rapidly deteriorated to a gravel road, then to a rock road! It appeared that they were trying to raise the level of the road by 2 or 3 feet. At the start of this section, they had installed new culverts under the road and piled rocks on top of them to the new level of the road (the photo doesn’t do justice to the size of the bump). This brought the term “traffic calming” to a whole new level (not sure whether the pun was intended or not!), later on the whole surface was large rocks. We followed a couple of Ontario motor cyclists who were having quite a hard time negotiating the surface.
Finally we regained the surfaced road and life became easier. The scenery was constantly changing, at one stage we were driving through densely forested areas, then through rock strewn areas without a tree in sight. Then we would be following the coast along a shore road, then climb up to a cliff road. It certainly wasn’t boring.
We stopped for lunch at what was probably the only cafe for 50 miles. As we sat down the two Ontario motorcyclists came in as well. They had driven from Toronto and said that the rock road was pretty challenging!
After lunch we headed out and discovered the world of Newfoundland cabins (cottages). They seem to be placed close to the road, but otherwise in the middle of nowhere with no services. I am sure there are more picturesque places to build them, but who am I to say.
One Cabin, One Outhouse, One pond (lake) and no trees.
We continued along the coast for a while and spotted a group of off-shore rocks
Eventually we made it into St John’s just in time for a wet rush hour. We checked into the hotel, only to find that they had upgraded us to a suite with a Jacuzzi, nice!