Welcome to Twillingate – The town of icebergs!
Twillingate is a picturesque village along Notre Dame bay in north central Newfoundland along iceberg alley. It is located on 2 islands, North Twillingate and South Twillingate islands. It is a charming community of over 2,500 people and offers several tourist activites along with restaurants and lots and lots of charm.
Auk Island Winery is located in Twillingate and makes wine from berries. The winery offers tours, wine tastings, a large gift shop, and a terrific cafe. It was our first time eating toutons which are pancake-like bread. The cafe made them as egg sandwiches and they were delicious. We also had some partridge berry pancakes which were also fantastic! The resturant (and gift shop) are full of wine lover sayings and wine lover items! We could have stayed there all day! We did buy a few bottles and enjoyed them.
There are a few companies offering iceberg tours during the peak iceberg season which usually runs from April to June but can vary year to year depending on the weather. Iceberg Quest offers a large boat (around 84 people) and The Iceberg Man has a smaller boat for much less people (see photos below). Whether you want to tour in a big boat or small boat is a personal decision and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Chasing icebergs is akin to whale watching in the sense that you never know exactly where they will be and for how long. Also the boats may not be able to get to them in the amount of time they have or they may only be able to get to one. On the other hand, they may be able to get to lots of them if they are many close together. It all depends. If you plan on iceberg watching them you either will get lucky and see them or you have to be ready to move quickly when you find out where they are. Iceberg Finder is a good app to track icebergs along with the the Facebook communities for sharing iceberg locations. We seemed to always be one step ahead or behind of where the big icebergs were OR the weather was windy, rainy, foggy, and the seas were rough on the days we wanted to go out. When we were in Twillingate the only iceberg the boats were visting were to the iceberg we already saw from shore. We decided not to head out that day and save a few hundred dollars since we both have seen icebergs multiple times before. BUT we are still waiting to view the big ones!! Maybe a trip to Torngat in Labrador is in our future???
Long Point Lighthouse is on the northern tip of the island and is suppsedly a great place to view icebergs when they are plentiful. We didn’t see any when we were there in mid June.
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