As you can tell from this post's title, we were very busy in
Twillingate with many Caravan activities plus our own explorations! We arrived in Twillingate on 5/29 for a 4
night stay after a stop in Botwood at the Botwood Flying Boat Museum and
Heritage Museum plus lunch. We also
stopped briefly at the train display in Lewisporte with a large snowplow,
diesel engine, passenger car and caboose.
Our intermediate destination was
the town and port of Botwood and its Botwood Flying Boat Museum and Heritage
Center. Botwood was a pioneering
aviation town beginning in the early 1920s when the Cotton Aerial Survey Co.
began airmail flights, seal spotting and passenger service to Labrador from
here. Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo Transatlantic flight in 1927.
In 1933 Lindbergh and his wife surveyed the North Atlantic coast for Pan
American Airways and recommended Botwood as a flying boat airport.
The first flying boat Transatlantic test
flights were on July 6, 1937 when the Pan Am Clipper III flying boat flew from
Botwood to Foynes, Ireland and British Imperial Airlines flew from England to Botwood. Later in 1937, Pan American opened its Pan
Am Operations Botwood base and began regular scheduled passenger flights to
Europe. Before and early in World War II
Botwood was the base for all air travel to and from Europe!
With the outbreak of World War II
in 1939, Botwood Airport became a major RCAF base with as many as 24 PBYs
regularly based there as well as the civilian passenger flights. The Canso and Catalina PBYs were used as
convoy escort planes, anti-submarine patrols, remote location transportation
and for rescuing downed pilots. Many other military aircraft as well as ships
used Botwood during the war. The use of
flying boats and the Botwood base wound down at the end of the war in favor of
land-based aircraft plus the huge wartime expansion of the Gander Airport made
it the preferred transatlantic airport.
Over 10,000 Canadian troops were stationed at Botwood during the
war. Botwood was also on the Newfoundland
Railroad line Botwood also had a long
history of shipbuilding and between 1810 and 1936 with 1434 ships, mostly
schooners, built there.
The Botwell Heritage Center
is in a restored WWII building and has a very interesting collection of
material on its shipbuilding industry,
trains, antique snowmobiles, the Beothuk Indians, its role in WWII, and
its port, which is still important economically today. We had an excellent guided tour of this
facility including an Ugly Stick demonstration!
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| Display of Mary March, one of the last Beothuks dying from TB |
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| A display of many different colorful snowmobiles |
Afterwards, we went to the adjacent Island Breeze Restaurant for an
included turkey soup and roast beef sandwich lunch.
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| Our guide shows how you play the Ugly Stick! |
Driving on to Twillingate after lunch, we enjoyed driving over the two “tickle” bridges that connect the 2 Twillingate Islands to each other and to mainland Newfoundland. Tickles are very narrow passages between 2 bodies of land. We went to our campground, Peyton Woods RV Park with full hookups, which was very close to the water, where we discovered a very large iceberg well offshore that was very prominent at sunset. Speaking of sunsets, they were really spectacular here!
We really liked everything about
Twillingate! It was easy to drive around
without getting lost, there is a lot to do here and the natural beauty of the
place is everywhere! Because of its many
coves, we'd guess that at least 70% of the houses have a water view! As we drove around getting acquainted, we
photographed houses, the bright colors, churches, businesses, trash boxes and
the harbour itself. Here are some
collages of these subjects.
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| Twillingate Harbour |
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| A beautiful Victorian--originally probably a rich merchant or Ship's captain |
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| We are thinking of painting our house in one of these colors! |
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| A fishing stage near the harbour |
We noticed in many places that there is apparently a yearly dump pick-up, lots of garbage at each house and many, many barbecues! But what about the "guy" in the blue bucket??
On 5/30, our group went to Long
Point Lighthouse, a large red lighthouse built in 1876. Very scenic here with
the light station and the large double lightkeepers house and the cliffside
views of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Gannets were flying around just offshore and there must be a nesting
area closeby.
The big highlight of the day was
Iceberg Quest, a two hour 40' boat ride on MV Iceberg Quest out to the huge
iceberg we could see from the campground.
Twillingate calls itself the “Iceberg Capital of the World” and it's
easy to understand when you see this monster up close! The weather was absolutely perfect with warm
sunshine, clear skies and benign seas.
Captain Arthur is a commercial fisherman and knows these waters like the
back of his hand.
