In the far northwest of Newfoundland, two old lighthouse keepers’ houses have been turned into tourist accommodation. If you are tempted by tempest, iceberg, and whale sightings from your bedroom, then this is the place for you. A penchant for cold fresh air helps too. It is an especially fine place if you don’t mind it with what at times feels like a side dish of Fawlty Towers. Though, to be fair, I was there the very first night of the 2026 season.
Quirpon Island is uninhabited during the winter now. It used to be home to, among others, Earl Pilgrim, a writer who lived on the island for much of his life. Pilgrim’s most famous work recounts the gruesome story of a drunkard who poisoned a school teacher and later killed himself and four others by setting fire to the boat they were on.
Up first is a half hour zodiac boat ride in what most would regard as a reasonably substantial swell (too dicey to take pics) and weaving this way and that around and between icebergs. Once tied up in a half-sheltered cove in front of a dead seal rolling in the waves, we haul ourselves up a short but solid ladder to the tiny wooden…well, it’s more a platform than a pier. Up top, I nearly trip over a wheel. It’s small and shiny and black. A spare for the ATV that is waiting for our luggage, I think.
We had been told we can only bring a small bag or pack because it needs to fit beneath the seats on the zodiac so it doesn’t get wet and we obeyed. The eight bags and one yoga mat are transferred from the boat to the boot of a roofed ATV and driven up the rocky track to the biggest of the red and white buildings. We are waved ahead, which we take to mean we are to make the trek up to the accommodation over ground only recently devoid of snow. The grass looks long, twisted and dead but will probably come good again in another few weeks as the weather gets warmer and the ground dries out.
After wandering around the yard in the chill air pretending to examine the lighthouse and outhouses but really waiting for further instruction, one of us tries a door to the most substantial structure. Bingo: a blast of warm air and the aroma of fresh coffee. We troop in, take off our shoes and look around, keen to be told where our rooms were. This is especially important those of us in need of a washroom.
Patsy – or is it Pats? (is it just me or did the two women look and sound as similar as their names?) — waves us towards the kitchen where coffee and tea are available. Turns out the room list hasn’t arrived yet. Which also means that, alas no, we can’t use a bathroom because the only bathrooms are either en-suite or allocated to each room. At least two of us cross our legs and try not to frown as we sit in the lounge to wait for the room – and bathroom – list. It will arrive with the remaining seven guests who were left waiting on the mainland for the zodiac to return for them. In the kitchen Pats, Patsy and two women whose names I didn’t catch converse – at considerable volume – in what for me (and later I learn for most of us) a nearly unintelligible patois.
They seem to be chatting rather than arguing, though it’s difficult to be certain. Amidst the clang of pots and the clash of cutlery, I decide there’s no animosity, just confusion and enthusiasm. The first day of the season. They must all be new, or at least new-ish, we comment to one another.
Nearly an hour later the room – and bathroom – list materialises. Then there’s a curious ten-minute conversation – at top pitch – between three of the women (the other is off collecting the other guests’ luggage), as they move from bedroom to bedroom, with a seemingly endless repetition as to who is in which room. They seem to be telling themselves more than us. Or so we assume as we haven’t been directly addressed, allocated rooms or otherwise invited to follow. Then it seems that we should have followed. Or listened. Or something. Eventually the list is shared with us.
I am in room 1, in the main house to my relief, since I forgot to bring a torch other than my phone. Then again, it’s only dark for about two hours a night this far north, this late in May. Guests troop upstairs or out to their rooms; some are a hundred metres away in other, smaller, buildings.
After we’ve put our bags in our rooms – and used the restroom – Pats or Patsy announces only the first night of the season and they’re almost full. Full enough for two dinner sittings. Glen and Cindy ask if they can take the 7pm, rather than 6pm, sitting as they wish to go hiking and out’s already 5. Their faces fall as they are informed they are listed for the 6 o’clock sitting. That’s it. End of discussion.
The working women are gathered in the kitchen preparing dinner when one pops back into the lounge to ask if anyone is vegetarian or gluten free. It’s 5.30 and at first, I think ‘bit late for that surely’ then realise they and their stores must be so well organised they don’t need this info in advance. Though it would have been easy enough to ask as part of the booking procedure.
Glen and Cindy have returned and are just taking gloves off, unwinding scarves and shrugging off puffer jackets when we who have been allocated the first sitting are instructed to take our seats.
