Our airport parking location proved successful and we had a really good sleep. This morning the parking lot appears to be a popular spot for car pool parking, hmmm. We prepare for the day and depart before 9:00am.
We drive through Clarenville and rejoin the Trans Canada Highway heading East where after about an hour we exit towards Dildo.
Arriving in Dildo we pass the Dildo Brewing Company but it’s a little early for a visit and so decide to go to the beach at Anderson’s Cove which is where we have planned to spend tonight. After locating the access road and driving VERY carefully down it to the beach we rethink our choice of spot for tonight.
Oh, the beach is lovely, nice grassy areas for parking and a very walkable pebble beach, but that road!!! It is gravel and steep and the potholes had potholes! Barb has to spend several minutes re-securing the inside of the cabinets and cupboards before we could go any further as everything had shifted. We exit via a second road which a local person on the beach had told us was in better condition. It was, but only marginally. We both are now rethinking coming back later. Nobody on iOverlander had mentioned the condition of the roads leading into the beach.
Leaving Dildo we head East across the peninsula and then North to Carbonear and stop at a small park that has some boards describing the towns history. Settled by the English the town has a long history of fishing and shipbuilding. The French unsuccessfully tried to capture the settlement during the seven year war in the late 1600’s.
We leave Carbonear and head back across the peninsula to Heart’s Content. We stop at The Cable House Market and pickup some bread and goodies. It is a lovely old-style grocery store in a really well preserved building.
Next, we visit the Hearts Content Cable Station. A historical site where the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable came ashore in 1866. The museum appears as it did in 1965 when it was closed as telegraph cables were replaced with more modern ways of transmitting.
For almost 100 years Heart’s Content was a community of people providing critical support for all incoming and outgoing communications between Europe and North America.
Leaving Heart’s Content we drive South along the shore and just South of Heart’s Desire we see what appears to be the perfect parkup spot for the night. We mark it on a map and continue to the Dildo Brewing Company.
The afternoon is warm and sunny but sitting outside would have been chilly as the sea breeze was steady and so we opt for inside seating where we enjoy a light afternoon meal and sample a few of their beers.
We take a couple of orders of their seafood chowder to go, visit the gift shop and leave town returning northwards to the parkup near Heart’s Desire. It’s a 30min drive and as we arrive and pull in we realize that this was a brilliant decision. There is one other campervan and so we have lots of choice as to where to park. We chose a spot near the shore and settled in for the evening.
Tomorrow we head to St John’s for a few days.