Newfoundland & Labrador - part three

This - and it’s not my photo - is the classic Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism view of the Western Brook Pond, a freshwater body on the island’s west coast.

And this is my shot of, in the far distance, the entrance to the pond (local term for lake), a 16 kilometre (nearly 10 miles) fiord long cut off from the sea.

It’s a half hour walk in from the highway and well worth visiting.

Also in Gros Morne National Park are the Tablelands, one of the few places where earth’s mantle has risen to the surface.

Dungeon Provincial Park. Note the person in an orange jacket at the top left who gives a sense of the arches size.

Aside from Gander Airport’s mid-century lounge, another place I’d long wanted to visit is L’Anse aux Meadows in the very far north of Newfoundland. It’s where Vikings, around the year 1000, became the first Europeans to settle in North America.

This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Putting it mildly, conditions weren’t propitious, but, in an odd way, add to the experience. I half expect a Nordic god to appear out of the mist. 

Fires in the replica Viking huts are welcome on a bitterly cold day. It’s only after a few minutes of thawing that I realize they’re gas. Real fires would be smokey and dangerous. Stupid me. 

On Labrador's coast, vast beaches with just me, gulls and icebergs. Long since I’ve had so much space all to myself. I could shout with glee, but would feel silly, so limit myself to skipping stones. 

Beachcombing is a pleasure that doesn’t end after childhood.

 All sorts of things to be found.

In Red Bay, Labrador, are bits and pieces of 16th Century terracotta used by Basque whalers. Orange-ish terracotta roof tiles came across as ballast and whale oil went back to, in a well-worn phrase, light the lamps of Europe. 

And, after another Labrador beach scramble on my own, I hold a chunk of compressed ice from a berg. Surprisingly heavy. How many thousands of years since it began passing down a now vanishing Greenland glacier?

Final Newfoundland post is next.