“I can do that. I just need a wetsuit.”

Monday evening, as we stood on the beach at Beachy Cove, staring across the channel to Bell Island, I told Katherine about my friend Steph Porter and how she and her friends swam across from Bell Island to the mainland. Three miles is the distance. Almost five kilometers. It’s a long swim in open water*….

Pause. Breathe. Resume.

This is a whirl-wind, helter-skelter sort of week for us. We have three major events occurring in the next several days and my aim at this point is simply survival. Last night, after dropping in to visit with friends and their charming child, we threw our schedule to the wind, pulled over and dropped in…

“It’s a long way down,” she said, archly.

At one point along yesterday’s journey, we stopped to grab a geocache. It promised a great view and the hint indicated that it lay behind a dormant ants’ nest. We pulled off at the indicated parking area, at the Flambro Head Heritage Society Look Out/Rest Stop, found the trail head and started towards the cache….

The Big River, Flatrock

If you park your car at the Church in Flatrock and wander north-east along the main road, you’ll soon come to a small road off to your right called “Hickey’s Lane”.  Turning right along Hickey’s Lane and heading downhill will drop you neatly onto the East Coast Trail, heading north. You can walk this trail…

When the whales come….

Here in Newfoundland, it isn’t Easter that promises Spring and its joyously heralded successor, Summer. No, in Newfoundland, when April and May arrive, we recognise with a certain pragmatism, that this is only the beginning of the beginning of waiting for Spring and possibly Summer. Spring is a fickle creature here. It comes and goes,…