The forecast called for a reasonably good Saturday (cloudy with sunny periods) and a crummy Sunday (rain), so we high-tailed it out of town first-thing Saturday morning. We went to Brigus, a small, historic community in Conception Bay (population of around 784. Give or take.)

Our plan was simple: pick a place with good colours and architecture that had a beach, some good views and relatively little traffic. An added bonus would be a location best suited to exploring on foot, but without gobs of residual snow.

Brigus was perfect. To boot, the weather was actually better than it was supposed to be and we had stellar light, incredible blue skies and warming sun. Here are some of the fruits of our trip. Enjoy!!

We started out by appeasing the small demon with a beach. The water was brilliant and the surf lively enough to be interesting. You can see Landfall Cottage, once the home of artist Rockwell Kent, in the background. It blends in pretty thoroughly!

The lighthouse:

Near the beach is a man-made tunnel, the story of which you can see below:

It's nearly as interesting coming back up the tunnel as going down.

The historic Anglican Church, St. George's, with brilliantly green moss in the foreground.

We then grabbed a quick lunch (wonder of wonders there was a Greco sub place between Brigus and Cupids) and went back for more wandering and shoot. Found St. Patrick's Church and had great fun with the statues there. The white on blue was stunning, both in nature and in statuary!

A statuary in front of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Brigus, Newfoundland, Canada. Adjacent is a convent formed of a group of nuns from Ireland. The Mission is aptly named "our Lady of Snow", in Mercy Convent .

We then had popsicles (at the insistence of the commander-in-chief. She prefers orange, by the way) and decided to see if the road to Rockwell Kent's cottage, Landfall, was passable. It was and was well worth the walk!

This is Big Head:

This is Kent Cottage or "Landfall". For more information about it, try this source.

This was as close as we thought appropriate, given that the property is private and it is, after all, someone's house. A summer house, to be sure, but were it mine, I would appreciate people keeping their distance. A bit of historical info: The Landfall Cottage was construction around 1786 for the Pomeroy family. It is built on the Battery, named after a gun placement site during King George's War from 1740-1748. They also call it Freshwater as it was a main source of water for sealing fleets on their way to the ice floes. The original building was a small Georgian-style structure with a chimney made out of brick-ballast from ships sailing from England.

Wandering back though the town, we saw dozens of fascinating houses. This one in particular caught my eye, both for the contrast of yellow on blue and for it's fabulous door!

These upper doors were often equipped with rollers to facilitate hauling supplies in. Very few remain in Newfoundland, as many of the houses have fallen down or been substantially modified (most people don't want second-floor doors with no stairs, for some reason).

Then we headed home, as the day clouded over and Katherine, who had been the soul of patience (popsicle bribes work wonders) and industry (we now have a trunk full of beach rocks) had just about had enough.

There's a trail that runs over the barren hills, out to the lighthouse and round to the next tiny community. We're saving that for when the snow is finally gone. With any luck, that'll be in a few weeks!