Wednesday, August 18, 2010

An Evening Paddle in Burnt Islands

With the Come Home Year festivities in full swing in my hometown, Burnt Islands, waaaaaay down on the SW Coast of Newfoundland, my wife and I squeezed in an evening paddle from behind my dad's house, in God Bay........seriously, its called God Bay, look on the map.

Anyway, the coast down there is pretty exposed, and there have been an awful lot of shipwrecks over the years in this area. There are sunkers EVERYWHERE. Inside the Colombier Islands (called Glumsy Islands back home) its usually pretty sheltered, but you can always hear the roar of the swells breaking up outside.

On this particular evening, we paddled around the community for a few hours, out around the Island and back. It was real nice.


The SW Coast of Newfoundland, between Isle Aux Mortes and Burnt Islands

One of the few sensible places to launch along Route 470

Heading out of God Bay

Angie paddling past "The Island", which was connected to the mainland by a causeway in 1969

The site of the old fishplant, it was here in the 1950's

These are called the Colombier Islands on the map, but everyone home calls the Glumsy Islands, I guess "Colombier" slowly got bastardized to "Glumsy" over the years, haha.

Happy to be home

Flat calm inside God Bay

Under the bridge. I spent a lot of time down here as a kid, it was nice to see it again.

5 comments:

kayakr said...

Nice!

I like the historical approach and descriptions of the islands. Nice photos.

What is the distance on a square on the map? It seems like a real nice part with many islands. Are you allowed to camp at the islands?

regards

Peter
http://kayakr.net/

Brian Newhook said...

Thanks for the comment. The distance of the square is 1km....so the area I have shown on the map is not very large. But there are similar areas all along that coast, perfect for multi-day tripping and camping.

And yes, you can camp pretty much anywhere you can pitch a tent, one of the great things about living here in Newfoundland :)

Tony said...

Looks like you were lucky with the sea state, as were we in July further up the coast. There can't be too many days a year when its so calm.

Tony :-)

Lee said...

nice report Brian!
I'd say the townie who made the maps back in the day couldnt understand what you guys were saying and called it that! Same thing happened to a few place names out my way.

Anonymous said...

nice pics brian ,your dad was my teacher for several years in burnt islands..say hi to him for me next time you see him.. jim keeping