Thu 25 Jul 2019
After just six hours sleep, I awoke through sheer hunger at 4:30 a.m. local time. There was still nothing to eat, and no shops or restaurants open at that time, so I left the others to sleep as long as possible and used the gathering daylight to sort out our belongings from flight mode into car-camping mode.
Dave got up next and took his mind off his grumbling stomach by having a shower. Our lovely campsite neighbours (from Toronto) rose at about 7:15 a.m. and, seeing our predicament, kindly offered us cups of hot tea. Although they didn’t have milk or sugar available, it was a Godsend to have something, anything, other than water to put in our stomachs.
As soon as the girls awoke, we headed straight into St Johns to find food. A passerby suggested eating at the Bagel Cafe, voted the best place in St Johns for breakfast. To be honest, after 24 hours with almost no food (and more than 36 hours for May, who’d managed not to eat her tea the night before we left home), it could have served partially reheated cabbage water and we’d have voted it the best place to eat in the world, let alone St Johns. Actually, however, it easily lived up to its reputation, and, this particular morning, we were delighted to partake of the Newfoundland tradition of deep-fried everything. My breakfast comprised coffee and toutons: deep-fried bread topped with baked beans and bacon. The service was really friendly, and the decor and atmosphere quaint and intricate. It was rather pricey, but at least the money wasn’t going to Air Canada, so I was content.
We then had a wander around St Johns in the gentle rain, enjoying the steep streets, gaily painted, weather-boarded ‘jelly bean’ houses, and the sternly beautiful, stone courthouse. We stopped at a fairly empty, echoing indoor market, where May tinkled about on a brightly decorated piano that, in Newfoundland musical and community sharing tradition, was freely available in a public place for anyone to use and entertain.
At 10 a.m., the shops finally opened, so we immediately went off to buy cooking gas and natter with the friendly manager of the nearest camping shop, and then headed out to a large supermarket to stock up fully on groceries for the coming fortnight. Dave does the grocery shopping every week at home, so said he’d do it here, especially as I had a few things to sort in the car. I had a shopping list all ready though, so passed it across. He took one look, then ruefully said, “Thanks. But I think I’ll manage without.”
I looked at my list. It was perfectly readable for once. There were two items on it:-
Emergency snack bars
Food
Oh.
It is strange driving around here. St Johns is about as far east as it is possible to go on the North American continent. The most easterly point is, in fact, Cape Spear, just two peninsulas south of St Johns and clearly visible from Signal Hill at the St Johns harbour entrance. Yet, every time we leave our campsite, the satnav on our car tells us to take the Trans Canada Highway (the one that goes right across Canada) and to head eastwards. We are nearly out of road, heading east! We are starting to get used to the idiosyncrasies of our car, and grateful that, as a spouse, it was possible to add me free-of-charge as a second driver, to share the driving, which is quite unusual as it costs extra (even for a spouse) in most countries. The satnav is an unexpected bonus, and, when we switch the engine on, it immediately fires up with, “Be alert and obey traffic laws.” In response to which I just cannot help but follow up with, “Are you alert, Dave? You look like a lert." O.K., bad joke.
We had a picnic lunch back at the campsite, eating like kings. By this, I mean there was actual food in front of us – bread, ham and even salad. Pippy Park campsite is very close to central St Johns, but so tranquil (apart from a bit of road noise) that you can’t believe you are in a city location. The campsite is on rugged ground with a mixture of gravel and grassy pitches, has lots of trees (some hanging with what looks like ‘old man’s beard’ lichen, a sign of pure air), and its own hidden pond complete with flowering water lilies and loudly ‘burping’ frogs (certainly more of a burp than a rivet). Cute red squirrels hop around everywhere and their small size and stringy tails make them look like youngsters even though most must be adults. In the evening and early morning, huge, almost-hare-like, red-brown rabbits with stump tails nibble at the grass. Today, in the afternoon, we trotted out for a short, 2-3 mile walk around the nearby Long Pond marshlands. May and I saw a strange-shaped duck swimming along and watched in amazement as it materialised into an otter.
For tea back at the campsite, Dave cooked up tomato pasta (one of many tomato pasta meals this summer... in fact, one of far too many tomato pasta meals this summer...). As a special treat to help us recover from the privations of the journey to Newfoundland, Dave had bought some wine in the supermarket and poured us each a glass (sorry, I mean a 1970s plastic orange mug). I had a look at the label to see what he’d bought: it was a German red wine. The Germans are not renowned for their wines, and especially not their red wines. But the situation was even worse.
“Dave, why have you bought de-alcoholised wine? Actually, what is de-alcoholised wine?”
I hoped it might be red grape juice by another name. That can be rather nice. Unfortunately, it wasn’t red grape juice. Even as my mind boggled at the concept of a de-alcoholised wine, my tastebuds rebelled at the taste. This stuff was rough – no, worse than rough, it was absolutely rank. We tried to get the weak, musty vinegar down our throats. Dave was in hysterics when I dutifully took a second portion that barely covered the bottom of my cup without the surface tension of the liquid forming it into two, separate, microscopic pools. He found it less funny when it was his turn to attempt a second glass.
I suggested we make it into mulled wine as we had mixed spice and sachets of sugar with us. It wouldn’t quite be the ‘real deal’, but would surely make it more palatable if it were heated, sweetened and spiced. And I’m sure this would have worked had I not accidentally packed a small sachet of salt in amongst our sugar sachets, which unfortunately made its way into the mulled wine. I was unable to get more than a single mouthful down. In my defence, I’d had a bad experience on a student sailing trip many years ago. The instructor had kindly made me a cup of tea and, desperately thirsty, I’d taken a massive gulp, only to find it coming up even quicker than it went down. Something was very wrong: it turned out that the instructor had mistakenly filled the kettle not from the freshwater tap, but from the seawater intake used for sluicing the decks. To this day, I can still taste that concoction in my mind and it makes me involuntarily cringe and over-sensitive to the taste of salt. Dave was wonderful though. He knew it was up to him to finish the ‘mulled wine’ single-handedly, so held his nose and guzzled ... and thanked his lucky stars that I hadn't accidentally slipped curry powder or mixed herbs amongst the mixed spice.
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