Rockcut Trail: French Beach

April 18, 2026March 19, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

I’ve slowly been working my way through all the sections of the Rockcut Trail in Twillingate. My Nan lives in Bayview, so it’s been a fun project to work on from summer to summer when I visit her. Summer of 2025 was particularly special because we had a family reunion over a weekend in July and many of my family members from all over the country came home to visit.

Our time was mostly spent celebrating my Nan’s 90th birthday, but I also wanted to find time to go for a hike while I was there. Some other family members got wind of my plan and before I knew it, a group of 10 of us had wound up at the trailhead to French Head. This wasn’t my first time hiking French Head, I had done the trail with Seth and my parents way back in 2015, but I couldn’t remember it well enough to blog about it, so I was happy to revisit.

The trail starts at the end of Main Street, where there’s a small parking lot for French Beach. You can hike into the beach along the trail or via a short road – both end up at the same place. 10 people is definitely too many for a group hike, so we quickly split into a couple of groups. We had some pace setters up at the front, the nature gawkers at the back, and a middle bridge group, which is where I mostly hung out trying to keep the everyone together (an impossible feat).

French Beach is only a few minutes from the trailhead and is a gorgeous beach looking out on the harbour. From there, you hike up and around French Head. It’s an incredibly scenic trail and most of it is exposed, so you get views the whole way. I think this is one of the more popular sections of the Rockcut Trail (aside perhaps from the Top of Twillingate section), and it was surprisingly busy. From French Head, the trail continues up towards Spiller’s Point, which is a special place for us because it’s my Uncle Trevor’s favourite fishing ground, so we’ve spent a lot of time there in boat through the years.

Once you hike around the point, the trail continues south towards Spiller’s Cove. At this point, our group really got separated. The slow paced nature group was really lagging and my GPS showed a shortcut through the bog, so that part of the group opted to take that exit and slowly make their way back towards the car. The shortcut is not marked and it is a muddy, wet section of trail with lots of brush scraping your ankles, so maybe not recommended if you’re visiting. Emily and Seth didn’t care about taking this route, but my mom was pretty cranky about getting wet feet.

I didn’t take this route. Me and my cousin, Matt, opted to fastpack along the rest of the trail to try and catch the front group. The trail continues to be very scenic and we could just see the rest of our group hiking along the rock in the distance, but we had no hope of catching up with them. Eventually we made it down towards the end of the trail before it cuts out to go to Slade Lane, but it’s a little bit confusing in this section, with multiple trails branching off from one another. We thought we were following the rest of the group, but we ended up on an unmarked trail. The trail clearly existed, it was very developed, but it wasn’t marked on my GPS.

We determined we had not taken the same trail as the rest of the family, but we thought we could find a shortcut back to the road. We ended up doing a bit of light bushwacking and ended up exiting the trail through a family’s backyard (whoops!), but we did end up back on the road just as the fast group was on their way back to the car. At the same moment, the slow group arrived on the road in the car and we had a good laugh about how we took 3 separate routes and managed to all end the trail at the same time!

I wouldn’t recommend our strategy though. If you’re visiting, I recommend just planning to do the full 6km route marked on the Rockcut Trail website. This route follows the trail of our fastpacking group and ends at Slade Lane, where you can follow the road back to your car. Alternatively, you can park a second car on Dump Road where there is a second parking lot. Either way, enjoy this beautiful trail, definitely one of my favourites on the island!

ECT Series: Bear Cove Point Path

April 4, 2026March 13, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’re probably aware that I’ve slowly been working towards section hiking the entirety of the 300km long East Coast Trail. In summer of 2025, I knocked out two new sections of trail that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, one of which was Bear Cove Point Path.

Bear Cove Point Path is one of the last sections on the southern end of the trail. It runs from the town of Fermeuse to the town of Renews, although we did it in the opposite direction, starting from Renews. The trail is approximately 12km long and has a nice mix of forest walking and coastline. Despite it looking like a relatively flat trail, there is 250m of elevation gain across the length of the trail.

If you begin in Renews, the start of the trail is very scenic. The entire first section is along exposed coastal meadows. You can take in a bit of history looking at the old cannons scattered along the coast as you hike the trail out of Renews, with beautiful views looking towards Cappahayden. We made a short stop along Northern Head to have a snack and enjoy the views, before continuing on along the trail.

The trail is pretty evenly split in two by the Bear Cove Point lighthouse. I thought the southern half of the trail was more scenic, and there are several viewpoints along the way to the lighthouse. We opted to take our lunch break at South Point rather than Bear Cove Point, but I think this was a good choice as there wasn’t really anywhere to sit and enjoy the view at the lighthouse. The lighthouse is really more of a tower with a light than a lighthouse, but it wouldn’t be a bad place to camp if you were doing a thru hike. Just watch out, there was lots of thistle around (which growing up I always called it “stinger-needle”).

The second half of the hike went by a little bit quicker, mostly because it was in the forest. Once you start hiking in towards Fermeuse, large sections of the trail head inland. I didn’t note a lot along the second half of the trail and it ends when you hike into Kingman’s Cove. We parked 1km further along the road at the viewpoint on Kingman’s Cove Road, which is where the ECT instructions say to park, but I don’t think this trail gets a lot of visitors (we went on a Saturday and didn’t see a single person on the hike), so you could definitely get away with parking on the road near the trailhead. It was particularly annoying having to hike uphill on the last kilometre on what was a pretty hot day.

