Disembarking the ferry at St Barbe we headed north following Highway 430 (called the Viking Route). For 20km the road followed the coast through well manicured villages and attractive though bleak and windswept coast and then headed inland. Along the roadside we encountered two sights that required later explanation from a local. The first were many areas set aside for the storage of firewood, some areas were well organized while others less so. We learned that these are generally personal (family) firewood supplies. NewFoundlanders are allowed to cut firewood in the forests and store near where it is cut for later use as winter heating. The second sight was more perplexing. We saw small plots of vegetable gardens beside the road. Later explanation informed us that, NewFoundland is known as The Rock for good reason; real soil is almost non-existent on the island. It happens that the construction of roadways creates a small area of fertile soil in the ditch beside the road. Locals make use of this rare soil and grow root vegetables there.

Mid afternoon we arrived at the L'Anse aux Meadows which is pretty much the northerly most point of the Northern Peninsula of NewFoundland. This spot is famous for the discovery in the 1960s of the remains of a Viking settlement dating back 1000 years and as such is the oldest verified European habitation on the North American continent. Like the Basque ship at Red Bay this discovery was also somewhat triggered by studies started in the old world, this time by a Norwegian scholar Hedge Ingstad of Norse legends, sagas and charts. In his studies he found references to voyages to what was to be known as North America. The resulting search eventually turned up L'Anse aux Meadows.

The ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows themselves are not impressive, nothing more than a few mounds of grass that require a lot of imagination to picture as buildings. However a small Norse village has been reconstructed using traditional building methods and I found this really fascinating. In addition we saw our first animals of the trip, a young fox and a moose.

Camped in another gravel pit.