Y'all come back now!
Going south from Corner Brook, your next meal can be found in Stephenville. I arrive mid-afternoon, rather played out after a soul-sucking ride on the TCH. I have someone to meet there, Colin, a friend of a friend. He picks me up at my hotel, bringing some chain lube I desperately need, and then gives me a tour of the town. It proves to be a very peculiar place. Stephenville was a small backwoods village until the American military decided, in 1941, that it wanted, to protect its ass from the Nazis, to set up shop there. Snatched out of our hands, the area became a de facto enclave of our glorious neighbour (and I spell that with a 'u') to the south. The population immediately jumped from a few hundred to almost 6000 as people from all over Newfoundland flocked there for jobs and to check out the servicemen.
The 'mericans pulled out in 1966 but, as tends to happen, they left all their junk behind, including an airport with a 3 km long runway. Colin takes me to the departure terminal. It’s rarely used but it’s very clean and tidy, its floor so shiny you can see your face in it. But it’s completely empty and kind of spooky, like one of those movies where suddenly all the people of the town are vapourized and zombies start crawling out of their holes. The military also left behind their old airplane hangers, now decrepit, full of broken windows; not a handsome addition to the local scenery. Much of what they left behind, though, is still in use as schools, houses, movie theatres, gyms, and so on. It still looks more like an air base than a town but it's clean and orderly and liveable. The Americans left behind more than just the buildings Colin tells me, a lot of the people here have relatives in the States.
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Today's ride: 83 km (52 miles)
Total: 1,031 km (640 miles)
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