Preparation

I have bought a one-way ticket to St. John’s. Since the length of my stay is indeterminate I have decided to wait until three or four days before I am finished exploring Newfoundland to book the return ticket.

Tomorrow I shall book my accommodation for the nights of the 3rd and 4th, and I shall book a rental car.

After that all I have to do is pack my bag and go!

Newfoundland By Road

Newfoundland by road is a collection of loops and spurs.

The spurs are roads that head towards the coast and then stop. To travel a spur means I drive the road twice – once to the end, and then return back the way I came.

The road that runs from the centre of the island at Bishop’s Falls due south to Harbour Breton is such a road. From Bishop’s Falls we can drive south to Harbour Breton, but once there, there is nothing for it but to drive back to Bishop’s Falls.

Four major nodes can be reached from St John’s. My plan is to take two hours to leave St John’s and sleep in Clarenville, and then drive the next day to St Anthony at the northernmost tip of the island.

This trip is more like my USA trips of twenty years ago than my trip to Poissy last year. Last year in Poissy I rode the buses until mid-afternoon, then returned to shower and don fresh clothes, stroll to supper, and have an hour or two to write up my diary before falling alseep.

On the Newfoundland trip I suspect that I will be covering many miles of boring highway with a need to reach a major town before dark.

I am tired of people telling me to “Beware of moose - they come out at dusk”. The situation is no different from driving outback roads in Australia - beware of kangaroo, they come out at dusk

Goal

I have set myself a goal to visit 20 locations in Newfoundland. Without this goal I would merely drive the car all day long and just rack up the miles.

Objectives

(1) Travel each of 4 spurs ( 8 days)

(2) Wander each of 5 areas (5 days)

(3) Produce documentation on 20 locations

I decided to travel in October to avoid “bad weather” such as fog, ice, and I want also to avoid the peak tourist season.

I hazard a guess that much of the driving will be along roads of boring sameness, much like the highways through Alaska. For example the road Grand Falls to Harbour Breton is through the interior, and appears to have little in the way of villages or side trips.

I checked out Porter Flights – starting from $250 each way, $500 all up, and the nice man at 1-888-619-8622 Porter says all flights have to display the full fare, taxes included, as per Govt. regulations.

I have had several communications with the tourist office in Newfoundland, and they have been helpful. They mailed to me a Travellers Guide and map, and have answered every question I’ve sent. I feel re-assured about my objectives.

The bare route is 4,800 Km, but I should probably pad that out by 15% to allow for side-trips off the road, driving around town after supper and so on. Say 5,500 Km. My latest four rentals have totalled 2,717 Km and cost me $167 in refueling, say 16Km per dollar, so 5,500 Km will be about $350 in gasoline.

I took some screenshots of the country highways. They look to be two lanes, one each way, with a broad sealed shoulder. The Street View of Google maps shows little traffic, and foggy/misty conditions, just like the glossy travel brochures! My guess is that I will be able to make pretty good time bopping along at the speed limit most of the time. That is, The Google Directions times are probably accurate once I get out of the city.

An assembly of images of highway stretches out in the country.

Most of the large towns seem to have accommodation. I used the night of October 10th-11th as a test, and rooms averaged out at $146, although some of those were as at yesterday – peak season. I shall take $140 as an upper limit. That drops my 18-night stay (Oct 3-21) to $4,928 or $273/day.

(Note: Not until a year later did I realise that October is out of the Tourist Season June-September, so all my B&B were, essentially closed, but each one re-opened for me. I cannot remember hearing “Sorry, we’re closed now”)

Then I had a thought: I will book into Clarenville for the first night. 3rd October. I can locate a cheap hotel from here. My second day, my first full day, 4th October, is to St Anthony. I can locate a cheap hotel from here for that night and two and four nights later. That takes care of the first six nights, except for Channel. I can research those two sites before I go, too, and get bookings made.

By the time the 9th October rolls around (Deer Lake to Harbour Breton) I will have a good idea of accommodation, whether I need to book or whether I can take my chances. Some towns are either multiple visits (Deer Lake, Marystown, Clarenville) or can be made so if I have learned that the road travel in October is fairly easy.

By the 9th October I will have a good idea of speed of travel, and how much time a side-track jaunt consumes.

I have sketched out a schedule, but the truth is I won’t know until I get there and have driven for a couple of days how reasonable this is. I may find that the side-roads with villages on the coast are a waste of time, for me, “When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”. Or I may find that each village has the equivalent of a scones-and-clotted-cream place where I can sit and relax.

Smaller Island, Longer Drives!

Assuming I land in St John’s early afternoon, drive to Clarenville the evening of the 3rd.

Clarenville to l’Anse aux Meadows is 860Km or 9 hours drive. Sunrise/set is eleven hours at this time, so a quick breakfast in Clarenville, lunch in Deer Lake (and check out hotels) and then on to St Anthony.

