July 2001
When we came to the west side of Newfoundland 18 years ago, we were on foot and camping. Our main memories are of hiking everywhere and strangers going out of their way to help us.
From Berry Hill campsite to the nearest shops in the bustling hub of Rocky Harbour (population a little under 1000) was a 3½ mile walk. So grocery shopping entailed a 7 mile round-trip with a steep uphill return to the campsite laden with heavy bags. On our first grocery trip, we also needed camping gas for our tiny stove. But it was difficult to find the right (European) type of gas. Each shop, admitting they had none, were sure the next shop would have some and it was ‘only 5 minutes round the corner’. But 5 minutes by car takes much longer on foot and, having already walked 3½ miles into town, we found ourselves traipsing another 3 miles around town from shop to distant shop, eventually being advised to try the first shop we’d been to – at which point we realised we’d gone full circle, tried everywhere and nobody sold the right gas. It had been a wild goose chase. We bought provisions and a couple of ‘Camp Heat’ emergency cooking canisters and set off wearily back to the campsite.
After a further 1½ miles, at the foot of the steep hill and about to start our ninth mile, a car passed us, suddenly stopped, reversed and offered us a lift with all our bags. We’d never hitch-hiked before (although occasionally given lifts to others), but decided to risk it in the circumstances. They took us right to the door of our tent despite the campsite being at the far end of a 2 mile long, no-through-road, completely out of their way. The ‘Camp Heat’ canisters turned out to be no more than glorified candles, taking 40 minutes to bring half a litre of water to around 65 degrees C. This was all we had to cook on for the next week.
Berry Hill campsite was widely spread and almost deserted. Our main company comprised the squirrels that hopped around our pitch – bold, little creatures with cute, white-rimmed eyes (we avoided encouraging or feeding them). Black bears, although uncommon, had been known to visit the campsite, so we packed our fresh food in several layers of carrier bags and squeezed the parcel into Dave’s (almost brand new) rucksack, which we hoisted high onto a tree branch, along with various other carrier bags of sealed foodstuffs. The day after the grocery shop, we hiked out to Bakers Brook Falls. On our return, something seemed amiss with Dave’s hoisted rucksack. We lowered it, only to find that a squirrel-sized hole had been chewed right through the rucksack, 3 layers of carrier bags and a plastic bread bag, so as to get at our bread. Never mind the bears, we thought, watch out for the pesky squirrels! Thereafter, we stored our food in the small toilet block (delightful) and I sewed a temporary repair to Dave’s rucksack using strong dental floss ... a repair which is still holding fast 18 years later.
Next day, we decided to climb Gros Morne mountain (a black bear had been spotted in the area that very morning). As well as a 10 mile circular hike with 2700 feet of climbing on the actual trail, we also had to get 8 miles each way to and from the trailhead. We decided to walk 2 miles from the campsite to the main road and try hitching a lift (to give us the time and flexibility to walk all the way back after the climb). Almost immediately, a lady called Violet stopped and, instead of heading straight to the Rocky Harbour Hostel, which she ran, she first took us 6 miles out to the trailhead. (It’s a very small world because, 3 days later, we spontaneously bumped into a chap called Travis who was staying at Violet’s – a couple of weeks ago and 400 miles away on Cape Breton Island, Travis had hitched a 120 mile ride with us when we’d had a hire car for a couple of days, and he had now rolled up in Rocky Harbour on a borrowed pushbike.)
We powered up, across, down and around Gros Morne like steam trains, not least because, from the first step, I was suddenly doubled up with intense stomach pains. But what can you do? There was a mountain hike 10 miles ahead of us or a basic campsite with few home comforts 8 miles back the way we’d come. We were here to climb a mountain. We quickly passed the few (around ten) other people doing the climb, which enabled me periodically to dart unseen into the tuckamore with my trusty digging stick. Ten miles later, the stomach cramps had dulled to a mild and perfectly bearable monthly ache and we contemplated whether to hitch or walk back home, at which point the rain started. Decision made, we put out our thumbs, the second car that came along stopped and we climbed in.
The driver, Zach, introduced himself. He was a retired schoolteacher and concerned about taking us straight to the campsite to sit out the rain in our tiny tent. He wondered if we were interested in having a look around his village on the way back. We gladly agreed, so he took us via what I still consider to be the most beautiful view in the world (a view over Bonne Bay and the Tablelands), and then to his home where he plied us with hot tea and showed us photos of Newfoundland in the deep snow of winter. When the rain eased and it was time for us to head off, he said he couldn’t let his guests leave without a parting gift! He wanted to give us fresh-caught cod to pan fry, but, on realising we had no frying pan and only a candle to cook over, he racked his brains and instead came up with a sealed jar of cooked moose meat and another of cooked rabbit meat, both of which he’d caught and prepared himself and which were long-life, needed no refrigeration and just re-heating. He then drove us to the door of our tent before heading back to his home again (a round trip of over 20 miles). A few days later, we posted a thankyou letter addressed to ‘Zach, Retired Schoolteacher’ with the name of his village. We hoped it would reach him.
