Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Today’s Goal is to drive from Lewisporte out to Twillingate, (little spur top-left corner), then back and along the coast through Musgrave Harbour to rejoin the Trans-Canada Highway at Gambo and then cunningly avoid Clarenville (been through there three times already) and end up in Bonavista. I will have to do Clarenville again on Wednesday, but that can wait. 540 Km plus a few diversionary miles, I am sure.

I was awake at 4:00 a.m. Shivering. Yet another hotel whose temperature controls don’t work. Sixteen degrees Celsius, and blowing a breeze across the back of my neck from across the room.

I ran a hot bath to warm me up. Mud bath, more like.

When it was time to go, I had to wrench the bed away from the wall to reach the power point and retrieve my cell-phone charger. Retrieved a few other interesting goodies, too, that had fallen behind the bed and been missed by the cleaning staff.

When I checked in last night I connected to the internet – with some difficulty, because there were five connections available. One by one the connection dropped, so I tried another. Same problem. Tried them all, and then gave up.

In the morning I sat in a chair in the lobby and did my WiFi stuff. The night clerk of course doesn’t know what the problem is. I do.

(1) The hotel management is too cheap to install router repeaters along the corridor, so if you are in room 126 at the end of the corridor, the signal atrophies as it passes through half a dozen rooms with tiled bathrooms. How much does it cost to buy a WiFi Router at The Source ? As little as $70, about half the $136 The Brittany Inn ripped out of my wallet for a freezing room with no WiFi and brown bath water.

(2) The hotel management doesn’t care about its clients. I was told that people often complain about poor WiFi service.

(3) The hotel management is too cheap to carry out a twice-yearly inspection to make sure that each rooms facilities are in full working order.

(4) The hotel management is vying with The Wave Hotel just down the road in Clarenville for the title of “Newfoundland’s Most Despicable Hotel”

No wonder I prefer bed and breakfast nooks. There the people really care (but see below about my arrival in Bonavista)

So it’s Ho! And I’ve beaten the sun yet again. Seven is about the earliest I dare start if I want to see what I’m driving through. Were I starting in Deer Lake I’d leave earlier, for this is the fourth time I’ve driven this stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway.

Of course, when it is this dark, it is even darker inside the car, and don’t I drop my black-cased ball-point pen somewhere near the passenger seat? It’s no good fumbling down around there. All the Chevy Trax controls that couldn’t be fitted on the steering column are located between the two seats

None of the pens I retrieved from the head of the bed are white. I must keep my eyes stuck to the sidewalks when I get back to Toronto and look for WHITE dropped ball-point pens. Or pale yellow, at any rate.

I head off along #340 aiming for Twillingate.

A glance at the dashboard tells me that my range on this full tank of gas is 906 km. That’s higher than usual because for this first half-hour I have been driving at 80 Km/hr

A half an hour later it reads 902 km. Trust me, I’d driven more than four kilometres in half an hour.

I still can’t get the USB keys to play properly. In this shaky photo we see a collection of “Track 4”. The system has pulled all MP3 files from the memory key, so again, I’m still getting the first five minutes of all the “Track 1.mp3”, which is to say, the first five minutes of each chapter in the book, followed by the second five minutes of every chapter in the book.

Sigh.

This house is clad in siding with a maroon theme. I doubled back to take a shot of the truck and garbage box (styled, I think, on lobster pots) in maroon.

And just to prove it was no fluke. The reds are dimmer here because the spot is shaded from the low-rising sun at this hour.

I spotted a derelict garbage bin. A rarity.

By 8:30 I am approaching Twillingate, and the ocean approaches us from all sides.

I make my way to the world-famous Crows Nest Cafe and it has joined league with the public libraries.

Today is, of course, Tuesday. Of course, curses course through my head.

Shocking, I call it. I mean, they don’t serve coffee until after ten o’clock?

I am struck by the thought that it would be faster to drive to St John’s and then catch a flight to Vancouver or London to grab a coffee, and I could be back here before this café opened.

I hurl a curse at the “Bloody Crow” (Australian joke), and try not to slam the car door.

So, it’s back the way I came, back along that little spur, top left of the map shown at the top of this page.

Twillingate is an island off an island off an island ...

I should have counted the causeways I drove across, I know.

I get completely turned around by these twisty roads.I have a sense that I want to head in a general direction of South-East, but the car compass swings through East, South-East, South, South-West and West. The sun, of course, joins in the dance and blinds me from all directions.

Why is the sun on my right? It should be on my left. I blame it all on the Crows Nest Café.

