The Coveted Loop

As any good traveler knows, the best way to travel is in loop fashion. This way you can see as much as possible and still get back to where you started.

Unfortunately, anyone who looks at a map of Newfoundland can see that loops are difficult to find. It's an island that was built along the coast, and only populated in the interior much later on. Consequently, travel here has usually been by sea rather than by land. Our original idea was to ferry on over to St. John's on the eastern side straightaway from Nova Scotia, then bike across the island back to Port-aux-Basques where we'd ferry back. The ferry to St. John's, however, was prohibitively expensive.

Not ready to give in however, we left Corner Brook still with a mind to make a loop. We headed for Gros Morne National Park, on the Northern Peninsula, where we would enjoy the scenery and hike around a little. If you are looking at a map and wondering how we were going to make a loop out of the Northern Peninsula, you are missing something. But first, we'll let you look at some of the beautiful scenery we encountered along the way. We stopped frequently along the way to enjoy the view as well. Here's our first look at the ocean after leaving Port-aux-Basques.


We slept right next to this little lighthouse in the town of Woody Point.


And we watched the sun set over the bay.


The next morning, we ferried our way across the bay and left Woody Point behind.


So back to our loop. If you are still perplexed how we were going to carry this out, we should say that we had some inside information. Various sources along the way informed us that there is a ferry that runs from the Northern Part of the peninsula down to the bulky part of the mainland. So, after enjoying Gros Morne, we book it up north and then ferry ourselves back down. We found it strange that few of our maps actually showed these ferry routes (there was one from Labrador down to Lewisporte, Newfoundland, but none of the ones we'd heard about).

We decided to trust our sources and headed north anyway. We found a map along the way that confirmed our suspicions.



See those little dotted lines that come down from St. Anthony and then the other one heading south from Roddickton (click on the map to enlarge it)? Money! Like the wind, off we flew!