We took a couple of days off, with just 7-11 miles of unladen walking each day. We went into Rocky Harbour to find an internet cafe: expensive, but the only way to make contact with home and catch up on a bit of world news after a fortnight out of touch. It just wouldn’t be possible to be this out of contact in 2019 ... unless you found yourself camping away from wifi and then happened to throw away your own SIM card. Ahem, moving swiftly on... We stayed in town one evening to hear the splendid, local band Anchors Aweigh, with the little human dynamo, Reg, on accordian and their inimitable introduction to the Newfoundland classic ‘7 Old Ladies Got Stuck In The Lavatory’. It finished at 1 a.m. so, that night, we treated ourselves to a taxi 3½ miles back to the campsite in the pitch black. Dave perfected what was soon to become his signature backpacking activity: throwing our (carefully counted) items of cutlery unnoticed into rubbish bins. Across two episodes within a single day, he managed to bin 5 out of our 10 pieces, specialising in knives. We were many miles away before discovering the first loss, but, the second time, I sent him back to scrabble unhappily through the bin until he’d retrieved everything.
We did two huge bouts of handwashing as there was no machine at the campsite and it was too far to carry everything into town. This meant no issues with ill-placed laundry powder in a top loader, but we still incurred a peg problem because the specified number of pegs for a travelling couple is 14 (compared with 30 for a family of four) – this is based on calculations I’d done before leaving home (i.e., usefulness-to-weight ratios and a ‘dry run’: no pun intended) – and, although 14 is optimum, abnormally large loads will always lead to a peg deficit. (After our 2001-3 travels, a friend bought me two replacement packs of pegs, ten per pack, from which they’d removed precisely six pegs from the second pack before gift-wrapping. I was heartened to see this matter being taken seriously.)
On our last full day in Gros Morne National Park, we decided to explore the geologically-spectacular Tablelands. Over 50 miles away by road, we’d heard that there was a 15-minute water taxi that could ferry us across Bonne Bay from Norris Point to Woody Point, making for a handy short cut. We had no idea of the departure times, and no way of finding out, so set out from the campsite promptly after breakfast. A little over 10 miles later, we finally reached the ferry, only to find that we’d just missed the 12:30 p.m. departure and there wasn’t another until 3 p.m. Taking pity on us at the dock, they said they did have a boat tour leaving at 2 p.m. and, for marginally more than the ferry cost, they would take us on the first half of the tour and drop us in Woody Point shortly after 3 p.m. to explore ... but we must be back at the Woody Point dock promptly for the very last ferry of the day at 5:30 p.m.
Allowing for a small contingency, that gave us a couple of hours to mosey around Woody Point and take in some scenic Bonne Bay views from a different angle over a relaxing drink. Alternatively, we could spend an hour route-marching nearly 4 miles to the Tablelands, spend precisely 3 minutes at our destination (perhaps walking 200 metres along the start of the Tablelands Trail), then route-march nearly 4 miles (1 hour) back to Woody Point, desperately hoping that we didn’t come to grief with a twisted ankle or worse. The decision was a no-brainer: we set off for the Tablelands – that, after all, is what we’d come to see.
Back at the dock, eating huge, cheap ice creams for tea as we awaited the ferry, we considered our situation. We had walked 18 miles, would reach Norris Point around 6 p.m., and still had 10 miles to get back to the campsite. We couldn’t really afford another taxi. There were only two other tourists on the last ferry, Albert and Lisa. They were friendly Newfoundlanders over from St Johns, and we got chatting. It turned out they were camping ... at Berry Hill campsite ... about 100 m from us! Their car was pretty full, but they willingly shifted things around and managed to squeeze us in, and we arrived home in minutes instead of hours.
Really, when I think about it, with hiking both for fun and through necessity, it was no wonder that, in our first year of backpacking, Dave and I walked over 1500 miles.
Our final tough walk in Gros Morne was the day we left to catch the thrice-weekly bus 6 hours north to St Anthony. We had to get to Rocky Harbour, 3½ miles away ... but this time carrying everything we had brought in plus 4 heavy carrier bags of groceries, their uncomfortable handles cutting into our hands. I quickly developed the ‘Stick Trick’: my hiking pole became a carrying pole, with the carrier bags strung along its length and Dave and I holding one end of the pole each, as well as carrying big rucksacks on our backs and daypacks on our fronts.
