Notre Dame Junction → Notre Dame Junction
Kittiwake Coast: Road to the Isles
- Drive time
- 3h 34m
- Distance
- 221.8 km
Conservative model estimate, Notre Dame Junction to Notre Dame Junction — no stops, dry roads. Many of Newfoundland's provincial routes carry no speed limit in the open map data, so the router assumes a slow default: a driver who knows the road will beat this. Source: OSRM driving profile, Notre Dame Junction out by Boyd's Cove, Twillingate and Moreton's Harbour and back, checked 2026-09-08.
Drive it with your own nav:Organic Maps →OsmAnd →Apple →Google →Waze →The first two run on OpenStreetMap and don't track you — the same map this site is built from.
Or take the whole route with you: Download the GPX → — the measured drive plus every stop as a waypoint, for Organic Maps, OsmAnd or any Garmin, no account and no signal needed once it's on the device.
No one has sent a recording of this drive yet.Be the first — send the track →
The province names this drive and gives it a start point, which is why it has a page — a loop ends where it began, so nothing but somebody else’s published list can say where it begins. Notre Dame Junction, where Route 340 leaves the Trans-Canada.
From there it is 221.8 km of measured driving: north to Boyd’s Cove, over the causeways onto New World Island, out to Twillingate at the top, and back by Moreton’s Harbour on Route 345. Three and a half hours before you stop for anything, on a drive whose entire reason is stopping.
Worth stopping for
Dildo Run Provincial Park
A provincial park on Route 340 among the islands and tickles between the causeways, effectively on the driven line. What it offers and when it opens are ParksNL's to state, not this page's; what is measured here is that stopping costs you nothing, because it is on the road you are already driving.
Stopping here adds about 0 min and 0 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · Waze
What has been recorded near here
Species reported within 50 km of Notre Dame Junction and shared to GBIF, the international record of species occurrences. The useful column is when — the months the reports cluster in.
- Northern gannetseabirdMorus bassanusReports cluster in June, July, May31 reports on record
- Humpback whalewhaleMegaptera novaeangliaeReports cluster in July, June11 reports on record
- Fin whalewhaleBalaenoptera physalusReports cluster in 3 reports on record
- Atlantic puffinseabirdFratercula arcticaReports cluster in October, June3 reports on record
- Minke whalewhaleBalaenoptera acutorostrataReports cluster in June, July2 reports on record
What this is not
- Not how many there are. A report means somebody looked, saw and wrote it down. A busy harbour with tour boats reports more than an empty coast with the same animals in it.
- Not a sighting you are promised. Nothing here says you will see one.
- Not complete. Only species we ask GBIF about appear, and only where somebody reported them.
From GBIF, queried 2026-09-14 — their record, not a copy of it.
Doing it electric
- Fast chargers on this drive
- Lewisporte km 11
- Longest stretch without one
- 210 km
- Lewisporte → Notre Dame Junction, of 221 km driven
- Nearest fast charger to Notre Dame Junction
- 11.7 km
- 12 min by road, at Lewisporte
Source: NL Hydro's published fast-charging network map, exported 2026-09-13 — sites within 3 km of this route's measured line, the km read along it, the drive to the nearest site priced by OSRM. NL Hydro lists these as 62.5 kW DC with CCS and CHAdeMO plugs on a ChargePoint account; whether one is free or working right now is the app's to say. Level 2 chargers in towns are not counted.
Paved or not, per the map
- Mapped as unpaved
- 0.2 km
- Muddy Cove Road (0.18 km, 52.4 km from Notre Dame Junction)
- Mapped as paved
- 18%
- 17.3 km of 221.8 km driven
- No surface tag on the map
- 81%
- 76.7 km the map does not describe either way
Why it matters: Hertz Canada’s published rental terms — the one set of Canadian rental terms we could read in full, quoted not recommended — list “use off paved roads or on roads which are not regularly maintained” as misconduct that voids the damage waiver. Read the agreement you sign before leaving the lot. The terms themselves. Source for these figures: OSRM driving profile, stored route query, with node annotations; OpenStreetMap surface tags via Overpass, checked 2026-09-08. A road with no tag is unknown, not paved; what any road is like today is on 511.
