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The main reason for heading up to the far-northern tip of Newfoundland is to go and see the settlements in L'Anse aux Meadows — the only confirmed Norse site in North America. In 1960, Norwegian researchers found archaeological evidence of ~1,000-year old buildings that were similar to known Norse sights in Greenland and Iceland. We were fortunate enough to get a tour from a Parks Canada Guide who was a young boy in the nearby fishing village when the site was first discovered. He had played on the "Indian mounds" (as they were then known) as a child, and had

Getting to the tip of Newfoundland's northern peninsula is not for the faint of heart. Suppose you start in Halifax (already further east than 99.5% of North America's population). You first have to drive 4-and-a-half hours to the far end of Cape Breton. Then you need to catch a 7-hour ferry to the south-western corner of Newfoundland. Once you are off the boat, you have a further seven-and-a-half hour drive, not including stops. But that is assuming you can drive at speed the whole time, which you probably can't: it's a single-lane in each direction most of the way. Once

Nearly seven months after we left home, we find ourselves back on Canadian soil — just some 1800 km east of where we started. Halifax is familiar territory for us, so it was a nice chance to catch up with old friends and do some low-key sightseeing, before we headed further north-east to Newfoundland. The Halifax waterfront is a lovely place for a stroll, with lots to see along the way. We ended up at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic had lots of boats and lots to learn about the Halifax Explosion. The next day, we took the ferry across