The first sight of a new land from the sea, the way it was experienced by the earliest European explorers - perhaps, in this case, the Vikings - is a very special moment. This is the 24th September 2008, on our second visit to Canada, when we crossed a rather stormy Atlantic and our first port of call in the New World was....
....the spectacular little city of St John's, Newfoundland. This is the entrance to its harbour which must be one of the most perfectly protected anchorages on earth: our cruise ship could only just squeeze through the entrance into the elongate cove.
We only had a few hours in port so we walked around the north side of the harbour to the headland below Signal Hill....
....enjoying the views of the masses of close-packed wooden houses clinging to the cliffs. Once back in town we stopped for lunch in a small cafe which served a superb fish chowder, the first we had ever had.
When we came to depart our ship only just had enough room to turn round but the manoeuvre gave us a chance to view part of Canada's growing Coastguard fleet. This is a country which, as global warming melts the Arctic ice, suddenly has to patrol hundreds of extra miles of coastline which it didn't know it had.
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