Nige's Trip to St Johns, Newfoundland

Well through a strange sequence of events I travelled 36hrs to St Johns for work, prior to the holiday in the UK. A long flight to put it mildly saw me pitch up in this quaint, 'one moose' oil town. As with most work trips they are pretty much work, eat, sleep but on my last night I managed to have a look round this lovely place. 'Discovered' before the rest of Canada and America it was still owned by the UK until the late fourties. It still has a big Irish influence and of course lots of Newfoundland and Labrador dogs! Scenery (and wind) reminiscent of the West of Scotland ,but then lots of places seems to be like that!. Even in the summer time they still had icebergs floating past the island or 'bergy-bits' as they call the small (i.e. a few tonnes) ones not big enough to be classed a 'berg. I was there with a few Norwegian guys who were planning to sail back across the Atlantic once the work we had to do was complete (one of them had sailed his boat over the previous year but got weather bound and had to leave it here in dry dock for the winter). I wished them good luck and fair weather before they sailed off, with each of them taking 'titantic' shifts i.e. looking for icebergs. I was quite tempted to go with them, however don't think I would have got to the UK in time to pick up Nadine and Anna from the airport!

All in all a very interesting trip worth the long flights and very friendly people (twas a bit like the old TV show, 'Northern Exposure').