THE TRANS-LABRADOR HIGHWAY 2010

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And so I turned off Highway 510 (which is the official designation of the Labrador Coastal Drive so I am told) onto Highway 516. For those of you who are interested (which I am sure that you are of course) the turning to Cartwright is at about 284.8 kilometres from the beginning of Highway 510 up near Goose Bay.

Cartwright is 85 kilometres away from here and that's going to be my destination for the night.

So this is Highway 516 to Cartwright, at 295.5 kilometres on the road from the beginning of Highway 510. This means that we are now at 10.7 kilometres down Highway 516.

Cartwright is somewhere over there on the other side of those mountains in the distance, and this is looking much more like Labrador. This will also be a beautiful photograph in the evening sunshine, assuming that we have any sunshine ever again.

Have a look at the road surface down there. It is nothing like as good as the one I've just been driving down, that I'll tell you.

Now let me just add to the confusion here. I set the tripmeter on Casey when I fuelled up this morning, and after doing some driving around, I joined the Labrador Coastal Highway with 23.7 kilometres recorded on the tripmeter. Hence all of the measurements that I've been giving you have been (Casey's tripmeter - 23.7) That took us to 284.8 kilometres true - or as true as I can make it.

Turning onto Highway 516, Casey's tripmeter was showing 308.5 kilometres and so all of the measurements along this road are going to be (Casey's tripmeter - 308.5)

That's perfectly clear now, isn't it? But wouldn't it all have been so much easier if there had been two programmable tripmeters in Casey? I'll have to have words with the hire company about that.

And just to add even more confusion, I've just driven past a mile marker (we seem to have recovered those down here on Highway 516 too) that says 340 kilometres - that's at 325.4 kilometres on Casey's tripmeter by the way. And I assume that the 340 referred to is kilometres from the Québec border, as the road across into Québec is Highway 138, which they hope one day will join up with the other end of Highway 138 further down the St Lawrence and which goes directly to Montreal.

The scenery along Highway 516 - or the Metis Trail as it is known, is much more interesting that along the Labrador Coastal Highway from Goose bay. At kilometre 19.9 is a particularly beautiful part of the road.

This is the view off to the left of where I parked the car. This is probably towards the north or the north-west showing several ranges of mountains stretching away into the distance. Never mind "stunning". "Spectacular" is an even better word for it.

This is the view looking forward left from where I stopped. This is probably looking slightly east of north, I reckon. And if anything, this is even more spectacular than the previous one.

You have to consider the weather as well. There are some heavy clouds overhead although it doesn't look like rain threatening us. It really does make me wonder what this would be like in the sunshine

And the third photo of this trilogy is the road straight ahead, slightly north-easterly, heading towards Cartwright and the coast. This is pretty beautiful too even if it doesn't have the same wild and spectacular aspect of the previous two.

There isn't much in the way of vegetation immediately around this particular spot. Whatever trees that we have are remarkably stunted although it might be that this area has been recently exploited and they represent new growth. But at the edges of the highway where they have cleared, it's deciduous scrub that is growing back. And it's been a while since I've been in amongst the deciduous stuff. Clearly we are approaching a more temperate climatic zone.

 

The lady inside the sat-nav has at long last found me a road to be on, and she informs me that in another 38 miles there will be a right turn. Ordinarily that might mean an hour's travel down here, but that's not counting any stops of course.

And that's not counting the road either. At milepost 350, or 27 kilometres down the highway it's ... errr ... reasonable but by the time we get to milepost 360 I'm being thrown about all over the road. Talk about a patchy road!

Now we haven't mentioned Land Rovers as yet. I know that Range Rovers and Discoverys are on sale over here in Canada because I've seen quite a few of them on my travels, but only in the urban areas of Canada. This part of the world would be ideal Series IIA country but I have not seen a single one, let alone a Defender, out here in the wilderness.

If I lived out here with these roads to negotiate, a long wheelbase Series IIA Land Rover truck cab with canvas tilt would be what I would have without any doubt at all.

Talking about the road, I mentioned that Highway 516 to Cartwright is known as the Metis trail. And so you might be wondering who or what the Metis are or where.

The answer to that is that they were the offspring of the unions between the native First-Nation women and either the French fur trappers or the Anglo-Scots pioneer farmers who slowly spread into the wilderness of Canada as the country gradually opened up back in the 17th and 18th centuries. Around here there are several First-Nations and one assumes that it was the colonialist fishermen who intermingled with the womenfolk back in those days.

I'm led to believe that although today they are classed as a separate indigenous group, this hasn't always been the case. At one time the Metis were denied the rights of native First Nationers by virtue of their colonialist fathers, and at the same time denied their rights as colonials by virtue of their First-Nation mothers. This "non-status", leaving the group in limbo for quite some time, was the subject of some animated discussion at one time.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, at about 40 kilometres I came across what looked like a pretty big lake and four kilometres further on I was still going around it, and that's where I stopped to take this photograph.

It didn't occur to me until much later that it might have been the headwaters of Sandwich Bay, but apparently it isn't. That bay effectively ends at the mouth of the Paradise River a little further on, and this is just an enlarged river. Still, it's impressive, whatever it might be.

It's been a considerable while since we have seen a grader working the road, and that's quite unusual for around here. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to encounter one along here - at 49.6 kilometres down the road. He has normal front wheels, not like the other one that we saw in the snowstorm, the one with inclined front wheels. And I'm still trying to work out the purpose of those.

But if you look at the state of the road, it isn't really all that bad just here. But where he's been grading it looks like a total mess, like everywhere a grader has been working. I don't really understand what useful purpose it all serves.

