Rob-n-Hild, Eastward Ho!

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Exploring St John's 12.2 km walking. 3:35 hours. 500 metres climbed

We got our exploration of St John's off to a good start this morning with a walk around Signal Hill National Historic site before lunch, a walk though downtown St John's for lunch and then another walk at Middle Cove after that. It was a lovely day so we made the most of it and were out all day.

Signal Hill is a hill overlooking St John's and - importantly - the narrow entrance to the harbour. This has made it an important spot ever since the harbour was first used and particularly during the various wars that have taken place over the last 400 years. The Cabot Tower was named after John Cabot who landed in Newfoundland in 1497 (just after Columbus landed in the Caribbean) and is also famous as the site where Marconi recieved the first transatlantic wireless message.

Needless to say, on a hill there will be walking trails and if there are trails, Hild and Rob will walk them! You can see at the top left the trail map - and our route as recorded by Max on the top right.

There were spectacular views, steep, narrow paths (one had just a chain bolted to the cliff as support) and a lot of up and down. There were also a lot of people, many of whom had doggies that needed snuggling and a few with whom we had a nice chat. Consequently, it wasn't one of our quicker walks and made a change from the paths we had been walking so far where we were often on our own. OK, we were also the weird ones walking in the knee-deep snow so maybe that had something to do with it too! One nice gentleman suggested another walk for this afternoon - more of that later.

We then drove into downtown St John's and found Mile 0 - the start/end point of the Trans Canada Highway. We had found the other end of this on Victoria Island, British Columbia last year and (cue spooky music) on the same date last year! Here is the comparison. Below is a pictoral representation of the whole TCH - we will do Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick in the next few weeks! Even though we won't actually drive the whole highway, we want to at least catch all of the towns on this map.

By then we were ready for lunch and - instead of our usual sandwiches and tea - we went into the Duke of Duckworth and had a great brunch. Hild had fish cakes and cod chowder while Rob had Toutons with sausages. Toutons (pronounded tow-tons as in town) are bread dough fried as opposed to baked and are very nice with molasses, although Hild preferred maple syrup. As it was an Irish pub, they had Smithwicks as well, so Rob had a pint - or actually two! Well, the first one went down so well.

As mentioned above, one of the people we chatted to on our walk around Signal Hill is a St John's native (although now living in Nova Scotia) and he recommended Middle Cove as a nice place for a hike so after lunch Hild drove the short distance up the coast to the nice little beach of Middle Cove - which was clearly a popular spot as the car park was nearly full! Most people were on the pebbly/dark sand beach having fun in what was the first sunny day for while, but we crossed the beach and took the Silver Mine Head Path. This path followed the cliff edge in and out of the trees and was a fun walk, even if it was there and back (we are getting used to these now). There were a lot of tripping hazards from tree roots, as well as some rocky bits and even some swampy bits that had wooden boardwalks, but once again the views were worth it as the cliffs were very steep down to the ocean.

Coming up: Cape Spear Lighthouse

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