Sat 27 Jul 2019
Our delightful campsite neighbours don’t seem to need much sleep. Goodness knows what time they went to bed last night, but they started gabbing again today from 6:15 a.m. and woke us all up. Still, it got us an early start on what turned out to be a full day of adventures.
We headed south along the coast from St Johns along the Irish Loop, past Bay Bulls and Witless Bay and on to La Manche Provincial Park, mirroring a journey we had made 11 years ago (and part-made 18 years ago). On leaving the main highway at the entrance to the Provincial Park, it was a mile or so of deeply rutted and potholed gravel and sand road, before reaching a small car park from where we walked about a mile along a rocky path through trees and past ‘burping’ frogs to reach La Manche suspension bridge.
Witless Bay, Newfoundland. The coast and a traditionally styled 'biscuit box' house, which I can imagine being hauled across the ice! We stayed in this house 11 years ago when May was just 5 ½ months old, so went back to find it.
This high, wooden, pedestrian bridge is strung across a deep and narrow river gorge filled with white, churning waters just downstream of a pretty, peat-stained waterhole and immediately before the river meets the dark blue ocean fronted with cliffs and bright green vegetation. What a beautiful spot. At this time of year (rather than in May when we last visited), there weren’t any shapely, blue-tinged icebergs caught up in pockets along the coast, but we were blessed with stunning swathes of wildflowers in yellows, oranges and purples, and a huge juvenile bald eagle preening itself for a full hour on cliffs high above the bridge. Our girls obviously have the same single-minded attention span as a bald eagle because they spent that same hour making a short, thick rope out of twisted grass, just the two of them. I was sceptical at first but, when I saw how strong it was, I became interested in just how they were making it and how they weaved new grass stalks in to lengthen it without losing strength. It’s fascinating, the things you can learn from your kids.
Grass rope making. When hooked over a tree branch, the rope was easily strong enough to take May’s full body weight. But they decided not to take up my (mock) challenge of swinging under the suspension bridge with it!
Dave had set us a Newfoundland challenge (with prize) on the flight out here – in this land of 8 months of snow per year with 400 icebergs floating annually down this east coast, there would be a prize of a bar of chocolate for anyone who braved the waters for a swim. It was a safe gamble for him – none of us had any expectation whatsoever of swimming in chilly Newfoundland, on top of which the locals had told us that their summer had been terrible, with only four sunny days to date. But, today, on our second sunny day (of the three days since arrival), the air temperature around lunch time rose to an incredible 27/28 degrees C and (although the girls refused to remove their fleece tops despite the hot sun) a cooling swim in the waterhole began to look like a distinct option, especially as a handful of locals were already in.
I won’t pretend the water was balmy, but neither was it shockingly cold – I’d call it a five-dipper (i.e., you needed about five, ever deeper dips to get yourself fully immersed). As the girls and I made to enter the swimming hole (water-hater Dave stayed out, of course), the bald eagle suddenly plummeted down over us and away, which felt like an agreeable omen. We enjoyed a magical swim surrounded by tall cliffs and trees, with fat dragonflies zipping overhead, then climbed out onto a warm rock on the opposite bank near, but not too close to, the entry waterfall, where we had seen a few locals climbing out to sun themselves earlier.
Events took a different turn shortly after that. As we sat warming ourselves on the hot rock, we noticed an 11-year-old local boy swim right into the narrow, vertical-sided, fast-flowing area fronting the entry waterfall. For the last ten minutes, swimming around the waterhole, this lad had seemed to like an audience, so it wasn’t a surprise when he started drawing attention to himself near the waterfall. I crawled to the edge of our rock and peered over just in case there was a genuine problem. He was in the gushing water 1½ metres below saying he was stuck, but in a sing-song voice, with a big smile, not looking overly concerned – in fact, behaving exactly the same as he had done earlier when he climbed out onto the rock near us and acted up that it was much harder than it really was. I asked if he needed help, he declined, I said it would be a good idea to get out of that area – not a good place for swimming.
A minute or two later, he still hadn’t swum out, and May said she thought she could hear him calling for help. I told both May and Poppy to stay right back away from the edge, then crawled over and peered down on him again. He was hanging onto the rock face, saying that he couldn’t swim back out, but again with a huge grin and not being at all clear on what the actual problem was. Regardless, I thought I’d better assist him as he didn’t seem inclined to swim out. I tried to direct him to potential hand- and foot-holds on the vertical rock-sides that he couldn’t see from below (but I could see from my vantage point above) in order that he could haul himself up and out. But he wasn’t tall enough to reach. So I leaned down to try to pull him out using a mutual (double) wrist grip. But he was quite big for an 11-year-old and very slippery, and kept sliding out of my hold as soon as I got him slightly lifted. I contemplated sending one of the girls swimming back for the grass rope they’d made (it really was a strong one), whilst I stayed hanging onto the boy, all the while wondering how much he was faking it.
During this time, however, two things happened. His mum, who turned out to be on the far bank, managed to work her way around the narrow ledge of rocks at the edge of the pool to join me in hauling and, at the same time, an athletic man (who turned out to be a complete stranger) swam into the fast-flowing waterfall area himself so that he could help push the boy up from below. Between the three of us, we got the boy up and out.