The meal is served in a leisurely manner, one plate at a time: a white fish fillet, two ice-cream-like scoops of mashed potato, peas and carrots bracketed by a pickle neatly sliced length-ways. Pitchers of water are cooled by what appear to be chunks of iceberg.
Now that’s cool!
One of us reminds Pats or Patsy that she’s vegetarian: ‘Oh, that’s you,’ she says whipping the plate away and setting in front of the next person before she says ‘Oh no, hang on, you’re gluten free,’ and, third time lucky, sets it before Glen. We quietly ponder what is on the plate has gluten in it. Soon I’m the only diner awaiting a plate. We wait. And we wait. The others are too polite to start their meals though I try to insist they do before the food gets cold.
Then we hear a plaintive ‘but I only cooked six pieces of fish!’ from the kitchen. There are eight of us. One of us is vegetarian. Patsy comes out and I wave away her apology. I’m happy to wait for the 7pm sitting. More than happy, but hoping I will be allowed to stay talking with these people because we’re all getting along famously.
Now, it maybe my imagination, but I could have sworn Patsy was tempted to ask me to leave and come back at seven but, by then, I’d opened a bottle of wine and was pretty obviously not going anywhere.
No matter, I was eventually served with the other seven guests, none of us went hungry though I don’t think any of us was overly impressed by the meal given the price we’d paid albeit for room and board.
I’m not sure what the other guests have planned for after dinner, but I head for my room to watch something already downloaded onto my tablet (thus not missing wifi), partly as respite from the downstairs kitchen chatter that is as enthusiastic as a cloud of swallows in a bird bath. It is the first night of the season and the ladies obviously have a lot to catch up on. I wonder what it would be like living on this island for three or four months a year then going home to slot back into the lives of families and winter.
Next morning I wander downstairs in search of a cup of tea. ‘What breakfast sitting are you?’ Patsy – or Pats – asks. ‘The first’ I confirm having actually been asked which I preferred the night before since I had spanned both dinner sittings and mucked their order up. They put the kettle on and in ten minutes I am sipping tea in the lounge and signing the latest guest book. There are several stacks of previous guest books on the bookshelves.
(As I am light on for photos of the island, here are some excellent puffin salt and pepper shakers I saw at a cafe down the road.)
While I was waiting for my hot water to boil, a bloke whose name I didn’t catch stuck his head into the kitchen and asked for coffee. ‘What breakfast sitting are you?’ ‘The second,’ he replied. The women glanced at each other and I swear one was about to say ‘no’ when Patsy decided it was OK. He could have coffee. I glanced at the clock. It was nearly an hour away from his allocated breakfast sitting.
After a breakfast of scrambled egg, sausages and toast or GF bagel, those of us staying just the one night dutifully load our luggage into the boot of the ATV by 9.30 and are waiting in the warm lounge before hiking down the hill to get to the jetty by 10am. Patsy comes out to say farewell. I ask how long she’s been working here. Five years she says, pointing to herself. Nine years, pointing to the woman we have seen least of. Of the other two, one has been here three years and the other is new. Glen, Cindy and I comment in the privacy of the outdoors that we’d have sworn it was their first or, perhaps, second season. We don’t point out to any of them, of course, that the tariff isn’t cheap even if it does include the two basic meals we were served. But, we admit, it must be an expensive caper to run especially for only three or so months of the year.
As we get to the slope that leads to the jetty, Glen and I are puzzled that the ATV hasn’t passed us with the luggage. Glen looks back and sees figures carrying bags. He quickly walks back up hill, followed by me. Plainly there is something amiss with the ATV and a few guests and two of our hosts are walking the bags to the boat. But that’s not going to be the main problem, I think, having seen the stores the owner has bought from the mainland that need to be got first ashore, then up the hill to the big house.
So, we form a conveyor belt type line and at least get the goods off the boat and onto dry land while the owner and skipper – who has owned the lease here for twenty-five years – gives instructions to Patsy as to how to pump up the tyre that is flat on the ATV. No mention of the tyre that’s lying beside me on the brown grass.
But later I realised I’d rather pump a tyre up than change a wheel too. This was when, later that day, I had a tyre with a slow leak, miles from a service station. My flat was from having an altercation with a pothole the previous day. You can see the damage it did to the hubcap! Thankfully a kind Newfoundlander directed me to the local car dealership’s service department and they fixed my slow leak for nothing. Thanks so much you nice people at Woodwards, St Anthony!
And here are some more cute puffins. Just because.