Chance Cove - Coastal Trail

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Hi Blog!

On Saturday, we moved from Winterton to Bellevue Beach. We didn't do much after we arrived, other than take a long walk on the beach. Just down the road from Bellevue is the town of Chance Cove, which boasts having a spectacular hiking trail called the Coastal Trail. It sounded from everything we read to be a quintessential Newfoundland hiking trail. We were eager to give it a go.

Sunday dawned early, with a certain explorer cat eager to get out and explore her new campground. After walk, breakfast, walk, it was time for us to get out and explore the Coastal Trail. 

The trailhead was easy to find.

The trail was well marked with lots of "hiking trail" signs.

The folks in Chance Cove love their trail and they do their best to maintain it. Boardwalks over marshy areas are lined with tree limbs.

Not all the trail signs were made by the same people. Some sign makers had a sense of humor!

Wildlife viewing is scarce in Newfoundland. Newfoundland has plenty of critters, but it also has plenty of space for the critters to hide in. However, this little black slug decided to cross the trail. Just like the Newfies, this slug emigrated from Europe. It is now home in Newfoundland.

It wouldn't be a proper Newfoundland trail if there wasn't at least one set of stairs.

We were warned several time to beware of Cliff. However, after hiking three miles, we never did meet Cliff.

The Chance Cove Beach is a long gravel bar than separates Chance Cove Pond on the left from Big Chance Cove on the right.

We are not sure why anyone would want to move the benches to the edge, but someone must have, because there are signs asking folks to please not move the benches to the edge.

One of several side trails leads out to Green Point. We were eager to get out there and see what we could see.

Once you start hiking through this grassy meadow, you can see why this place was called Green Point.

The view back from Green Point.

Just past the point is a wooden staircase that leads to a gravel beach. Once down on the beach, we noticed this bald eagle checking us out.

We were eager to explore the beach to see if we could find any sea glass. However, we came up empty. There is not much wave action this far down into the bay.

We did stumble across a small star fish. We tried to place it back in the water, but it may have already expired by the time we reached it.

Chance Cove Island sits across a narrow tickle. The bald eagle we saw was perched on the lumpy hump to the right. The shallow water is so clear, the eagle could easily spot a fish swimming by.

As we continued our beach walk, we noticed a strong fishy odor. Hundreds of capelin were spread out across the beach drying in the morning sun. Capelin spawn on sand and gravel beaches. The females lay their eggs in the surf and the males rush in to fertilize them. Then, most of them expire on the beach.  Capelin have an extremely high post-spawning mortality rate which, for males, is close to 100%.

The arrival of capelin marks the start of the summer cod season. As the capelin make their way to shore to spawn, the cod fish and whales follow them in. Newfoundlanders are also eager to take advantage of the bounty of capelin. These small fish can be fried, dried and smoked. The dried capelin have been used for generations to fertilize vegetable gardens.

After a lovely stroll on the beach we continued on the Coastal Trail. Here is our first look at the Big Cove. We could see from our vantage point, a number of sea caves carved in the rocks.

We were eager to go down and explore the cave, but first we had to get there. Luckily for us, the good folks that maintain the trail provided a rope.

The cave was not very deep, but the water was crystal clear.

Now the fun part, getting back up the cliff face.

Once we recovered from our climb, we began to make our way back to the trailhead. The coastal forest floor was covered with these pretty white-and-pink flowers.

After our hike, we drove over to check out the harbor at Chance Cove.

We passed a cute little waterfall along the way.

We also decided to check out the small community of Bellevue while we were out and about. Newfoundlanders are very creative. We admired this ice fishing sled made from the back of a pickup truck with a cap and wood stove.  It sits near the fishing stage, ready to be deployed as soon as the ice is firm enough.

However, our favorite local creation was this stone moose with real moose antlers!

We have one more day here, so stay tuned to see what we find next.