Hiking from Aquaforte to Port Kirwan
Joanne and I have been trying to do most of the 20-km'ish hikes along the East Coast Trail this summer.
The weekend before last, we hiked to the Spout - a "geyser" formed by waves crashing into a river channel:
You can see that thread
here (I put it in General Photography as it doesn't show any communities).
And today we hiked to Berry Head Arch. This trail was "only" rated difficult, as opposed to the Spout hike, which was ranked strenuous. This one was also only 17.1 km instead of 26.
But, wow... it was gorgeous!
Some of these photos were just with my iPhone, but most were proper.
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We picked up the trail at the trail head in Aquaforte, a small fishing community south of St. John's (so... like all communities south of St. John's.
).
It's a VERY small town, but beautiful.
Again, look out for raptors.
From the trail, we could see all the way to the beautiful and historic town of Ferryland, the site of one of the oldest English colonies in the New World (the oldest is northeast of St. John's at Cupids. The town of Renews, south of Port Kirwan, is where the Mayflower stopped to re-supply on its way to settling America.
We saw a woodpecker, moments after Joanne said she'd never seen one.
And a few waterfalls, as always.
Sperwink Island.
And then we made to the arch. We actually walked on it before we'd realized we were there.
We tried to get down to the bottom of it but it was just too dangerous and steep.
The arch was beautiful.
And pieces of the rock were falling off.
We stopped to rest at the arch, had a lunch, and fantasized about walking away from the world and living here. It somehow even had WiFi, despite the fact there's nothing around there:
South of the arch, the terrain became even more spectacular.
We could see Ferryland again beyond the arch.
Looking back at the arch.
The water was beautiful, and it took the swelling down in our feet. We felt like we were just starting out for the day when we dried off and left.
And the sun was strong and hot.
Parts of the trail were black as night because the trees were so thick.
And then we made it to Port Kirwan.
It's a cute, little fishing/farming community.
We saw these people outside so we decided to ask them if they could give us a ride back to the highway (7 km) so we could hitch back to my car (15 minutes away by road). They were more than happy to drive us the whole way - and not only that: they had a full car load and were about to go out for lunch. They kicked out two people to drive us right to my bumper first.
The local restaurant in Calvert was the Squid Jigger. We decided to have a feed and a time.
We each had a seafood platter with fries, dressing, and gravy.
And split a deep-fried Mars bar between us.
Then we drove back to St. John's, passing through Ferryland.
And to wrap it all up, we were treated to a gorgeous sunset:
Hiking from Aquaforte to Port Kirwan
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