newfoundlanders aren't friendly

An 'old friend' turns up in Gander

The road to St. John's is full of long climbs and long descents. Highway 1 is the big road cutting through huge landscapes swathed in forest.  We skirt the coastline and are then drawn inland again. Some days we motor and some days are stop, start, stop.  Generally the weather is good and this becomes more obvious when we get hit by rainy days - we are such fair-weather cyclists that if there is shelter we are usually tempted to take it.  This is when the visitor centres become special.  
 

a civilised dinner before squatting someone's garden

We enjoy some cheeky camping: on the edge of a sportsfield behind a school in Gander, in the overgrown garden of a baptist chapel in Glovertown, on the immaculate lawn of a visitor centre in Goobies.  This latter one is shared with Keigo, a 21 year-old Japanese man who we meet on the way into Clarenville where we are refuelling and resupplying.  We don't know what Keigo does in the town because the next day he seems to have no food.  We wonder if he has camped much on his Trans-Canada journey - he seems quite inept and we feel sorry for him.  But not sorry enough to look after him.  Gayle asks him what was his favourite part the journey across Canada. "Saskatchewan."  Why?  "Because someone saved my life there."

sodden but still laughing

In Goobies it rains heavily all evening and night and in the morning Keigo is soaked in his clothes.  He drags his sleeping bag out and literally squeezes the water out of it.  And then in a final pitiful show picks up his 'festival' tent and pours the water out of it.  He remains incredibly cheerful and upbeat. "Tonight motel" he beams. We ride together to the next visitor centre at a road junction,  Whitbourne, where we spend a day and a half using the internet and dodging more rain.  Keigo finds his motel.  We have a night in a lousy pitch down a steep embankment only for me to discover a wonderful grassy spot the next morning.  Ah well.

Before we bumped into Keigo we'd had a night in a cabin in Port Blandford, a small village on an inlet.  We've got soft after staying with Mike and Laura.  But from Whitbourne we wave goodbye to Keigo and take a small road back to the coast at a community called Holyrood.  We don't intend to reach the village but the downhill to the coast draws us onwards.  We decide to camp near to some houses and, just to be polite, we decide to ask the neighbours.  The man we speak to invites us to camp in his garden.  It seems rude not to - and it's grassy - but he doesn't invite us in to use 'the facilities' so I hope he doesn't mind me peeing in his bushes.  It's another rainy night - I'm sure he doesn't mind.  We meet him the next day down the road at work.  He's one of the village grounds keepers.  And we chat with him and his colleague, an English immigrant.  
 

with Keigo

Our night before reaching St. John's is spent at the beach on the west coast of the  peninsula.  We cook our tea at Topsail beach and are invited by a couple to visit them in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  We camp away from the beach but return for breakfast and a youngman with a now-familiar Irish accent asks us where we're heading.  He chats away with us all very friendly-like.  Lots of Canadians had told us how friendly everyone is on Newfoundland and it seems true.
 

Topsail beach

and sunset

St.John's has a great setting - an oval bay almost completely closed off by cliffs to keep out the North Atlantic weather - a perfectly sheltered natural harbour.  There are brightly painted wooden clapperboard houses lining the streets that sweep down to the harbourfront and town centre.  Here the traditional wooden housing gives way to concrete eyesores that mar the picture, but hey ho.  We are using Air b'n'b for the first time and staying with Jody.  Except Jody isn't staying with us it seems.  He isn't at home.  Gayle rummages in the letterbox and finds a key and lets herself in.  Is this burglary?  We find the wifi password in a bedroom and get online.  Gayle's hunch plays out - our host is not here and we are to let ourselves in and make ourselves at home. There's a lot of information about the house and the town.  At the end of his note it reads "Remember: Newfoundlanders aren't friendly, they're just bored."

Grooving Newfoundlanders Ahead