Ride Day 9--St Lunaire

Day 9/RT 27—Saturday, July 10
Raliegh (Ha Ha Bay) to L’Anse aux Meadows & back to St Lunaire
34.5 miles
Brendan’s Motel

From the Tour Guide: Today we go to L'anse aux Meadows, site of the discovery of Viking life in North America. A UNESCO world heritage site, we will experience what life was like 1000 years ago. We stay in the traditional Newfoundland fishing village of St. Lunaire. It is our last night together - let's party!

When we started out this morning, it was 60F and there was surprisingly little fog. I dressed only in shorts and jersey, but tied my raincoat around my waist. Good thing I did. When we got to St Lunaire, the temp dropped abruptly 10 degrees to 51F. Today’s ride had turned chilly and hilly.

A sled  waiting for snow and its snowmobile

One section of road was covered with buttercups, though this photo does not show them well; that's a snowmobile bridge to  the right of the road

Suz reaching for her camera as we cross another stream

We stopped in St Lunaire at the Dark Tickle Café and I had coffee and two small blueberry bran muffins—the best I’ve ever eaten I think. (A tickle is a narrow bay, and the one on which the café sat had hills on either side that shaded it and made it dark.)

Suz at the Dark Tickle; below: colorful boats anchored in Gunner's Harbor

After leaving the Dark Tickle, we headed through town. Shortly after we passed what would be our motel for the night (Brendan’s) we descended a hill and it began to rain. I stopped at the bottom of the hill to take some rainy pix of Gunner’s Cove. As I was framing the shot, a car pulled up beside me. The woman on the passenger side rolled down her window and shouted, “Are you nuts!?” I laughed and said, “I must be because I’ve cycled for 10 days in this type of weather.” When I told her where we’d started and what we were doing, she told me to grab onto the back bumper and she’d help me along.

This and the next several photos are all of Gunner's Cove in the rain

It was 8 miles from St Lunaire to L’ Anse aux Meadows, the site of the first North American settlement . . . by Leif Erickson about 1000. (I think American schools still teach that Columbus discovered America.) It also claimed another “first” distinction, being named the first UNESCO Heritage Site.





The visitor’s center was closed for remodeling, so a park employee shuttled us to the site in a van because the road into it was rutted dirt/gravel. Another park employee, looking with his red hair and barrel chest like a true Viking descendant, took us on a 45-minute tour that was very, very good. Though he talked fast, the guy had been directly involved in reconstructing the model longhouse that was there and in excavating the primitive house sites. By this time we were standing fully exposed to the cold and wind on a point of land at the Atlantic Ocean, and it was difficult to think of much else but being cold. But, when we approached the recreated house, there was an open fire and inside several fires. The wood-framed, peat-turf building was snug and warm. 

Centuries before Christopher Columbus left Spain and discovered America, Viking raiders and Norse traders were already sailing across the cold and dangerous Atlantic. They settled in Iceland and Greenland and also a legendary place called Vinland. Icelandic sagas told of this rich land discovered and settled by Leif Erikson, but nothing tangible was ever found proving that Vikings had landed on the shores of North America long before Columbus. Not until 1961, when dedicated Norwegian explorer and writer, Helge Ingstad, discovered the site of an ancient Viking colony at a solitary, wind-swept location in Newfoundland called L’Anse aux Meadows (Internet explanation).

Foundation imprints where other "buildings" were in the past

Reconstructed Longhouse--original without wooden chimneys but with smoke vents

Aki with reenactor

Aki and Suz snug in the longhouse; it was a bitter cold and windy place; we were all reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire

Our red-headed viking-like tour guide was very knowledgeable and had even helped excavate some of the site. Archeologists even knew the prevailing winds by studying the ash patterns left behind. All in all a pretty amazing place that deserves a better understanding than I can give here. Go to Wikipedia for a full description of the site.

After touring the site, we were shuttled back to the visitor’s center and our bikes. We biked back to the hotel, stopping on the way to climb a trail to the top of the world—actually a trail called Clair Trail that was 450 meters long (up?). 

Suz and the gang hiking up a roadside trail for a good bird's eye view



I took many pix from the top. We saw three moose today, two at the motel and one at the Viking site. Last night Gary told us that there were two moose at the campsite. The pix below are of all four directions from the top of Clair Trail. That's the Atlantic Ocean in the first photo.

There is a distant iceberg in this photo but my camera just could not reach out and grab it



Ocean

Small freshwater lake

After getting settled into the motel, we all walked to the nearby Daily Catch restaurant for dinner. At last, I thought, I’ll get to meet some of the other riders on this tour. Not to be. Forget the last words on today’s ride description. There was no party. We were all seated at separate tables, and those who came or rode together remained in their groups. There were no goodbyes, no socialization table-to-table, and no time to tip. I sat with Suz, Arlene and Ancilla—poor kid. She is only 27 yet stuck with the oldsters. It was a small place and we and other patrons took up all of the tables. I had a good seafood chowder and the others had fish and chips.

Internet photo of Daily Catch Restaurant in St Lunaire

It was raining hard on the way back to the motel, so I pulled out the trusty umbrella.

Arlene, who has been somewhat of a sourpuss for the entire ride, had promised that Ancilla could bunk with her in Deer Lake, but at dinner she abruptly withdrew her invitation, announcing that she had a plane to catch and needed both beds to organize her gear. I think Ancilla was relieved. We told her that she was welcome to share our Deer Lake room, but she and Barbara, who is about her age, reserved a spot at a Deer Lake B&B.

Suz is tired and saddle sore. She wants to sag the last 20 miles--to St Anthony--tomorrow in the van. I don't blame her. She's been a trooper on this her first long-distance bicycle ride, and she's had to put up with my snappy irritability. I don't need to ride the extra 20 miles either, so both of us will sag. Joanne of the Tom-Joanne-Will family will sag in also. She is slower than her two men and holds them back. Riders must be in St Anthony by 10 am. With three people sagging (an option explained in the brochure) there is no room in the van for Gary, so he will have to ride his bike. Andrew will be leaving early in the van to get Aki to a 6 pm plane out of Deer Lake. The drive back to Deer Lake from St Anthony is over 5 hours.