Expeditioners in the kitchen, for a hostel takeover. Here to watch me make my first pancake … the results of which look more like a thick slice of bread. Liberally doused in maple syrup, who can tell the difference?
Talk around the breakfast table is of intrepid trips … packing adventure into a powerhouse Toyota off-roader (with a snorkel, ffs!), or bundling it into the back of an old Econoline van with a dodgy engine – which sounds more like a kidnap, to me.
Yeah, we’re all pirates of the Trans-Canadian!
Even me in my brand-new air-conditioned VW rental, with a trunk full of moisturiser.
Once everyone has departed, I’m left alone with the pancake mix and a hot pan, so feel compelled to torment myself further by taking a shot at another crepe. I don’t need a bread knife to carve into my second attempt, which is pleasing.
While I’m high on maple syrup, the NYC family reappear – their boat trip lasted all of ten minutes, and didn’t involve any boats. Turns out it’s blowing a hoolie out there, even though it’s dead calm here.
Plans hastily rearranged, we all abandon ship.
Up the winding road, I fall out of my car at Sleepy Cove, there to see Gorilla Face, Queen Victoria and Nanny’s Hole; thinking, this must be a joke.
I’m wondering what on earth they’ve been smoking around here, as I amble along the rocky coastal path overlooking their craggy aspects and features.
The old gorilla appears to be face down in the water, Queenie is a bit stoney-faced, and Nanny … I never found her, which in a way I’m grateful for. There are some things you don’t want to see.
No doubt these three chancers had a blast last night, knocking back the babychams and rum chasers, whipping up a storm over the water, and now won’t be roused for centuries.
The peace and quiet of my early-morning hike hits the rocks abruptly at Long Point Lighthouse, where everyone who was staying overnight in and around Notre Dame Bay has now descended to. It’s a sold-out gig, this is.
NLD ghosts and flowers, loitering in a breeze by the lighthouse, at the precise moment I arrive.
I linger among them for a short while, waiting for the exhibition to open. But change my mind when I realise there’s now coaches chugging in, dropping off their phantom cargo.
I head down and around the perilous cliffs to Devil’s Cove, where there is scenery here, that’s for sure. Flew in on an ice age at some point. And the seagulls see fit to mock this!
Rock stacks for the birds to perch upon, in view of the trails for the humans to traipse over.
Islands are floating on by. It’s all a mystery to me … how and when and what and why. Guerilla tapestry goes some way to clarifying things for me.
I shuffle down the mountain via a conveniently-placed rope, to a road which hides the remainder of the path far too well.
At the Crow’s Nest, there’s no-one on the lookout for life. Or customers. That cafe is closed, leaving my cake dreams in pieces.
Wandering around the pretty village streets, pretending to be interested in boats and driveways and washing lines and stairways that go nowhere, because the trail has gone completely cold.
How to get back on it is beyond me – or at least beyond the anonymous house, past the campervan with the curtains closed.
Overhead, the sky is starting to look pissed again. All day spent in between heavy showers … downpours to the left of me, cloudbursts to the right, somehow managing to stay dry, directly in the middle.
When the trail re-appears I’m set fair, scrambling down the coastal path increasingly quickly as another storm cloud follows me, all the way to the parking lot.
By the time I dive into my car, I’m being mugged, the heavens now fully opened and heavy drops bouncing off the roof.
In the circumstances, only a Split Rock craft ale makes any kind of sense.
There are four people in the pub, and two of them are staff.
I perch at the bar, sink a schooner, order another, and have a chat with Pat, the cheery beer pusher.
Then a sudden influx of customers, a takeover. When there’s too many people surrounding me, I bail. Over the road, to hang out with my washing.
In the lounge is the globetrotter with the never-seen partner who has broken his ankle. Allegedly. I see her later scoffing her lobster penne pasta with a smug grin and a glass of red.
Me I’m on the cod tongues, which I swear are grinning at me, somewhat implausibly – the cheek of it.
Pat sent me packing to Skipper Mike’s late-night show down at the Captain’s Dock, so I go.
The host screeches into the boozer having left his Kia Rio wrapped around the lamp-post.
There are ugly sticks propped up by the speakers, ready for use on the audience, if they don’t behave.
It’s all the old Newfoundland classics, the singalongs, stories and tall yarns – delivered in an Irish accent which passed through immigration unchecked over a century ago, and has been getting more and more indelicately Gaelic ever since.
Captain Joe Barbour, adrift from Newfoundland, to arrive dumbfounded in Oban on the West Coast of Scotland, just to see McCaig’s Folly. We’ve all been there … waking up in the middle of a sham, wondering how the hell we got there.
I retreat east to Split Rock, the brewery tap again, followed by the skipper himself. And the yarns continue.
Helicopters unloading millionaires and billionaires just around the corner, in the sheep pen. Here to sample the local delights. This is why the pub was suddenly overrun earlier today.
Although it turns out when they were looking for some quality brewis, they ended up getting served endless jugs of beer, not the cod and scrunchions they were hoping for. Which is my kind of misunderstanding.
At midnight, we all have one for the road, because it’s a perilous one out there – my ten second stumble over a deserted Main Street, in the shadow of Tickle Bridge, fully lit and illuminating my every move.
An Outside World 