At the end of the road, the Burgeo ferry

In the summer of 2009, Benoit and I put our bicycles on the plane to Newfoundland for seven weeks. It was a practice trip for our world tour by bicycle: planned departure date May 2010. We tested new equipment and tested ourselves at wild camping. Near the end of our stay in Newfoundland, we cycled the Burgeo Road. One hundred and fifty kilometres of not much out there. At the end of that road was a passenger ferry to towns with no cars.

Excerpt:

Back at the ferry dock, we found out that we were to load our luggage into a big metal container that would be hoisted into the hold of the boat. We passed our bikes down by hand, then Benoit tied them to the railing. On the dock, we met Bryan, who said it was a shame that we were planning to go to LaPoile instead of stopping overnight in Grand Bruit, a much nicer community (so he said). We had wanted to stop in Grand Bruit but decided against it because there isn’t a store there and we didn’t have any food for dinner or breakfast. These communities have no road access – you can only get there by ferry – I was intrigued to see the towns with only sidewalks and no cars. Bryan approached us again as soon as the ferry left the dock to say that he and his wife Barbara were inviting us for dinner at their place in Grand Bruit so that we could stay the night there. He informed us that the ferry goes on to LaPoile today, but then doubles back in the morning to Grand Bruit, before going again to LaPoile and finally on to Rose Blanche. The Grand Bruit route was about three hours by boat – almost immediately I could feel myself fighting back the nausea as the boat swayed side to side in the swells. I thought that the waves were huge, but one guy aboard scoffed, “Ha, this is nothing!”. I spent the entire ride on the outside deck with the sea spray in my face, trying to keep my gaze fixed on the view ahead, which unfortunately was almost completely blanketed in fog. Only a short time before, I was putting on extra sunscreen just as we were boarding the boat – it was that hot and sunny in Burgeo. But right after we started sailing east, only fog. I asked Bryan where the life preservers were. He told me that they were under the seats, but “they’re not good for much... except picking up the bodies.” I had a shocked look on my face as he went on to explain, “The water is VERY cold.”

For all the details, even more that you could care to know, are in my bicycle log on Box.net:

• Newfoundland 2009: 26 pages, 5.5 Mb: nfldblog2009.pdf

Clicking on the link above will take you to a Box.net web page that says that the file has been shared with you. Click on download and enjoy.