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| The Long Point lighthouse from the water |
He took us close to
several islands then about 10 miles out to the iceberg which was enormous,
especially when we got close. The
iceberg had its own waterfall coming down from its flat top! We went all the way around and it has a
different appearance at each angle!
There were several large fractures that eventually will split the
berg. The photographs again tell the
story!
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| Views from the boat---Newfoundland is not called "The Rock" for nothing |
We stayed busy on 5/31 going to the
Auk Island Winery where they make 25 types of wine, with all but one, local
berry wines. Some of their wines are
made with very pure iceberg water. They
have a large gift store and a huge selection of Newfoundland books for sale. Their wines have some great names: Spin the Bottle, 12 Gauge, Krooked Cod,
Jellybean Row, Funky Puffin and Moose Juice!
We went for the tour of the winery and the tasting afterwards. They were OK but we prefer grape based wines.
We saw the poster on the Winery bulletin board for Karren Churchill's Shed Party with someone playing an Ugly Stick so we asked one of the salesgirls and she said she was a part of it and invited us to come tonight—the first night of the season!
We had a group potluck that night and we announced the Shed Party to our group and altogether 13 people came and had a great time. Karren is an excellent singer and entertainer with 6 or 7 CDs out and has been doing parties for several years. Basically it's her guitar music and songs with lots of very good bakery goods she makes. Everyone had to pick an “instrument” when they arrived from an assortment of spoons, clacker things (technical term!), Ugly Sticks, tambourines and even guitars.
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| Lin and Tom were "playing" the Ugly Sticks |
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| Karren and two of her Ugly Sticks |
Three of our group were brave enough to be
“screeched in” which is the hilarious ceremony to become an “Honorary Newfoundlander.” This ceremony requires kissing a cod (in this case a capelin),
drinking a glass of "Screech" (terrible tasting Newfoundland rum!) reciting some Newfie words and doing a dance!
We all had a lot of fun and got to know some good Newfoundland folk
songs!
We learned more here
about fishing and Newfoundland than anywhere else! We started off inside where
Dave talked about a half hour with a lot of humor and explained the dioramas of
cod fishing practices, the cod traps, one lung motors used in early fishboats
and many other pieces of gear. Naturally, there's a big but reasonably priced
gift shop, which has at least 20 Ugly Sticks of all descriptions for sale!. Dave's sidekick, Bill Couze, both ex-schoolteachers and fishermen, played guitar and sang a few Newfie songs and asked Lin to accompany him on Ugly Stick for one song—my public debut!
Outside, there is an articulated Sei
whale skeleton that is very impressive, and inside the adjacent shed called “A
Whale Tale” there are photographs and text explaining the retrieval of the
deceased Sei whale and towing it to Prime Berth, cleaning and mounting it for
display.
In “Father's Stage” building,
Dave's father's fishing stage towed over to Prime Berth, Dave did a real
cod-splitting demonstration and talked about the people required to do a
commercial salt cod operation.
It was
fun reading Dave's poems on the walls of
all the buildings, his blacksmith shop plus a shed full of fishing gear,
old outboard motors, nets and much more. Here's a Newfie Joke example--”My Wife
Ran Away with My Best Friend and I Miss Him!” Trip Advisor calls Prime Berth
“More than a Museum, It's an Experience” and it certainly is! We really enjoyed Prime Berth!
Outside there are lifesize examples of fishermen (and women) carrying and drying cod on the flakes.
In the afternoon, we all went to
the Twillingate Museum which is housed in the circa 1900 Anglican Church
Rectory. It is essentially a house museum with
beautiful furnishings but many of the upstairs rooms have specific
themes, like the Georgina Stirling exhibit, relating the life and death in 1935
of this famous Twillingate-born opera singer, called the “Nightingale off the
North.” There is a Beothuk Indian
exhibit with artifacts also a large local genealogy archive and catalog of all
the cemetery headstones. There is a
terrific gift shop here too featuring crafts, quilts, sweaters, needlework,
books and souvenirs.
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| At one time cod was shown on the 1 cent stamp |
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| This "red" Indian, a Beothuk holds a moving poem |
That evening we all went to the
Twillingate All Around the Circle Dinner Theatre where we had a nice meal
of either fish cakes or stuffed chicken
breast full dinner and then a series of music, songs and skits poking fun at
some local characters or places with a cast of 10, who also prepared and served
dinner. The skits were pretty corny. but
we survived!
Twillingate is another town where
we would have loved another day or two in this very scenic place!
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