On the way back (because I returned this way) he was still there a-grading but by now he was doing the centre of the road and he had to pull over to the side to let me pass.

I mentioned Paradise River a little earlier and at 50.1 kilometres I see the sign for the little settlement that is there. It's down a small track on the left. But despite the attractions of visiting a settlement that was almost wiped out by the great influenza epidemic of 1918/19, I'm going straight on to Cartwright, which is a mere 43 kilometres away.

And the temperature here is a heady 4°C. It's significantly warmer here than anywhere else that I've been in Labrador and I notice that we are starting to get back into the strands of deciduous trees.

Here at 52.3 kilometres I'm right at the top of a hill and you can see way back down there the road over which I have travelled. You can even see the patch of road where the grader is working and that's at least 2.5 kilometres away. A good telephoto lens makes it look like nothing.

That on the right is what I meant by the enormous lake that I saw that is in reality a river that flows into Sandwich Bay. You can understand why I was confused when you see it from up here.

But it really is magnificent isn't it? I'm really enjoying this road.

A short while further on, at 55 kilometres on the road, I crest another brow of a hill and there's a huge lake on my right-hand side too. I'm being surrounded by water, which for me is quite a welcome situation, Pisces and all that.

That particular lake might actually be the "Good Enough Big Pond" and there has to be a story in a name like that.

Never mind Labrador being "The Land of a Thousand Lakes" - there are probably that many here along the road to Cartwright. This is another one peering through the trees, at kilometre 59.6 on the road.

And it is definitely a lake. And that's a shame because I was rather hoping to see the sea by now - or at least Sandwich Bay, which is the arm of the sea that stretches inland around here. In fact it is Sandwich Bay, or something on the shore of Sandwich Bay, that is one of the reasons for me coming to Cartwright.

At kilometre 63.2 I drove past a couple of small deciduous bushes at the side of the road and an enormous cloud of tiny white birds shot out and flew off into the trees. I wonder what kind of bird they are.

I'm almost there now, I'm certain. For here at kilometre 82.2 I'm sure that the water that I glimpsed through the trees is the sea.

And so it is indeed the sea - or at least it is Sandwich Bay, so I was informed by a lady just here at kilometre 82.9 who was halfway up a bank at the side of the road digging up trees to plant in her garden.

And isn't this quite stunning too?

The woman who was digging up trees was quite garrulous, as are most people around here when they meet strangers. She told me about herself, about how she married a guy from Kent (was it the English Kent or another one?) and moved out there. And then how he died and how she came back here, for this will always be her home, and now she has to make a go of things on her own.

Apparently there's quite a number of people who have moved away from the area but the elastic that binds them to Cartwright is far too strong and pulls them back home in the end.

She was full of stories - stories about going out on the trail in the winter and going out fishing in the summer. All of this is so marvellous and it's this kind of thing that contributes towards the magic of isolated Canada. I was to find it again and again.

On a more practical note, she told me there's a sanctuary for eider ducks down there - or was it eiderdown ducks there? Well, it was one thing or the other.

Still, all good things come to an end
"Excuse me - I need to go and look for those trees that I just threw down onto the road" she said
"Maybe we'll meet again" said I, optimistically. I quite enjoyed her company
"Its a small place" she replied. "Maybe we will. But you'll recognise me. I'll be the one carrying a tree"
It's this kind of banter that could entice me to settle down in a place like this. I quite miss the contact of like-minded people.
"LATEST NEWS FLASH .... house prices plummet 50% in Coastal Labrador"... ed

As an aside, I mentioned that the inlet here is called Sandwich Bay. I've no real idea why it might be so named but I can speculate for at the time of the earliest organised surveying explorations of the Labrador coast, the First Lord of the Admiralty was John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, he of the "butty" fame.

The main reason for me visiting Cartwright is a historical one relating to the shore of Sandwich Bay, as I said earlier. In the Norse sagas discussing the explorations of Vinland there is mention of a beautiful beach which became known as "Wunderstrand" - "wunder" being wonder of course and "strand" being Dutch for beach, although how come a Germanic word has been appropriated for a Viking name is something of a puzzle.

It wasn't the Vikings themselves that called it "Wunderstrand". That is a 19th Century translation. The word that the Vikings used in their sagas was Furdustrands

There are several likely candidates for the Wunderstrand, but one of the most likely is the one right over there. If you accept that L'Anse aux Meadows is the Vinland of the early Viking explorers, then this limits your choice of the others. However, while there is no doubt whatever that L'Anse aux Meadows is indeed an important and contemporary Viking settlement, I remain far from convinced that it is Vinland but that it may well be another unrecorded settlement.

A close-up with the telephoto lens, even in this weather, gives you some idea of the splendour of the situation.

I know that it doesn't look too far away but to go there requires some major logistics. It's either a trip across the Bay by boat or else you need to hike all the way around the bay and through some of the mountains. One of my major plans is to go there one day but I doubt that it will be possible tomorrow morning

Ohh yes, now. Look at this! Isn't this just so beautiful? Here at 84.1 kilometres I go round a bend "you did that quite a while ago" ... ed and this just has to be the bay at Cartwright and it's marvellous.

The lady back up the road told me that there was a motel in the town, and here's a sign that confirms it. I'm going to head down there and find myself a room because this is journey's end for today, even though it's still quite light.

I also need to find the fuel as well. The gauge is hovering uncomfortably just above the bottom line. The warning light isn't on yet although it can't be far away and I'm still puzzled by this. The second half of the tank has brought me just about 200 kilometres and that is what I would be expecting it to do, and so I reckon that the tank wasn't filled right to the top at Goose Bay.

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