I must add 1 hour for a meal stop to that 9 hrs driving.

I could do St Anthony to Channel the next day.

Clarenville to Channel is only 7+ hours. A doddle.

And Clarenville to Marystown is two hours. Drive out, drive around, drive back to Clarenville all in one day, especially if I am returning to the same room in Clarenville.

Remembering that on this trip I want to get “a lay of the land”, and I anticipate driving for several days.

I am getting cold feet, or at least, cold toes. There will be no problem driving St John’s to Clarenville the day I arrive, but is it wise to attempt St Anthony on the next day?

Nine hundred kilometres driving at 100Km/hour is ten hours (the average speed is always less than the maximum), and roughly half the trip is NOT on a major highway. My Google Maps Streetview images show bare road, sealed, much better than the Alaska highways back in 1986.

A smart person would break this long “first day” into two easier days – Clarenville to Deer Lake, and then Deer Lake to St Anthony. If the roads treat me better than I fear, I can fall back into my original schedule and drive one day St Anthony to Channel-Port aux Basques. If not, then I split that leg into two days and revise my schedule.

This morning I booked the flight out. Leave Toronto at 6:45 a.m., arrive in St. John's at 2:00 p.m.. Newfoundland is 90 minutes ahead of Toronto, so the flight is not quite as long as it seems. That is an early start and may justify the luxury of a taxi ride to the airport. Land at 14:00. I should be out of the airport by 15:00, and in Clarenville by 17:00 for an early night.

I have enquired of hotels in Clarenville and St Anthony for the nights of 3rd and 4th. Enquiring by email is my way of assesing the service. Clarenville might be a base for me over several disjoint periods. Looks like $125 and $136 at a time, which includes 15% tax. The tax is a blow. Most prices will be quoted at-source, to which I must add nearly a seventh again!

This morning I booked a car for three weeks.

The tax is a killer. Enterprise quoted me $223/week, so about $670 for 21 days. Then they surcharge 15% to rent from the airport. Then 15% sales tax on top of that. $925. I should check the price of a cab fare to the downtown location.

Note that I pay HST on the airport surchage, which is in force for 21 days. On a one-day rental it is not a big deal, but on a twenty-one day rental, I am paying the location charge twenty-one times, and then paying the HST on top of that!

Moral: Tomorrow, cancel the rental and check the rates from another location. Grab a cab or take public transit. I have time.

A savings of $120 if I eliminate the Location Fee. For that I could GrabACab, or even study the airport shuttle service to downton St, John’s.

So I cancelled the airport rental and booked through Kenmount Road. This has dropped the cost from $924 to $760, a savings of $163. For that I can take a cab ride.

St John’s seems like a locked-up scam. “St. John’s International Airport currently operates a Closed Taxi Stand. City Wide Taxi is the exclusive provider of ground transportation services for the public at St. John’s International Airport. Please note, there is no public transit or shuttle service other than for specific hotels operating directly to and from St. John’s International Airport.”

(Later I learned that is not really true. The Metrobus has a stop right by the airport. It just isn’t ***at*** the airport terminal)

Hence, I suppose, the 15% per day gouge by car rental firms.

I shall investigate public transit (by bus). Fares are $2.50 cash.

Google Directions suggested (at the minute I enquired) anything from 90 to 120 minutes for the trip. Buses run every 60 minutes, it says ...

This means I land at 2pm, the bus leaves the airport at 3pm, arrive at 4pm at the car rental and into the motel sometime after 6pm.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

I look like spending up to $1,500 per week, so today I shall move $1,500 out of my savings account and into my chequing account.

I have booked into Trailsend 1 Cormack Street for Wednesday night. $80 includes taxes and breakfast, but of greater interest to me is being able to pump the owners about my next town.

Friends have advised me to take winter clothes, but I will not do that. Five days from departure and St John’s is aiming for 19c/12c today, falling to 10c/4c by Saturday. I am taking warm clothes, long-sleeved skivvies and shirts, and a jacket and a wind-breaking rain-stopping plastic outer jacket, and a thin pair of woolen gloves.

If we get into serious sleet and snow and gale-force winds, I’m coming home early.

Monday, October 02, 2017

This time tomorrow I’ll be in the air (I hope).

Today is wrap-up day, clean the fridge, shroud the house-plants in dry-cleaning bags, sweep and vacumn and mop the floors, crank the windows ajar to let air pass though, but inhibit the crud that the builders laborers toss down the side of the building. They are now in their fourteenth month of re-cladding the exterior walls of an eleven-storey building.

I shall be glad to be out of Toronto, a city of orange cones and pylons, yellow tape, diverted sidewalks and closed-off lanes, of garbage trucks in regular service eighteen hours per day.

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