However, are we speaking of a single ride over a relatively
short distance – say an hour or an afternoon?
Are we speaking about the entirety of an adventure: the good + the bad +
the experience = a perfect ride? Therein
lies the judgment.
Departing Gros Morne, we experienced some rain, overcast and
a tailwind to Daniels Harbor, partially along the coastline. This gray theme was becoming too redundant. Riding
further to Port-aux-Choix (meaning “port of choice” – three small harbors
around which the town was constructed) was an evolving rolling landscape,
picturesque in its own right with the sun desperately trying to chase the
clouds away – succeeding for only a few hours in the afternoon, until we turned
west to the Port, itself soaked in a thick bank of fog, unable to truly
appreciate the splendid, treeless peninsula which we rode across to get to the
town. But with a tailwind, anything is possible!
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| Chasing the clouds |
Departing Port-aux-Choix the next morning, still hung over
with clouds, we traversed a “shortcut” along the shoreline, a beautiful, quiet,
un-maintained gravel road through the space between the higher ground and
shoreline, as the sky became gradually thinner.
And within a few miles after re-connecting on Route 430, we were riding
in sunshine along a perfect shoreline for many miles, able to see and hear the
waves crashing the rocks – with a perfect tailwind. With a divergent course a bit inland to skirt
a large bay, we hit the gently rolling hills with abundant sunshine, until we
could spot the lighthouse in Flowers Cove, our stop for the day. This is the
kind of ride that makes one giddy – a top ten ride for me.
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| The road best traveled - Flowers Cove to Eddies Cove |
And it didn’t end there.
From Flowers Cove to Eddies Cove, a distance of about 20 to 30 miles, we
were riding the shore under a crisp, clear blue, nearly cloudless sky, cool
temperatures, with a beautiful tailwind, and the coast of Labrador visible to
the west across the Strait of Belle Isle.
Thinking it was all over when we had to cross the highlands of the upper
Newfoundland Peninsula, it was instead a beautiful run through this unique
landscape – like an open tundra plain, with groves of short spruce, vast bogs
and exposed rock plates. And a tailwind.
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| The highland plains |
The plains gave way to hills on the east side of the peninsula, hills that can punish the weary by their short steepness, but can nevertheless stimulate for the views and the thrill of the descent, but not always wind aided on this eastern coast. We rolled into St. Lunaire-Griguet, a small town with a big heart, with one final climb.
But must the perfect ride be on a bicycle?
Consider our fate the next morning. After getting to know the proprietor of a
tiny local seafood restaurant for dinner (the Daily Catch), he indicated the
potential for a whale tour the following morning at 9:00, originating out of
his general store less than a mile down the hill toward the waterfront. Now, our previous experience in a tour boat a
few days ago – Western Brook fjord in Gros Morne - was a crowded affair where
we were basically stuck with the spot we claimed when we boarded. Today, Captain/Owner Keith (Iceberg Alley
Boat Tours) with his small, speedy hand-built
launch, capable of seating 12, did this morning accommodate only Rich and
myself for a personal tour of the bay and further into the Atlantic, under
perfect skies and light winds, where we witnessed the rise and fall of many
whales breaching the surface, along with a school of dolphins, and a visit to a
ghost town vacated not so very long ago., but crumbling quickly under this
punishing climate. There could not have been a more perfect ride! But sadly, my one ambition to see icebergs
melted away, literally, for we were but a few weeks late for the last of them
(late April thru June, the sea is full of them, known here as Iceberg Alley).
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| This shot was a fluke! |
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| And they got pretty close! |
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| Surveying the cove at St. Lunaire |
We then proceeded about 10km north to visit the object of
our entire trip – the very tip of Newfoundland – L’Anse aux Meadow (this whole
area is known as Vinland) - the site of a proven Viking settlement
approximately 1000 years ago set on a treeless plain with the Atlantic
unfolding to the north. Dispatched by
Leif Ericksson from Greenland, a group of 60-90 people “discovered” North
America well before Columbus. I guess
for me, this was one of the older construction sites in the continent, aside of
course from those settlements of native peoples, and worthy of a visit to put
our location into a historical time-and-place perspective. One could easily imagine the challenges life
brought them for the relatively few years the settlement existed.
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| One of the original long house foundations - the slight mounded earth |
Reflecting on this distant past, we rolled down to St. Anthony, the terminus of our visit to Newfoundland, and the start of our next journey to Quebec.
But that other perfect ride?
A taxi with cabbie Preston giving us some cultural rendering of “Newfunders”, the absence of certain
consonants in their pronunciation guide (“h” least prevalent), driving us back to
fog bound St. Barbe for the short ferry crossing the Strait of Belle Isle to
Blanc Sablon, on the Quebec/Labrador border, avoiding a wicked headwind across
the headlands, and enabling our timely ferry connection.
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| Main Street in Flowers Cove - the kind of stuff seen on a perfect ride |
So what exactly was the perfect ride? Bicycling along the coast? The highlands? The
great weather (for the most part)? The
entirety of the four days from Port-aux-Choix to St. Anthony featuring great
weather, scenery and cultural experience?
The taxi, whale boat or ferry rides?
For us, it is ALL part of the perfect ride. But what all bicyclists can possibly agree
upon is the impact of one singular aspect of a great ride – a tailwind!
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| Result of a good tailwind! |
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