Trans-Labrador Highway: Baie-Comeau to the Ferry

Routes 389, 500 and 510, Labrador · Canada

Challenging10 daysNorth America~£1,650 est.

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Overview

This is the last long drive in eastern North America where the map goes quiet. From Baie-Comeau you climb Route 389 past the Daniel-Johnson dam at Manic-5, a wall of concrete arches in the middle of nowhere, then cross into Labrador and turn east on Route 500 through black spruce and burnt barrens towards Churchill Falls, a town that exists to serve an underground power station you can tour. Route 510 runs south through Port Hope Simpson and Mary's Harbour to Red Bay, where Basque whalers rendered oil in the 1500s and left a UNESCO site of tryworks on a treeless shore. Detour by boat to Battle Harbour, a restored fishing station on a car-free island, and finish at Blanc-Sablon for the ferry to Newfoundland. Icebergs drift down the Straits into July. What catches people out is fuel, not surface. The 400 km between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Port Hope Simpson has almost nothing, so fill up at every pump and carry a jerrycan. Check your hire agreement too: many companies forbid these roads outright, and a cracked windscreen is close to inevitable. Carry a satellite messenger. Ten days with a 4x4, fuel, motels and the ferry is around £1,650 each, two sharing.