Deer Lake is where most people's Newfoundland begins or ends, since its small airport takes the jets from Toronto and Halifax, and it is also where the Viking Trail leaves the Trans-Canada Highway and turns north. The town sits at the foot of the lake from which it takes its name, at the mouth of the Humber River, with the dark hills of the Long Range rising behind and spruce forest everywhere you look. It is a plain, practical place, and that is how you want it to be at the start of a long run north.
Route 430, the Viking Trail, is the road that matters. It runs about four hundred kilometres up the west coast of the island's Great Northern Peninsula to the tip, passing Gros Morne National Park, with its fjords, the stark orange plateau of the Tablelands and a mountain that looks like a tilted table, and ending near L'Anse aux Meadows, where Norse settlers camped about a thousand years ago, the only confirmed Viking site in North America. Both parks are World Heritage sites. The road itself is a calm, smooth ribbon, mostly straight with gentle bends and occasional climbs, between the sea on one side and bog and forest on the other.
Be honest about the hazard: moose. Newfoundland has a very large moose population, introduced in 1904, and collisions are frequent, particularly at dawn and dusk, so ride at modest speeds and scan the verges constantly. Weather is the other variable, with fog, wind and cold rain common even in summer, and a few days of clear light a real prize. Pack a waterproof layer and warm gloves in July.
Deer Lake has more than four thousand people and decent services, including fuel, supermarkets, motels and a couple of diners, so stock up before heading north. Beyond Corner Brook and Deer Lake, the towns shrink quickly and stations are widely spaced, and in the north some close early. Never let the tank get low.
Food on the road is simple and good: cod, fish and chips, toutons, which are fried bread dough eaten with molasses, and partridgeberry jam. Ask what the local specialty is, and you will usually get an honest answer.