An early-morning drive around downtown Durrell, trying to find the starting point for my hike today: French Beach (helpfully translated on a bilingual road sign for the Francophile tourist: Plage French).
If I cruise around the streets any more slowly, trying to find this goddamn beach, I’m likely going to be reported for suspicious behaviour.
I’m being overtaken by cyclists and tractors – which make up the bulk of the rush hour around here.
After a sweet while, I spot a small gathering of rental cars at a dead-end, by a trail head, giving the game away.
Up on the escarpment, bobbing about down below, in and around the clear blue water: The Cobra Snake, the Camel, and the Indian – rock formations drifted over from a glacial age, before I was born; now owned by the birds.
Eventually, I find the French Beach – hiding around the other side of the bluff.
Of course, when I crash down the path and onto the beach, it’s deserted – other than for a random shaggy dog excitedly splashing about at the water’s edge.
Carrying on a breeze from beyond the dunes, numerous distant cries of “Aphroditeeee!” … I wonder what the hell’s going on back there.
Only connecting the dots when I take the steep path up the bluff on the other side of the beach … it’s not quite Carry On Up the Dunes, but simply a couple out walking this shaggy dog, which happens to be named after a Greek goddess.
As the dog bounds back over the sand dunes to rejoin them, panting uncontrollably, all I can hear is “Naughty Aphrodite!” yelled out several times.
Only in Newfoundland, is my thought.
These cliffs are mean, jagged, they take no prisoners; the trail clinging to the edge in places, slightly perilous.
An open air coastal hike past improbable rock formations, some stranded now unreachable – other than by creative means. Or a boat.
Wildflowers exude a new kind of flourescence in the bright sunshine; the scrub all around me, hanging in the breeze by the edge of life itself.
To Spillers Cove, where nothing lives except for the rocks and the water and creatures unseen that may or may not live in the water, including A Sitting Man, according to my map.
Me, I’m looking for Codjack’s Cove, but stumbling into so many bays I lose track of where I’m at, especially with all the frankly ridiculous views.
Doing my best not to come crashing down the rocks – I don’t want to end up popularised on a yellow warning sign as the generic faller. With two people distantly following me, that would be at once embarrassing and convenient.
In front of us all, two bald eagles, staring into space, reflecting on existence. It’s one of those days. I bet they don’t even know where Codjack’s Cove is!
My rambling pursuers become the hiking trailblazers, and I’m now following them.
They dart off too quick, though, missing those eagles suddenly take off from the rock, for circular manoeuvres around the cliffs. All executed with a kind of grace which other birds can only dream of.
This is an air show with minimal effort and one spectator. I stand there gawping for a good few minutes.
The trail descends through close shrubbery and uncleared trees, opening at a clearing and a sign, a cove.
Mute life then continues at right angles, along a gravel road which has its own ponds and lakes and localised mosquito populations, but no views and no lookouts.
Eventually, the track is taken over by huge quarry lorries, which own the road, but then at this point downtown Durrell is only around the bend.
A cheery wave from a local to welcome me into town, and a throwaway comment from them, “That was a long walk!”
As if they watched me all day, or are tracking my movements. As if anyone would do that!
Around the houses in Durrell, and around the inconveniently-placed hill, past the yappy dog and up the sloping road to the dead-end parking lot.
I motor back around the Bay of Biscay to Split Rock, winning the prime parking spot and walking straight into the brewery tap over the road, to what feels like a Sunday Session. I have to go along with everyone when they say – it’s Thursday.
I take my beer to the open-air veranda, to absorb the sea air and watch the paddlers drift past. It’s a good life, I think.
Pat tells me to go to the family restaurant, so I do. There are families in there, and food being served up on plates. I eat quickly and escape back to the pub, a natural habitat by now.
An old local has a conversation with me at the bar, which I need a barperson on standby for, to translate.
Even then, I’m unsure exactly what I’m nodding along to, other than Twillingate isn’t what it used to be.
I take a pint of stout – I don’t know why, it just seems like the right drink to have – before calling time on myself.
My plastered friend is hiding around the corner in a striped jumper, just in view of the determined kayakers, busy trying to stay sunny side up.
Aren’t we all.
An Outside World 