Two things here. First, the shy little red-head peeping out from the green trees. Second, on the right, one of the many small places one can pull off to stretch the old legs.

I am approaching Musgrave Harbour. This shot merely supports my statements that the country is pretty much one of about four stock characters. This is the “stunted trees along the edge” type.

Now I am leaving Musgrave Harbour. I didn’t drive through the town because it lies off the highway.

That doesn’t stop the road-works though. This time with a clock that tells you that you have enough time to scoot around the car to the trunk and get a spare bottle of water.

Or some Gouda cheese.

Is that the sea I see in the distance?

Yes, but it is not icy, for I see no icebergs. FWIW two hours after I took this shot the temperature was at 20c.

More sea to shining see.

And an ad hoc caravan park. Is this a hunter’s camp?

I was struck by this spot. Exchange the pine trees for jam bushes, and you could be parked along the side of The Great Eastern Highway near the Nulla-Nulla crossing .

Except that you’d never see standing water at the Nulla-Nulla crossing. Let alone a creek.

The scenery is changing as we approach the Trans-Canada Highway. The trees are uniformly pine; the deciduous trees have disappeared. Also as we drop off the plateau, a sea of pine-tree green reveals itself.

I think I had mentioned earlier that in Newfoundland the pot-holes are joined by patches of road ...

A great shot of the cirrostratus or cirrocumulus clouds (I think).

Nothing much else happens. At two o’clock the temperature was 21c.

I am approaching Bonavista.

Here at 15:15 is the town spread out before me on highway 230. Keep your eye on those two water-towers.

I was struck emotionally by the similarity to the first view of Southern Cross from the quartz ridge known as Three Boys Hill, at 6pm on my tenth birthday.

Remember that since Saturday afternoon the car has been nagging me to get the oil changed.

I cruised down and up the main street but spotted no garage.

Aware that I was a traffic hazard to pedestrians, children and other small animals, I returned to a second-hand car sales yard I’d spotted. Discount Autos Bonavista. I explained my predicament to Derek, he picked up the phone, booked me into Crewes Garage , walked me to the window and pointed out where to go. I paid only half as much attention as I should have paid because his accent was so intriguing.

Back onto highway 230 (which happens to be the number of miles from Perth to Southern Cross), hang a right, past the two water towers, between the two cemeteries, and where the road forks, drive right in.

I did. Jessica handed the keys to one of the mechanics.

I asked if I might start a branch office in Newfoundland, and was given permission to use a table and chair in the reception area. I sent a message to a friend, and at 15:40 the mechanic bounded in “She’s all done”, however you say that in Newfoundlandese. I paid. Asked Jessica where I could find authentic Newfoundland cuisine (“Just don’t turn left back onto 230; go straight ahead”, which I did).

I was paid up and on my way by 15:45.

Now remember, the time was 15:15 when I reached the outskirts of town. I have driven the length of the town and back, waited for Derek to wrap up his phone call, poured my heart out to him, he has phoned a contact, told me how to get there, I’ve driven there and the oil is changed.

All in thirty minutes.

Why can’t Toronto be like this?

You may have an idea of how this oil-change has been on my mind, driving for four days through the wilderness, but I doubt it.

What a load off my mind.

And guess where I would like to live if I moved to Newfoundland?

And so at 15:50 I am sitting down to Fish and Brewis , pronounced “FishBRUCE”, and a large mug of hot tea with milk and sugar, pig that I am. I forgot to mention that I started with a bowl of pea soup, with serious chunks of ham or maybe salt-beef floating within. Not ham-flavoured water with peas, but chunks the size of my thumbs.

My mother used to make pea soup by waving a ham-bone over the water, twice, before putting the ham-bone back in the fridge. Here in Bonavista they know how to cook.

After a belly-stuffing supper I wandered outside to take a photo of the Provincial Court of Newfoundland. Look at the lower-right corner of the building.

Yes, that’s the bit I mean.

Here it is in detail. FINALLY I have found a shabby building in a Newfoundland community.

The responsibility of the government.

Here is a view of the fishing harbour.

With fishing boats.

Here is where you should eat: Walkham’s Gate Pub and Café.

The light being good, I drove out through Dungeon Provincial Park to a spot adjacent to the lighthouse. A radio transmission tower is part of the 20th century.

A statue of John Cabot takes us back to June 1497.

And for scenic effect, waves breaking over a small rock.

Finally, I reach the B&B, and there is a lovely hand-written note to greet me.

I have visited seventeen towns so far, so I have almost achieved my goal .

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