Rob-n-Hild, Eastward Ho!

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Bonking Toads and Leaking Pipeline! 11.4 km walked. 3:48 hours. 600 metres climbed

We don't normally name pages, but today we had two decent walks - and there was a very notable theme to each one - neither of which you will find in any guidebook!

Bear Head Trail (called Man in the Mountain Trail if you are looking online) is a part of the International Appalachian Trail Network and was listed as an out and back trail with a steep climb up to a nice lookout. Well, it was a steep climb, but at the top it carried on down to a lake which was full of bonking toads! We had heard a loud high pitched chirping and we began seeing toads on the path, but when emerged from the undergrowth to a shallow lake it was jumping. It was only when we looked into the water that we could see that it was toads - most of them in pairs! We spent a few minutes filming, but we decided against going further as it would have involved crossing a bridge of two logs lying in the water that seemed to be a very popular spot - Hild even saw a threesome underneath - and we didn't want to interrupt.... There is a video below - listen with sound to get the full effect.

Having decided against disturbing the toads, we went back to the lookout at the top and made a cup of tea. Over in Nova Scotia there are a lot of wildfires and even though we only have very safe camping stove we still only cook on rocks - and the lookout was perfect for that. This is where we discovered that we had brought everything we needed for a cup of tea - except cups! We had still been using them when we packed the rucksacks this morning so they got left out. No problem, said Hild, we will use the two pans that are part of the Trangia. Which worked brilliantly, apart from us having to share the handle as the pans were too hot to hold in our hands. While we were drinking our tea, a young couple appeared at the lookout from a third path we hadn't noticed before. As they had come up from the car park, we decided to take their path back down, making our walk into a loop. It also turned out to be less steep - something Rob was grateful for as he had been getting worried about coming back down the steeper bits we had walked up. We decided we had done the loop the right way as although it is harder to walk up a steeper slope, it is much safer to walk down a less steep one!

The town of Corner Brook celebrates its discovery to Captain James Cook, who spent five years mapping the coastline of Newfoundland (well, it does have a lot of coastline), doing such a good job that he was then given the job of mapping the island of Tahiti. The rest, as they say, is history as Cook went on to discover Australia and New Zealand. The statue is on a headland overlooking the bay and they included a relief map showing the coast at Gros Morne - even listing Green Point where we had stayed 10 or so days ago!

After lunch we went for another walk across the road from our hotel in Corner Brook Gorge. According to the map, this one was going to be a loop - but we couldn't find where to go, so it became an out and back! It started off along a very deep gorge, which we crossed and then went up into the hills where there were a number of fallen trees we had to negotiate. When we came out of the woods we saw a pipeline - and got very worried as it was spouting water from many many small holes. Hild was a bit worried that it was going to burst, but when we got closer we could see that the pipeline was made of wooden staves (like a big barrel) and water was coming out of gaps in the wood, many more of which were semi-repaired with wooden pegs. Thankfully, we were carrying Snus (our mobile WiFi) so we checked up on it and it turns out this is a water pipeline to the local wood pulp factory and they are not planning to replace it, so were just doing minor repairs. It did look very old - a wooden pipeline, wow. It was about this point that we couldn't work out where we were supposed to go as the trail signs just stopped. We were also feeling a bit tired as there had been a lot of up and down already today, so rather than get lost, we backtracked (across the fallen trees!) and back to our hotel. It had been a day with two great walks, neither of which turned out as we had expected, but both were fun!

Coming up: Another work day

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