Overall, I really enjoyed this trail. I did it with my sister, Emily, and my friends, Karen and Grant. So we had two cars, which made it a lot easier because we could park a car on either end. I’ve struggled to do the last few trails on the ECT because they’re such a long drive from St. John’s and it’s hard to get two vehicles to do it. I did a lot of the shorter hikes as there and back hikes to avoid the second car. You could do Bear Cove Point with one car, as there is an inland shortcut trail that crosses the headland, but I’m glad we didn’t have to! As of right now, I only have the final path to Cappahayden left to do, so I hope to return against next year to finish it!

Hiking Signal Hill

March 12, 2025February 27, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

Since I finally took the time to write about Cape Spear, an iconic Newfoundland landmark and iconic day trip, I figured it’s time to finally write about Signal Hill as well. Signal Hill is a quintessential attraction in St. John’s. It can be seen from all over the city and it’s a significant historic and cultural national site, not to mention it has the best view of St. John’s to be found in the city.

Signal Hill is home to Cabot Tower and overlooks St. John’s harbour. There’s a military encampment that surrounds the hill and has been used for centuries to protect St. John’s from naval threats. You can walk around the hill and see all the old cannons, which still stand guard over the harbour. One of the more iconic defense strategies that’s been utilized at Signal Hill is stringing a large chain across the Narrows of the harbour to protect from both ships and submarines. Cabot Tower is also recognized for it’s significance in the advancement of communications, as it’s where Marconi sent the first trans-Atlantic communication from Newfoundland to Ireland (and I’m guessing this is where the name ‘Signal’ Hill comes from).

There’s a really nice visitor centre halfway up the hill, which is staffed by Parks Canada. They give fantastic tours in the summer. You can see the firing of the noon-day gun, or you can watch the Signal Hill Tattoo, which is a re-enactment of the military drills of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the late 1700’s. Right across the street, you can visit the Johnson Geo Centre and learn about the fascinating geoscience to be found on “the Rock”. Then drive to the top of the hill to visit Cabot Tower and see the cannons.

But the most popular use of Signal Hill by locals is for a scenic and short hike. It’s only ~4km to do the loop around the hill, but give yourself some time because there is a lot of stairs and you’ll want to take photos. The locals are a bit split on the best way to hike the trail. The largest section of stairs is at the top of the hill. Some people prefer to hike up the stairs for the workout, while others prefer to hike down them. While I love a good uphill hike, I always hike down them. I used to do this because I’m lazy, but now I do it because you get to enjoy the view looking out at the Atlantic Ocean when you hike down.

If you start at the top, which I think most tourists probably do, you begin by hiking down the stairs and around the coast. The trail follows some pretty narrow cliff edges along the Narrows into the harbour, before you arrive at the Battery. There is one chain section, but it’s not intimidating. You don’t need to pull yourself up or anything, it’s just a narrow trail, so there’s a chain to act as a rail. The Battery is an old and historic neighbourhood of the city along the edge of the harbour. It’s filled with colourful historic homes, also known as jelly bean houses. Once you exit the trail, you walk up through the Battery. This part can be a bit tricky – if you want, you can just follow the road, but there is a staircase shortcut hidden among the houses, so watch for the signs as you go up, because it’s a more scenic way to travel.

From this trail, you hike back up towards the duck pond across from the Geo Centre. There’s a nice lookout of the harbour, and some storyboards with more historic information about the city’s military history. From here, a lot of people will opt to hike up the road, but if you know where to look, there’s a trail that continues along the back of Gibbet Hill towards the Visitors Centre. From there, you an hike up the hillside to the cannons before reaching Cabot Tower and the end of the hike.

Like I said, a lot of people will start at the top, but my preference is to park across the street from the Geo Centre at the duck pond. I don’t like ending on a big hill, so this way, you do a good chunk of uphill first, then all the downhill, then a bit more uphill to get back from the Battery. It’s a good balance. But you really can’t go wrong. It’s taken me years to properly learn where all the trails are, so just make an adventure of it. Be careful around the cliffsides, but anywhere you end up will be beautiful!

Another option for climbing up to the top is to cross the road and walk up the trail at Georges Pond. It’s a longer route, but allows you to see the view from Cuckold’s Cove. You hike out past Georges Pond until you come to a junction. If you continued straight, you’d find yourself hiking into the historic village of Quidi Vidi, but take the right turn to head up to Ladies Lookout at the top of Signal Hill. It gives you a nice view of Cuckholds Cove, and if you look down from the first viewpoint, you might be lucky enough to see the Cuckhold’s Cove eagle in her nest.

I moved to BC 11 years ago and I haven’t made a single trip home where I didn’t go to Signal Hill. I won’t hike it in the winter if there’s snow, because it gets really slippery, but I will always hike it at least once in the summer. It takes me about an hour, but as a tourist, I’d give yourself 2 hours to really enjoy it! It’s an iconic piece of St. John’s history and well worth the visit!