I spent many days playing around the cliffs and beaches of Spencer's Park. At one time it was a maintained park with a playground, change rooms, washrooms, and a huge open concept building filled with picnic tables. Unfortunately time and teenagers took there toll on the park and now all that exist is the beautiful landscape. Just to right of where this picture was shoot is a natural cave carved into the rocks from years of crashing waves and beach rocks. I will post a picture of the small cave tomorrow. You could only make it into the cave at low tide and often my cousin and I would be caught with the waves closing in on us and the slick rock walls were hard to climb out of.
The cliffs to the right were often scaled without any climbing equipment but with plenty of stupidity and sheer determination. The waves in the picture were often used for our beachwood rafts. I recall taking a raft my cousin made from a picnic table and floats for a ride and had nothing but a long pole to paddle with. The tide kept pulling my out and I was getting quite nervous that I wouldn't get back into shore. The guys on the beach thought it was really funny seeing me struggle to get back in, but I made it. I think that same day on the way back around the point, my cousin and I with our shirts off began to splash our backs with the cool refreshing salt water. We soon found out that the scorching sun had badly burnt our backs. It was one of the most painful experiences I can recall as a kid when my back blistered with severe burns.
5 comments:
Hello,
I really enjoy your blogging about Twillingate.
It's nice to hear of your days growing up around Spencer Park...are you maybe from Back Harbour?
I was wondering if you would like to have your blog promoted on Twillingate.net.
You could use an rss feed from this blog to the site if possible, or I could just create a link to your blog from Twillingate.net.
If you are interested in discussing some options, I'm open, just let me know.
Regards,
Terry Adey
Twillingate.net
Hey Terry,
I've been to your page several times and was thrilled to finally see a professional looking website. I didn't live in Back Harbour but spent many days in Peyton's Woods and Barrett’s Island. I lived in the next "town" over called Paradise. We always called it that but I don't know if it ever was officially named Paradise. Hey we even had a baseball team, the Paradise pirates that played against the Wild Cove and Back Harbour guys!
I appreciate the RSS offer and may take you up on it. You can grab my email from your Schoolmates signup. Profile id 254.
Cheers,
~2q
Yeah, It's your cousin here. The bright side of the blisters was the infamous "bad sunburn story" that still comes up now, 20 years later.
Btw, I love the "time and teenagers took there [sic] toll". Great to see teeangers get the same ranking as time.
I draw attention to your spelling mistake and then write "teeangers"- oh well.
I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
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