Viking Trail: Port au Choix to L Anse aux Meadows

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Port au Choix

   Port au Choix sits at the tip of a low, flat peninsula on Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, where the Viking Trail, Route 430, runs along the coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence. It is a working fishing town with colourful houses, stacks of lobster pots and boats drawn up on the shore, and it has a surprising depth of history. The Port au Choix National Historic Site preserves the remains of some of the oldest settlements in the region, with burial grounds used by the Maritime Archaic people about four thousand years ago, and later by Dorset Palaeo-Eskimo groups. The graves contained tools, ornaments and spiritual objects, giving a rare glimpse into a prehistoric culture.

   Read the complete Port au Choix write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Port au Choix is where the day begins. Next is St Anthony.

2. 2. St Anthony

   At St Anthony the road runs out of Newfoundland, or nearly. This is the northern capital of the Great Northern Peninsula, a fishing port of about two thousand people facing the cold Atlantic and the Labrador current, and it has been a lifeline for the whole coast since the English doctor Wilfred Grenfell set up a hospital here in the early twentieth century. The Grenfell historic properties still stand, and the story of the doctor who sailed from cove to cove to treat fishing families is one of the best told in the province.

   Read the complete St Anthony write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   St Anthony comes up about 211 km into the recorded legs. Next is L Anse aux Meadows.

3. 3. L Anse aux Meadows

   At the very top of Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula, where the land ends in low, windy moorland and the cold water of the Strait of Belle Isle, a handful of grassy mounds mark the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America. L'Anse aux Meadows was found in 1960 by the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, following local directions to some strange humps beside the bay, and excavation showed eight buildings of turf and timber from about the year 1000. It was one of the first places in the world to be placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, in 1978.

   Read the complete L Anse aux Meadows write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 252 km.