A Tale of Four Coves Near St. Anthony

Saturday, June 24, 2018 was another big day.  We scheduled an iceberg boat tour for the early afternoon - but before that in the morning, and after the boat tour, we took four short hikes in coves around St. Anthony.  Let take a look at each of the cove hikes.

GOOSE COVE - PUMLEY COVE WALKING TRAIL

To the south of St. Anthony is little Goose Cove, an unassuming little community along the French Coast.  But it has a beautiful hike -- the Pumley Cove Walking Trail:

As we started along the trail from the end of town, we spotted a collection of old equipment - in this case the old frame of a box sled used to carry firewood and other materials over the snow in the winter:

Our hike led us along a red boardwalk, up to a canopied lookout, where we could see the Atlantic Ocean, and up and down the coast:

The harbor of Goose Cove itself was littered with what we call "Berglettes" and the locals like to refer to as "Bergey-Bites," although many of the pieces of ice are broken pack ice rather than pieces of icebergs:

Our trail took us further up the cliffs at the head beyond Goose Cove.  Looking back, we could see the little village spread out along the shore of the harbor:

Along the coast of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, the landscape is arctic, with boreal forest and tundra, taiga woods, tuckamore (or krumholz), the ground covered in sphagnum moss, rocks, and beautiful little wildflowers:

Reaching near the tops of the cliffs, we could look down on the near part of the town, with its church and related buildings:

The cliffs were dotted with tiny tarns:

We finished our hike, and as we drove back around the harbor, we spotted this little bergette, which was grounded near the boat ramp.  Kathy was able to reach out and touch it:

GREAT BREHAT

After our boat ride, we drove north to Great Brehat, where we found the Flat Point Lookout Trail:

It didn't take us long to get out above the village of Great Brehat, which is as picturesque as any French Coast community:

At the top of the trail, we could look down on some small icebergs.  Note that the end of Kathy's bench memorializes the town in which this spot is located:

We could see some interesting little berglettes from this point.  The furthest fron us was graced with a beautiful circular arch, which we caught in this photo from down on the rocks at water level:

While David was snapping the above photo, Kathy caught this view of him on the rocks below (to the right in the photo below) - the photographer in action!

ST. CAROL'S

On our boat tour earlier in the afternoon, we had circled a most beautiful and complex iceberg floating just outside St. Carol's Harbor.  On this drive, we returned to St. Carol's by road and found John Patey's Trail, which began at an old shack whose wall studs framed a view of that gorgeous iceberg from the land:

The harbor of St. Carol's below us as we hiked was littered with berglettes!

As we hiked back to the waterfront in St. Carol's we saw that our tour boat was arriving to circle the beauteous iceberg once again on its 4:00 tour!  We cauth the boat as it passed the iceberg.  This photo will give you an idea how large the iceberg was, because it dwarfed the little tour boat:

ST. ANTHONY'S BIGHT

We drove on to St. Anthony's Bight (a bight is larger than a cove but smaller than a bay), where we took the Silver Point Trail out to survey the many berglettes that have been trapped in the Bight:

One huge iceberg caught in the Bight is flat, and has probably rolled over several times.  We could glimpse it beyond the point where our trail ended:

By this time, it was getting late, and we needed to get back to St. Anthony for our Viking Feast!  More about that in the next blog entry.