(In this province, or at least this part of this province, what bay you come from matters a lot. Since life was mostly about fishing in the old days, and transport was by water, your neighbours were the people on the same bay as you. Getting across land to the next bay was not easy.)
Going by car was relatively easy, and involved crossing some more of the barrens. It was pretty flat, once we were up from Dildo. And until we got to the start of Harbour Grace. Conception Bay, I guess because it's closer to St. John's, is more "modern". The houses are more fixed up, the roads are bigger (even four lanes in places), and there are malls. When we got to Carbonear, there was a Walmart, a big shopping centre, lots of traffic. A big place compared to what we had seen over the past ten days.
We are staying at the Carbonear Hotel. This is also a place out of the 1970's. Not quite plastic on everything, but thin cotton sheets on sagging beds, small and noisy fridges. Apparently, we were lucky to have a place. Most of the time, it is full of folks who work for the Hydro Utility and are building capacity for the Muskrat Falls development. But they are away this week, so the rooms are available. The view is over the harbour and quite beautiful. The boardwalk goes from the centre of town, past our place, and out to the barrens.
And again, the people are generous and friendly. Darlene asked the resident of one of the other rooms where we could go for a coffee. This man—a man in his seventies who had the appearance of having seen a lot of poverty in his life—suggested he would bring down some fixings for us. And sure enough, a few minutes later, he appeared with some instant coffee, sugar, and Carnation milk (this is Newfoundland, after all). Very thoughtful, and a wonderful gesture.
We decided that yesterday would not be a bike day. We walked into town (about a kilometre), and had a pint at the Stone Jug, a pub in town (probably the only pub in town). Food was good, beer was good, ambiance was okay, music too loud. But, as usual, the people were great. My waitress saw I was reading a book by Austin Clarke, and asked if I knew some of the authors she knew in this area. We had a good quick conversation.
Walks and rests made up the rest of the day, and we finished with a beer down by the water.
We hoped to go biking the next day, and that's what we did. We had planned out a route which took us mostly up the coast, with of course lots of ups and downs. But wonderful scenery. The weather was a bit iffy, lots of wind, cloudy, and eventually rainy. So, after only 45 km, we capitulated to the rain and wind, and put the bikes in the van, drove up to Old Perlican at the tip of the peninsula, and then came back to Carbonear.
This place reminds me of some of what I had seen in Cape Breton, but bigger and more of it. There are enough quaint villages to fill a large catalogue. There are fancy houses, old houses, abandoned houses, poor houses. Lots of cemeteries, many churches.
We stopped for a bit at a bakery along the road.
I asked the daughter of Nora (who was kneading dough in a dishpan to make her nine loaves), how she liked it here. She had had to go to Edmonton for work, but found it mind-numbing. She was glad to be back where (as she says) she can hear the whales and the stream from her front door. Don't know what there is for work for her, but she is clearly attached to this place—at an age of, I guess, 20 years old.
We had planned tonight to be going to a music festival. We checked on it, and when we went, it was raining a bit, there was a group performing, and all of three people in the audience. We felt sorry for the folks organizing and those performing, but we didn't want to be there, either. So we had a mall cafe dinner of fish and chips (good cod there as well), and came back to the hotel.
Tomorrow: we'll see, but it's looking like rain, so biking is unlikely. More likely, we'll drive into St. John's and drop my bike for the start of its trip home.
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