Day 27 - Rest Day

Day 1 in St John’s:

Beers: 6
Screech: 2
Fish and Chips: 5
Toutons: 6
Wet legs: 6
Whales: 2 (maybe)
Puffins and assorted other birds: 2493216

Pretty painted houses, 100’s, funny road intersections many, greater than 20% hills-who can count?


Emily is a gentle slave driver and word has it she follows her mother in this regard. She shepherded us to Shea Heights, where Ron made a joke about someone coming up to him with an offer to sell him the site, and his response faithfully recorded here- “I don’t take Shea Height from anyone". When he’d recovered, the intrepid party visited Bay Bulls, where they bought tickets to take a trip to see puffins et al. Unfortunately, the fog was very thick, so to spot these porcine shaped flappers was somewhat more difficult, than it was for the birds to spot us and we were warned to keep our mouths closed at all times. We got some good shots of fog, no one was sea sick and so we counted that as money well spent.


Back on land, it was lunch time. We all had gourmet burgers. In Bay Bulls, this means a whole wheat bun, a well cooked patty, and a Dill pickle. It was, however, delicious. Some more gentle shepherding was done, Emily making sure that we were not over taxed, and we were at Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America. There was close up photography of rocks and plants, as we basked in the soft light of the fog. Then, as we approached the old WW2 shore defense battery, the fog cleared and beauty surrounded us. One more magical experience.


Emily drove us back through heavy rush hour traffic to Ches’s where we sampled some superb fish and chips, then it was time for Skype. Skype was an audio visual event with the three of us sat with Em’s laptop in the back of her Mazda connected with good friends at home. (I love technology which enables me to see new angles on our garden from 2000km away but don’t ask why we had to do it in the back of her car.) Thoroughly drained from laughing too much, we thought our day was ended, but no! It was back to George St where we were anointed the 95002 and 95003 honorary Newfoundlanders at Trapper John’s Pub. A couple of beers at Greensleeves Pub finished the night with a very good singer guitarist playing all the songs we knew.

Pictures