Up and down the north-west coast of Newfoundland, we ended up with the same bus driver all three times (totalling about 15 hours): he was a slender, distinguished, grey-haired chap with film star looks, sparkling eyes and very few words, which always came in pairs. I still recall everything he ever said to me in his gravelly, seductive voice: “Rocky Harbour”, “Why not?” and “Liquid sunshine”. We saw two moose on the bus journey to St Anthony’s. One lumbered slowly onto the road at dusk and our driver skirted effortlessly around it, but the other, at 11 p.m., suddenly darted from pitch darkness at the edge of the road straight into the beam of the headlamps. Every dozing passenger woke with a start as the bus driver slammed on the brakes and swerved sharply into the middle of the road (just missing the moose), quietly cursed (undoubtedly with two words), then carried on as if nothing had happened.
Surely, these cute animals can’t be the cause of all the problems?
Arriving after midnight in St Anthony, we used a payphone to call for a taxi to our pre-booked B&B. Next morning, the taxi phone operator turned out also to be the lady who cleaned the B&B and prepared the breakfast (I remember the delicious homemade partridgeberry jam, best harvested after the first frost to partially remove the sourness from the fruits, and the homemade bakeapple jam, complete with pips). On learning that we wanted to visit the magnificent L’Anse Aux Meadows, the only Viking settlement on the North American continent, but had no way to get there, the cleaner-cum-taxi-operator said, “You can borrow my car. Just bring it back by 4:30 p.m. because that’s when I need to drive home.” There was a small kitchen in the B&B (used for making breakfast), but the owners let us use it each evening at no extra charge to cook our meals – we ate up Zach’s moose meat and rabbit meat and some fresh-caught sea salmon that we bought. When we left after 3 nights, the owners drove us to the bus stop, to save us carrying all our bags.
My final memory from St Anthony was walking out in a wet, biting wind to the rugged, fog-shrouded (but apparently scenic) Fishing Point - shuddering every time the incredibly loud, persistent fog horn sounded - so that we could take in all the fog from a range of lofty viewpoints. We were frozen, but warmed up back at the B&B with a hot bath. Their rubber bath plug leaked badly, but I had the idea of putting our universal plug over the top, which worked perfectly until the time came to empty the bathwater. Their plug had now jammed and wouldn’t come out. We tugged on the ring-pull: but the rubber was perishing and the ring-pull came away. We used a flat camping knife to try to prize the plug out: the knife bent. The plug had been leaky so, if we let the water drain away overnight, we could remove the plug next morning without the weight of water on top: next morning, the bath was still full of now-cold water. I didn’t want to leave it like this for the lovely cleaner to find. There was only one way left: I grabbed a sharp kitchen knife, attacked the plug, Hitchcock ‘Psycho’ style, and hid the pieces wrapped up in a tissue in the bin. I wonder if they ever worked out what happened to their bath plug.
May 2008
Seven years later, we found ourselves back in Gros Morne National Park and decided to look up Zach. We knew his village, but couldn’t remember where his house was and weren’t sure how to go about finding him. On a cold, grey day with a chill wind cutting in from the sea and spatters of rain stinging our faces, we popped out to look at the view from Lobster Cove Head, about 8-9 miles from Zach’s village, and noticed a few small groups of people clustered and huddled about on the rocky foreshore. It looked like some sort of local event (which turned out to be a session on ‘edible geology’(!) and tide pools at the now-annual Trails, Tales and Tunes festival). Pulling our thin coats about us and bundling a well-wrapped, 5½ month old May into our front carrier, we headed down to the beach, partly to see what was going on but mainly to make a start (however unpromising) on asking around regarding Zach.
At random, I selected a couple of women to try first. “We are looking for someone,” I said, “His name is Zach and he’s a retired schoolteacher.” I told them the name of the village and asked, with an understandably low degree of expectation, if they knew him or where we might find him.
Both women gave me shrewd, sidelong looks – this British-accented stranger turning up in the grey murk out of nowhere, with a poor little baby strapped to her chest in such miserable weather, and asking a question like that. Then one of them spoke up. “Yes,” she said, “I know him. He’s my husband.”
After that, we were soon invited for a cup of tea and Zach was summoned. He scurried off to find the thankyou letter we had sent on our previous visit, 7 years ago – it had indeed reached him. Zach and his wife, Kay, also invited us to a delicious, home-cooked Jiggs dinner and, a day or two later, to Zach’s shed party, where I had my first go at beating time with the ugly stick, and May happily slept through everything in the middle of a double bed, bolstered on each side with a pillow to stop her rolling off. During the festival, Zach was presenting on a temporary local radio station, so I got invited along for an honorary slot.
Since then, Zach and his family have been over to the UK and managed to visit us for a couple of days during their trip. When we went back out this year (2019), the four of us were invited to stay in their home for a few days, and we even got to meet Pat, the lady who was with Kay on the beach in 2008. She was reassured to find that May had actually survived exposure to such bitter weather all those years ago.
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