Day 11 - bright lights and dark nights

We woke to a really cold, misty, damp morning. We were back to having heating in the van. We set off early and back into Bonavista where we found a lovely cafe for breakfast called The Quintal. A Quintal is a hundredweight of cod fish, of course. There was no such thing on the menu, thankfully. Andrew and I had eggs and toast with hash brown. Oliver had french toast. It was delicious. And the coffee was sooo good. Proper coffee.

After that we set off for our final destination today - the Terra Nova National Park. The park is owned by the Candian National Parks service and is a Dark Sky Preserve. Today is very cloudy so it might not be as starry as hoped.

The roads in Newfoundland are terrible. When we were on the boat earlier in the week, the captain joked ‘The English drive on the left, we drive on what’s left’ - not such a funny joke when you are in a 24 foot camper van. Poor Andrew has been avoiding potholes every few feet. So it takes a while to get anywhere!

We stopped at the Cape Bonavista Lighthouse which is the only lighthouse where you can view the same seal oil fuelled light used in the 1800s. The lighthouse is still used today but it now has an LED electric light instead. Today’s weather meant it also had it’s foghorn sounding. Quite wonderful. We paid CAD 6.00 each and had a tour of the lighthouse which has been restored to how it would have looked in 1872.

It was very rainy and bitterly cold, so we got back in the van and drove the coastal path. Lots of desolate towns and nothing remarkable to see. Other than a place called Tickle Cove!

Eventually we arrived at the park. Signs warning of moose greeted us. The man at the entrance spoke to us about bears and how we were not to leave any food out. Scary!

It’s been a long, grey drive today but we had music on so we had a nice time anyway.

The RV park is huge. The shower blocks are so clean and the water is hot. We had dinner in the van - pasta and sauce and ice cream sandwiches.