In addition to the East Coast Trail, I’ve done a fair bit of hiking on Twillingate Island. My mom grew up in Twillingate and my Nan has a beautiful property in Bayview, so I spent a lot of time there growing up. I’ve done several of the trails over the years, but in recent years, the trails have been re-branded as the “Rockcut Trail” and I’ve been impressed to see a lot of work being put into expanding and maintaining the trails. Twillingate is a bit of a tourist metropolis in the summer time, so it’s nice to see some care being put into the trails. You can learn more about the full trail system on their website – in total there are 13 trails identified on the Island, 5 of which have been branded as a part of the continuous “Rockcut Trail”.

I’ve done both the French Beach and Spiller’s Cove Trails in the past, but not recently enough to write about them. So this past summer (2023), I hiked a new section of the trail, which is known as the Lower Little Harbour Trail. It can be done as a round trip hike out of Little Harbour, or as a longer hike through to Purcell’s Harbour. I was visiting for a few days with Emily, Karen, and Grant, and it was super hot out, so we opted to just do the Little Harbour loop, which totals 5km.

We thought it was going to be an easy hike (which it might have been in cooler conditions), but it was actually a fair bit more challenging than we anticipated. You start by walking down an old access road to Little Harbour, and then you spend most of the hike navigating around the headland to Jones Cove, before returning back to where you started. The majority of the hike is exposed on barren rock, so it’s incredibly scenic, but could be very windy in the right conditions. It was not windy when we visited (rare) and we had the sun beating down on us (also rare).

There’s a few viewpoints you can hike up to and during our visit, the bay was filled with icebergs! The trail gets a little technical and goes into the trees before Jones Cove, but the beach at the cove is gorgeous and they’ve recently constructed some brand new tent pads at the back of the beach! We stopped for a break and me and Emily went for a quick swim in the ocean. It was absolutely freezing, but refreshing on such a hot day.

After Jones Cove, the trail crosses back over the headland and you return the way you came, but I’d definitely be keen to return on a future visit and continue on to Purcell’s Harbour. I have a strong connection to Twillingate Island, so I look forward to completing all the trails in the future and this is hopefully the first entry in a new series!