NEWFOUNDLAND – THE LAST OF THE BURIN PENINSULA.
Day 74 – It was cloudy this morning with some wind. At 8 a.m. it was 57 degrees out. We wanted to visit the remaining little harbor towns today & were hoping the sun would come out. By early afternoon it alternated between hazy & sunny. Our pictures would’ve been better with full-on sunlight, but the scenery was amazing nonetheless.
We left the campground at 10:25 and drove northeast like yesterday. Once we passed where we left off yesterday, we continued going north on Route 210 to Route 211, heading west to the other side of the peninsula. These small villages were located on Fortune Bay, rather than the Placentia Bay which is on the eastern side.
First we took a road off the 211 & visited Terrenceville. It was the largest & newest community that we saw today. The scenery only got better from there. Back on Route 211, we drove to the end of the road, stopping to see Grand Le Pierre and English Harbor East. We climbed up & down tall, rocky & green hills, finally reaching the water. Because of the wind, the waves were breaking big & their were whitecaps. English Harbor East was charming, the best town on this particular route.
We drove back to the main north-south road, Route 210, and turned toward Route 212 and headed west on it. This was a road we’d looked forward to traveling. It appeared on the map to be long & winding with six different villages on it. We’ve found that the longer and more difficult a road is to travel, the less occupied the towns are and the more authentic & non-touristy they are – at least that’s what we hoped.
We were right. These small villages were wonderful. Colorful & well-maintained little houses, gardens & flowers in the yards, narrow one-lane roads that wound through the villages as they climbed the rocky cliffs – just amazing. St. Bernard’s, Jacques Fontaine, Bay L’Argent, Little Bay East, Little Harbour East, and our favorite, Harbour Mille (very French-sounding names for these villages, eh?)……all of these towns were built up from their individual harbors of pristine deep blue waters (you could see the rocks on the bottom) & surrounded by very tall, rocky cliffs that came right down to the water’s edge. If there was a ledge or a wall or a field above the beach, houses were put there. Fjords ran between the hills. We felt like we were in Switzerland or Sweden, bring out the wooden shoes. The towns on this drive were old fishing villages dating back to the mid-to-late 1800’s. So, so pretty.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
We got back to the RV at around 5:30. The high today was 71 degrees & there was full sun & some wind. We really hate to leave here, as we’ve hated leaving many other wonderful places, but we haven’t even seen half the island yet. Tomorrow we move on; we’ll try a northern peninsula again in the hopes of seeing some whales and NO fog & rain. July is whale watching season here.
Frenchman’s Cove Provincial Park: Route 213, Frenchman’s Cove, Burin Peninsula, NF; (709) 826-2753 or (709) 637-2040; e-mail nlcamping@gov.nl.ca; website www.nl.camping.ca. Open mid-May to mid-September. There are 76 campsites at this Park; 20 of them offer electric & water hook-ups & the remaining 56 sites are without any hook-ups. The 20 sites with hook-ups are in a more crowded, less private section of the Park, 12 of them are bordering the golf course. The campsites with hook-ups are occupied most of the time. Eleven of the campsites without hook-ups border the waters of the Great Garnish Barrisway, and some of them are very private and have water access for kayaking or canoeing. We had one of those campsites & it was wonderful. Site #26, completely private with no view of other campsites, surrounded by trees, a pull-through site with its own large grassy area for the screened tent, picnic table, etc., and just steps to the short path leading to the water & some great kayaking. What more could we want?! $20 per night (Canadian currency yet), there was a spigot for water close enough that all we had to do was connect a hose to the RV, and there is a dump station on site. Perfect! We will definitely stay here again.