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Published: August 22nd 2010
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LABRADOR CITY
Currently in Labrador City which is on the far western edge of the province so we have done the whole of the Trans Lab Highway that is in Labrador (it continues into Quebec for some strange reason). Most of the miles have been on gravel roads.
LEAVING NFL
After a visit to the salmon ladder at Hawkes Bay in NFL which helps the salmon leap the 2 metre falls of Torrent River to reach their breeding grounds we headed up to catch the 1.5 hour ferry to Labrador.
QUICK QUEBEC
The ferry docked in Blanc Sablon which is actually in Quebec and for the few miles we were in Quebec instead of all the signs being in French and English they were just in French!!
LABRADOR
The first thing I thought when I saw Labrador was "where are all the trees?" and then I realised there are trees but just much smaller ones. The scenery here is just even more than NFL - rolling tundra with an uncountable number of lakes and crystal clear air. It is a shame that we cannot really admire the scenery as we have to keep our
eyes on the roads all the time as the gravel roads are very unpredictable. We seem to have swapped the mossies for black fly! We saw one iceburg just off shore just north of Red Bay.
BLANC SABLON TO RED BAY
The 50 mile paved road from Blanc Sablon to Red Bay is one of the best we have riden on so far in Canada - it actually has bends and undulates and follows either the coast, river or a lake. Once again the weather is fantastic. At Red Bay we left the paved road and did 40 miles of gravel road to reach Mary's Harbour.
GRAVEL ROADS
The gravel roads vary so much and probably from hour to hour depending on whether a grader has just been along or if it is raining. The speed limit is 70kph (45mph) and we have been riding at that or about 50-55mph most of the time. Thankfully the gravel tends to get pushed to the side by the cars so it is possible to follow their ruts but on some stretches fresh and deep gravel covers the whole road and riding on this is very difficult and we
have both had some spectacular fishtailing but so far have both managed to stay upright.
The dust is really bad too, when a vehicle passes in the opposite direction, particularly a truck, it is white out and not possible to see the road for a while - quite frightening with such an unpredictable road surface. At one point a couple of days ago a big red truck came steaming towards us with dust all around it and it just reminded me of a dragon. We are both really dusty and the bikes filthy having riden for a while at the start on damp gravel roads - no dust there but lots of sticky spray.
We have let some air out of our tyres to make them better on the gravel and have found that we did not need knobblies. Both of Mark's headlight bulbs have blown due to being bounced about on the rough roads so he has wrapped a high viz jacket around his screen so that he shows up a bit on these grey roads.
TRANS LAB HIGHWAY
We have completed the new part of the road which runs from Cartwright Junction to Happy
Valley-Goose Bay and Mark was wondering if Sally is the first woman on her own bike to ride the road. We travel for miles and miles without seeing any other vehicles - a typical example is 50 miles = 5 cars and one truck.
PORT HOPE SIMPSON TO HAPPY VALLEY-GOOSE BAY
This stretch of the road is 250 miles and the GSs will usually only do a max of 200 miles so we carried 10 litres of fuel with us. It must be due to the slow speeds and low revs but we both managed to make the 250 miles without any extra petrol. Sally's bike was telling her she had 12 miles of fuel left and Mark's was running on vapours as we reached HVGB but we made it!!
THE COMMUNITIES
The communities here are very small and no one seems to live along the roads outside of the communities. The people we have met are not what I expected. They are not the deep thinking, arty types I had expected but more the small town people with no imagination to do anything else. Most seem to be employed in the crab or shrimp canning places. There are very few places to stay en route and the accommodation is shabby and expensive. We have been very disappointed with the food. Fresh vegs seem impossible to get and so much is battered and deep fried - with all that fish being pulled out of the sea why are they not eating it?!!
The weather in winter is very extreme - apparantly it goes down to -50C in Churchill Falls.
ANIMALS
We have been lucky enough to see another young black bear on the road just out of Happy Valley Goose Bay to Churchill Falls and later on the same road three cyotes were at the side of the road near some construction.
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Ann
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Black Flies
I met black flies for the first time in Newfoundland last year, nasty fellas aren't they. Glad you managed alright on the gravel roads, you will have arms like a navvie when you get home. I must admit that this part of your trip was the only part I was worried about, if you survive Labrador the rest should be a doddle. No moose yet?!