Western Brook Pond

31^st July-4^th August

We leave the Vikings and begin our journey south. This feels like the turning point of the holiday, the point where we are now heading towards home rather than away from it, even though we still have weeks left. We return to Gros Morne National Park, this time staying north of Bonne Bay in Rocky Harbour, a much larger settlement and probably the most touristy place we’ve stayed on the island. Not that it’s commercialised, just that there seem to be more people wandering and gazing around than there are locals going about their daily life. There is so much to see and do here it’s not surprising.

Our first stop is Western Brook Pond in the north of the park. We were a bit dubious about visiting because some reviews describe it as spectacular and a must-do, others call it an over-priced tourist trap, making it one of those experiences you take your chances with – do we pay up and suck up, or risk missing something worth seeing in a place we’re unlikely to return to? We took a deep breath and whipped out the credit card. The verdict? Both reviews have merit.

Western Brook is a fjord and, unlike most which open to the sea, is landlocked, hence the pond bit. The only way to see it up close is to get on a boat. The only way to get to the boat is to walk three kilometres or so along a wide gravel track that undulates over strips of boggy ground with low ridges where trees fight the wind. Judging by how small the trees are I guess that the wind is a feature of these parts, and it is today, clouds jostling to cover the sun. The dark walls of the fjord ahead of us don’t seem to come closer as we walk. At the end of the track a wide expanse of water ripples in the breeze and we join a few dozen others to walk down a long pier to a small red boat. We pick a seat at the less exposed back and huddle into our coats until we reach the shelter of cliffs that rise so vertiginously around us it’s hard to look to the top without doing damage to your neck.

The fjord is similar to our own Milford in its grandeur but is more verdant, a green coat clinging impossibly to near vertical grey walls splashed tawny by minerals. Skinny waterfalls plunge over the edge, one in the distance drifting away from the rock and into sunlit mist. A huge rock pile climbs out of the water where a cliff has collapsed and fallen away and a couple of small steep valleys, tree-filled, dissect the wall. The guide tells us that migrating caribou can clamber down these, swimming across to scramble up clefts the other side. We are tiny against it all.

At the end of the fjord the boat pauses against a small deck jutting out from the trees below where the cliffs converge. Here the land rises with less severity, sloping into the distance to a tree-covered saddle. Have a dozen hardy souls shoulder huge packs and disappear into the trees, the saddle – a six-hour walk – their immediate objective. Then they have four to six more days of trackless terrain before emerging close to Gros Morne Mountain. There are no services and all you need must be carried, akin to tramping in New Zealand. As much as I’m envious that they get to leave the crowd and disappear into near wilderness, it is tempered with the knowledge I wouldn’t even be able to lift one of those packs, let alone carry it on my back up these hills for days.

As the boat turns back between the cliffs and the saddle recedes into the distance I acknowledge that the fjord is spectacular; it’s also the trap some reviews warn about. The tours are run by a private company rather than the park itself and the guide seems to be reciting by rote rather than with any interest in her subject. I’m astounded when she asks guests to consider tipping as they leave the boat, something the excellent and much more deserving NP guides we’ve been out with have never done.

I pause on the jetty and look back towards the fjord. A slight bend hides the saddle and all I see are solid, impassable, walls. The sun seems to be winning the aerial battle with the clouds, lighting cliffs that were dark and foreboding as we arrived. The water still ripples, now with added sparkle, and meagre warmth counters the still keen wind. Expensive, yes; worth it? Absolutely.