Newfoundland & Labrador Explorer

Thirteen nights by hire car to Labrador and back, which makes this the most remote trip the operator sells and the only one that reaches mainland Labrador at all.

St John’s opens it, and then a ferry crosses to Labrador, where the shoreline is among the least developed open-water coast in North America. Red Bay is the destination and is UNESCO listed for an unexpected reason: Basque whalers worked from there in the sixteenth century, and the remains of their try-works, cooperage and sunken galleons survive, which makes it the earliest industrial complex in the Americas.

The return ferry crosses the Strait of Belle Isle to Newfoundland, and St Anthony gets two nights with the Grenfell buildings, named for the doctor who built a medical mission along this coast from the 1890s, and the Bottom Brook Trail.

L’Anse aux Meadows follows, the only authenticated Norse site in North America, occupied around the year 1000 and the proof that Europeans reached the continent five centuries before Columbus. Cow Head then gets time in Gros Morne, with the six-mile Shallow Bay beach, the Lighthouse Trail and the rock at Green Point, which is a global reference section for a boundary in the geological timescale. Gander follows, famous for its airport, which handled transatlantic refuelling for decades and took thirty-eight diverted aircraft on 11 September 2001. Canadian Affair include the flights, the hire car, the hotels and both ferry crossings, with fuel, insurance and meals separate. The price is per person. The ferries are the thing to plan around: they run to a limited seasonal timetable and the Labrador crossing is weather-dependent, so this itinerary rewards flexibility more than most.