August 27, 2018

  Breakfast was served after 8 a.m. We joined two retired couples from the Stratford area of Ontario and a young couple from southern Ontario. They all had rented cars and were touring Newfoundland. Hot breakfast choices were French toast with homemade blueberry sauce and a homemade scone or two fried eggs with three breakfast sausages and a homemade scone and coffee or tea plus optional toast, cereal and orange juice.  Just as we were finishing breakfast the fifth couple, middle-aged Torontonians, arrived in the dining room.  

    The morning temperature was 16°C and very little wind.  The sky was partly cloudy and there was distant fogon the low mountain range. After breakfast we went for a walk on one of the many walking trails in Deer Lake, following the path along the lake for several kilometers. When we returned to the B&B over 90 minutes later we had walked over 10,000 steps and wandered up and down the hills of several neighbourhoods of the sprawling 5,000 person town.  We saw the power plant on the shores of Deer Lake which powers the Corner Brook pulp and paper mill, 53 kilometers away.

    We phoned for a taxi to take us to Corner Brook.  The ride was about 40 minutes door to door. The Trans-Canada highway has four lanes and runs through forest along Deer Lake and the Humber River. Corner Brook is west and a bit south of Deer Lake located on a long bay, Humber Arm, located at the mouth of Humber River, on the Bay of Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the north western side where Newfoundland is separated from Quebec. 

   In the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, Newfoundland was divided in half with the northern part given to Britain, along with the eastern coast of North America from the northern border of today’s Florida up to and including the state of Maine and the southern part given to France, along with most of central and eastern North America from the Gulf of Mexico to north of Hudson’s Bay and all of Labrador (Spain kept Florida and Mexico). The western Newfoundland dividing point was a bit north of Corner Brook.

  We arrived at the Glynmill Inn about noon and put our luggage in the baggage room, since our room would not be ready for a few hours.  Check in time is 4 p.m.

   The four storey Tudor style Glynmill Inn was originally constructed in 1923-1924 as the living quarters for the senior staff of the Armstrong-Whitworth Company, the company constructing the paper mill.  After a fire in 1924, it was renovated and became a hotel. It is located on the Glynmill Inn Pond which has a picturesque walking trial surrounding it, where you can see white mute swans swimming.

   We walked along the Glynmill Inn Pond trail pausing to watch the swans then we crossed a walking bridge over the Corner Brook Stream and went along the stream to reach the town center emerging at Mt. Bernard Avenue and Main Street. We spotted a Tim Hortons café with a quaint maritime style clad in light yellow clapboard siding. Several people stopped us to ask if we were from the “boat” meaning the Seabourn Quest cruise ship and have a short chat. After a light lunch at the Brewed Awakening Café, we climbed the hill to the Three Bears Trail and several lookout points to view the inlet and the Port of Corner Brook. At the port, we saw the 198 meter long Seabourn Quest cruise ship docked.  It carries 450 to 540 passengers and 330 crew members. The viewpoint also gave us a vantage point to see the 23,000 population town of Corner Brook stretching up the hills from the waterfront.  We could see the hill where Captain James Cook National Historic Site is located.  He surveyed the area during his 1797 voyage.

   We found the staircase on Park Street down to the Glynmill Inn Pond trail that took us back to the Glynmill Inn. We had been roaming through Corner Brook for three hours by the time we returned, checked in and claimed our luggage from the baggage room. Our second storey room looks onto Glynmill Pond trail where we had walked back on from the town center. Steps 23,693

   We met our guide for the tour, Chris Rustin, in the lobby before going for dinner at Rinda’s Kitchen, a Thai restaurant with delicious food whether mild or very spicy. It was less than a fifteen minute walk using the Glynmill Inn Pond trail. The sky was cloudy but we did not need to use jackets.  After dinner we walked over to the waterfront to see the Seabourn Quest cruise ship, which was only to have stayed until 4 p.m.  It looked like it was almost ready to cast off.  We were back to the inn by 7:30 p.m.           Steps 30,490 = 17.5 km.