Our plans for an early start failed again as we
did not manage to drag ourselves out of bed until 9:00am -
outrageous!! Today we managed to find the local library and made use
of their wireless connection for a couple of hours. We now have a
list that we keep of various bits and pieces we want to check when
we are on line. Today's collection included important travel stuff
such as ferry information to get to/from Newfoundland and flights to
Florida to meet up with the Sarney clan for a few days. The non
important stuff included how to make paper, what defines a hurricane
and its strength and checking up on some of the Saints who have
generated many of the place names we have passed along the way. I
have yet to read the downloads so am still none the wiser! As we
were in a library I also took the old fashioned route and used a
book to look up the origin of the word "ketchup". It was much faster
than the internet (we were sat right next to the encyclopedia) and
by the way it is a derivation of a Chinese word evolving through the
Indonesian "ketjap"
From here we headed through
the "centre" of town to Signal Hill. I say "centre" because we have
yet to find one apart from the three streets of bars and pubs. Most
cities have a commercial and retail district in their centre
somewhere but unless we have totally missed it St John's does not
seem to. It must all be out of town shopping malls. Its a shame
because it means that the town has no personality or character.
Signal Hill is just a few
minutes out of town on the coast. It has a long history as a
military base being used most recently for military purposes in
World War II. It first came to fame in 1762 for the Battle of Signal
Hill when the British took control of St John's ending French
control of Eastern North America. St John's was Britain's first
overseas colony and is often called the birthplace of the empire, a
fact our taxi driver yesterday had been quite proud of. Signal Hill
is also famous as the site where in 1901 Marconi received his first
transatlantic wireless communication from COrnwall.
In the Cabot Tower, built in
1900 to commemorate John Cabot's arrival in 1497, there is a display
giving information about the transmission and how the wind on this
part of the coast caused a few logistical problems for them. You can
also hear a simulation of what Marconi heard - lots of static but
the clear sound of dot dot dot, Morse code for "s". His experiments
were perceived as a big threat by the local transatlantic cable
companies. They issued him with a legal writ threatening to take him
to court if he continued. He simply moved further down the coast to
Sydney in Nova Scotia where he and his experiments were welcomed and
partially funded.
All around Signal Hill, but
especially from the top of the tower where you can get out onto a
small roof terrace, there are great views across St John's and out
to sea. It was a really windy day and we were blasted with fresh
air. The winds were so fast that the low clouds were being swept
across the sky like speeding bullets, sometimes showering us with
icy rain on their way. It was one of those days where the sky was
really bright blue and the clouds were glacial white. In the
distance darker, wetter clouds were building and moving our
way.
Looking for a pot of gold
As we made to leave a big
group of people all with white t-shirts on were walking up the hill,
clearly on some sort of organised walk or demonstration. In turned
out to be a local cancer charity on an annual event. The charity had
been set up six years ago by someone who had survived a cancer
induced coma. Told he would never walk again, this organised walk
celebrates and remembers the first steps he took when he came out of
the ICU. There was a lot of friendly banter and then a coach of men
in black tracksuits turned up to join in. We are not sure who they
were but think they may have been the local hockey team.
From Signal Hill we made our
way out to a nearby village called Quidi Vidi where there is a
little micro brewery which unfortunately was shut. We then carried
on through town and out the other side to go to Cape Spear, the most
easterly point in North America. From here, London is about 3,700km
away, closer than Vancouver on the west coast of Canada which is
about 5,000km away. We shouted "hello" as loudly as we could but
suspect you did not quite hear it in the UK! This was the closest
geographically we will be to home until we arrive back in May next
year.
Cape Spear was also a WWII
military installation, although they never actually went into combat
here. As it is a great vantage point over the ocean two enormous
guns were based here. They were positioned behind concrete walls to
make them easy to load and maintain. When they were fired, they were
raised up above the level of the wall. At the site there are still
the gun placements and connecting tunnels and you are free to walk
around them. It must have been a very cold and gloomy spot to be
during the war years.
Here too it was very windy and
the dark clouds that we had seen building earlier were now overhead.
The wind picked up quickly, so much so that it was a battle to make
progress against it. We just made it into a little information
centre at the top of the hill before the rain started. It was pretty
fierce and looked set to last quite a while. After about ten minutes
though it calmed down and we went back down to the car park and sat,
warm and dry with cups of coffee, inside Morty watching the rain
pass overhead. With the number of rainbows we saw we would have been
very rich if we had been able to find the pots of gold at the end of
them.
It was a great spot to just
sit and watch the landscape. The ocean stretched out vast and wide
before us and to our left we had views of the cliffs surrounding
Signal Hill and the entrance to St John's harbour. It is a very
rugged landscape in what must be a harsh place to spend the winter
as the sea gets iced over. Their compensations though include the
whales that come and play in the bay and watching the icebergs that
drift down this far from Greenland in the early summer, neither of
which we saw today.