It was only when the man went to swim back out of the narrow area that any of us realised just how serious the situation was. This man was a very strong swimmer and he swam outwards with all his might ... and made no headway whatsoever against the current. It was bizarre: the entirety of the surface water was flowing inwards, towards the waterfall. I have never come across such a situation before. Normally, if you try to swim towards a waterfall (which I’ve only ever done when the waterfall is wide and there are easy places to exit at the sides if needed), the waterfall-induced wind and water current push you away as you swim closer. This was the opposite: a strong current towards the waterfall right in the narrow gulley area – once you were in, you weren’t swimming back out, and nor were you climbing up the steep sides without help. (I suppose there must have been a bulk outflow of water under the surface at some depth or other – it was a waterfall, after all – but that was of no use to anyone trapped at the surface.)
The only way out, for this man as for the boy, was up the small rock-face onto the rocks at the side. He was taller than the boy, but still 20 cm short of the hand-holds and absolutely exhausted following his attempts against the current and then a couple of tries at climbing out by himself. We gave him a few seconds’ breather then, with one almighty effort, he kicked and the boy’s mum and I pulled on an arm each, and we had him up onto the hand-holds and out.
Dave said that, from the far bank, all he and the handful of other spectators could see was that two people had individually swum into the narrow area and never come back out, and that something seemed to be going on from the rock, but they couldn't see what.
Ten minutes later, the man was relaxing in the sun again and the boy was leaving with his mum and younger sister. It was strange to think that no-one else arriving at that point would ever have known anything had happened – to either the boy or the man. I recoil at what the outcome would have been if no-one had been around to help or if no-one had seen them swim into the waterfall area.
As the boy left, he began showing off about it being his second near-death experience, how he’d have a great story to tell at school in September and was looking forward to his next dice with danger. With the man in mind, I told him to reflect on how he’d feel next time if someone dies trying to save him. His mum was more to the point: she simply told him to shut up.
It was time for us to leave the crowds of La Manche behind (well, on such a hot, weekend day, we saw about 100 people there in total across the day, and even 10 counts as a crowd in Newfoundland). We drove back to Bay Bulls, past big roadside ponds blocked with beaver dams, and parked up at O’Brien’s to take a whale and puffin watching boat trip into the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, hoping to see whales close up. We went with O’Brien’s 18 years ago, which was before today’s receptionist was even born.
Whale watching in Witless Bay Ecological Reserve with O’Brien’s at Bay Bulls. (I never take many whale photos, preferring just to watch and enjoy.)
It is an ideal time of year for whale watching and we had a fantastic trip with many sightings: a huge fin whale (the second largest animal in the world) sending up a 40 foot spout, brief viewings of the relatively small minke whales, and our favourite: a mother and calf humpback whale swimming together, surfacing, sending up 25 foot spouts and showing their tails numerous times as they started a deeper dive. Normally, a deep dive means you lose them for ages but we only lost them for a few minutes at a time as the dive depth was limited by the 7 month old calf (a mere baby at ‘just’ 2-3 tonnes compared with the mother’s 25-30 tonnes).
The massed seabirds clustered onto rocky islands beaten by surging and crashing waves were also incredible: tens and hundreds of thousands of gulls, murres, guillemots and others, with half a million Atlantic puffins looking comical as they tried to get airborne. What we didn’t see were the million Leach’s storm petrels that congregate here (one of the largest colonies in the world, second only to a colony 60 miles north on Newfoundland’s Baccalieu Island) as they spend their daytimes out to sea and return to roost only at night.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Puffin and bird watching with O’Brien’s on the rocky islands and churning seas of Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.
After an exciting day, we made rapid tracks back to St Johns to eat at a vegan restaurant that had been highly recommended by Alex and Melanie. They had spoken, enraptured, of the great food and ambience at Peaceful Loft and the ‘sweet owner and his wife’. A couple of days ago, we’d already gone to some lengths to check out its location (it was closed then, so we couldn’t eat there) – we’d been surprised to find that this ‘loft’ was on the ground floor and the menu hanging outside contained many items of chicken, fish and pork, which didn’t seem too vegan.
We arrived hungrily at 7:15 p.m., saw the ‘Open’ sign and went inside. It was busy and, before we were even 2 seconds and 1 metre across the threshold, the owner marched over, abruptly said the restaurant was full and pushed us back out again, which didn’t seem overly sweet. Rather crestfallen, I said we’d had a special recommendation, but he didn’t seem interested and, being from overseas himself, he wouldn’t have picked up on our non-Newfoundland accents or had any inkling that we’d carried this recommendation around with us for over 5 months and travelled 3500 miles from the UK to be here. Disappointed, we headed to another eating place that Alex and Melanie had recommended – POYO at The Sprout – and this visit was more successful, the staff friendly and helpful, and the food absolutely delicious.
Back at the campsite, new neighbours joined on our other side – a big group of friends sharing one enormous tent – and, nearby, a very large, multi-family group of Muslim women and children. Pippy Park seems to be a cultural melting pot. With the arrival of two big groups, I thought we’d be in for a very noisy and interrupted night, but both groups were considerate and fairly quiet. The Muslim mums, in particular, went out of their way to make sure their children didn’t hog the bathrooms (as children can be wont to do when left to their own devices), which was thoughtful as there were only two toilets, two sinks and two working showers in the ladies’, so not a lot to go round.
In fact, the noise came from the same neighbours as last night: they started playing their music too late and too loud. However, I suddenly realised it was live music (i.e., one of the chaps was singing to his guitar) and somehow that changed it in my mind from something annoying to good, wholesome, camping fun. Strange. We also heard the distant strains of Ed Sheeran as we settled down to sleep. I don’t think Ed had dropped in for a night of camping, so this was unlikely to be live music: just someone else imposing their loud, late, party music on their neighbours with complete disregard. For once, someone else was copping it and we had escaped.
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