Newfoundland, from St. John’s to L’Anse aux Meadows

Crossing Newfoundland

The trip starts in St. John’s, at the far eastern end of the island, and ends in Deer Lake, in the west. In between, the Trans-Canada Highway runs through spruce forest, ponds and bogs. On the coasts, you go from one fishing village to the next: wooden houses painted red or yellow, wharves, lobster pots and a lighthouse on almost every headland.

On the east coast, from late May to late June, icebergs from the glaciers of Greenland drift south on the Labrador Current and sometimes run aground in the coves of Twillingate or Bonavista. In Elliston, puffins nest very close to the cliff: you can see them without a boat. In the south-west of Avalon, thousands of gannets nest at Cape St. Mary’s.

In the west, the highlight is Western Brook Pond, in Gros Morne National Park. You walk 3 km to the jetty, then a two-hour boat tour runs through an old fjord about 16 km long, between cliffs about 600 metres high. To the north, the Viking Trail runs along the Strait of Belle Isle, facing Labrador.

Greenland aside, it is the only authenticated Viking site in North America. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1978. In 2021, a study published in the journal Nature dated pieces of wood cut on the site to the year 1021. Some see it as the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas, but the question is still open.

Mounds in the grass mark the original buildings. Next to them, reconstructed sod houses are staffed by guides in costume. Two kilometres away, Norstead recreates a Viking village.

The geology of Gros Morne

Gros Morne National Park has been a World Heritage Site since 1987 for its geology and its landscapes. The Tablelands are the most visible example. They are rocks from the mantle, the layer below the crust. They were pushed up when two plates collided, several hundred million years ago. Poor in nutrients and heavy in metals, they are toxic to plants: you see an ochre, almost bare plateau in the middle of the forest. An easy 4 km return trail follows its base.

At Green Point, by the sea, the layers of rock stand almost vertical. They are the world reference for the start of the Ordovician, a geological period. Western Brook Pond is a fjord carved by glaciers, then cut off from the sea when the land, freed of its ice, rose again.

What not to miss

1. 1Signal HillAbove the harbour of St. John’s, Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal, on 12 December 1901.
2. 2Cape SpearThe easternmost point of Canada and its lighthouse of 1836, best seen at dawn.
3. 3TrinityA merchants’ village of wooden houses and, at Trinity East, the Skerwink Trail along the cliffs.
4. 4The puffins of EllistonA colony on a rock just across from the cliff, visible without a boat until August.
5. 5TwillingateThe Long Point lighthouse and boat trips out to the icebergs.
6. 6Port au ChoixA cemetery about 4,000 years old and the traces of the Dorset people, who came from the Arctic.

Newfoundland in pictures

i

i

i

Trinity, its colourful wooden houses and its wharf.

The Newfoundland table

Jiggs dinner brings together salt beef, cabbage, turnip and pease pudding. Fish and brewis combines salt cod with soaked hard tack. You can also try fried cod tongues and toutons, fried pieces of bread dough.

In summer, the cloudberry, called bakeapple here, and the partridgeberry end up in jams and pies. In Quidi Vidi, a brewery makes a beer with iceberg water. In St. John’s, the screech-in welcomes visitors: a glass of Screech rum, then you kiss a cod.