Arrived in Newfoundland after a fleeting visit to Prince Edward Island the home of Lucy Maude Montgomery the author of Anne of Green Gables. The house that inspired the novel was the home of her aunt where she spent a large part of her childhood and is now a museum which highlights her many novels.

After visiting the museum we discovered a lovely seafront restaurant at Point Prim on the south east corner of the island where we enjoyed a very tasty seafood meal.

En route to the most northerly tip of the island we called in at a variety of destinations.

The Insectarium in Deer Lake. For such a small place it had a very impressive display of insects from around the world and a live butterfly house.

The marine research station at Bonne Bay which contained examples of local marine life housed in what would be their normal habitats that had been set up by a post graduate from Memorial university

Lobster Cove lighthouse and its stories made you appreciate the hardships experienced by the family of the lighthouse keeper who lived with him directly below the light.

The further north we travelled we experienced cooler weather and misty days. Our motivation for coming north along the Viking trail was to see the oldest European settlement within the whole of the Americas and Icebergs.

L’Anse aux Meadows was where Leif Ericksson and his Norseman created an outpost settlement (in the year 1000 over 500 years before Columbus) to develop trading opportunities with indigenous natives and harvest food and essential supplies from the sea and land around them.

On a very misty day we set sail in the hope of seeing hump back whales and Icebergs. Disappointed not to see any whales only a lonely seal who popped up to say hello.

According to our guide it is very unusual to see icebergs here at this time of year but the cooler weather meant they were still around. What we were seeing were icebergs that had taken around three years to get this far south and the features of the coastline mean they are trapped and will most likely melt over the next five days.

We were only seeing the tip of the iceberg’s with approximately ninety percent under water the blue lines in the surface of the berg are caused by melt water refreezing. The melting drives out the oxygen content of the ice.

Before our boat trip we visited the Grenfell Historic Society and museum which is dedicated to Wilfred Grenfell a British doctor who came to the island in 1892 and transformed the lives of the people in fishing villages across Labrador and Newfoundland. He saw an underserved area that was in need of hospitals, houses of worship, orphanages, schools and small industries.

To address this need he encouraged other medical professionals to join him in delivering health services across the area. He also set up orphanages and schools, encouraged the people to grow vegetables and take up crafts that could supplement their income.

The hardest thing he achieved was to set up a cooperative that challenged the Truck system (a state of bondage where everyone lived on goods advanced on credit which was paid for by their next catch of cod, but paid in store tokens not cash) This enabled the people to sell their catch and have freedom of choice.