Eating on the way — measured, not recommended
19 places to eat that the open map data records within 2 km of this drive, in the order you would pass them. No stars, no prices, no opinions, and no opening hours — distance along the road is the one thing measured here that a directory cannot give you.
The longest stretch with nothing mapped on it is 122.1 km — after Pier 39, to Notre Dame Junction. That is the figure worth planning around.
- Tim Hortonscafékm 10.6
- Greco Pizzarestaurantkm 10.7
- KFCfast foodkm 10.7
- Subwayfast foodkm 10.7
- McDonald'sfast foodkm 10.9 · 165 m off the road
- Greco Pizzarestaurantkm 71.8
- Doyle Sansome & Sons Lobster Poolrestaurantkm 82.9 · 614 m off the road
- The Orchid Cafecafékm 95.6
- Mary Brown'sfast foodkm 98
- Robin's Donutsfast foodkm 98.4
- Twillingate-NWI Dinner Theatrerestaurantkm 98.6 · 460 m off the road
- D&T Restaurantrestaurantkm 98.6 · 162 m off the road
- Annie'srestaurantkm 98.7 · 687 m off the road
- R&J Family Restaurantrestaurantkm 98.7 · 455 m off the road
- Tasty Thai & Pizzarestaurantkm 98.7 · 531 m off the road
- Canvas Cove Bistrorestaurantkm 98.8 · 338 m off the road
- Golden Restaurantrestaurantkm 98.8 · 171 m off the road
- Blue Barrel Cafecafékm 98.8 · 1201 m off the road
- Pier 39restaurantkm 98.8 · 505 m off the road
What this list is not
- Not a recommendation. Nothing here is endorsed, reviewed or rated. It is in the order you drive past it.
- Not complete. Somewhere unmapped does not appear. This is never "all of them".
- Not open hours. We publish none, because the open data holds none. Never assume a kitchen is serving.
- Not necessarily still trading. A place that closed stays in the data until somebody removes it.
- Not for sale. No one can pay to appear here, to rank higher, or to have a rival removed.
Open map data is incomplete — somewhere unmapped does not appear here, and this is never "all of them" or "the good ones". A place that closed is also still on the map until somebody removes it, which is why no hours are shown and nothing here says a kitchen is open. From OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps (which includes data from Meta, Foursquare and AllThePlaces); swept 2026-09-12. Map the one that is missing → and every site built on the open map gains it, this one included.
Before you go
These change. We link the people who keep them current rather than copying numbers that go stale here.
IcebergsTypically late spring into early summer
Twillingate is one of the viewing spots Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism names, and this circuit ends there before turning back. Presence varies year to year and week to week — check current sightings before you plan a day around them, because a measured drive is not a promise of ice.
Check it now →MooseYear round, worst between dusk and dawn
The province states the likelihood of injury in a moose collision is twice as high between dusk and dawn as in daytime. Three and a half hours of driving plus the stops that are the point of the drive puts most people on Route 340 in the evening; the causeways and the runs between them are unlit.
Check it now →Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
Route 340 crosses to New World Island by causeway, and Route 345 runs out to Moreton's Harbour with nothing parallel to it. A closure on this drive is not something you route around.
Check it now →
Questions people actually ask
How long is the Road to the Isles?＋
Measured here as a circuit from Notre Dame Junction out to Twillingate by Boyd's Cove, back through Moreton's Harbour: 221.8 km and about 3 hours 34 minutes of driving. Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, which names the drive and gives Notre Dame Junction as its start, publishes about 311 km — a longer figure that takes in more of the branches off Route 340 than the line measured here. Both are honest; ours is the circuit we drove.
Is this the whole Kittiwake Coast?＋
No — the province names four Kittiwake Coast drives, and this is one of them. The others are the Road to the Shore, the Road to the Beaches and the Islands Experience, and they cover different parts of the same coast. Anyone who says 'the Kittiwake Coast drive' is being less specific than the province is.
How does this relate to the airport routes on this site?＋
It overlaps several of them. Gander to Twillingate and Deer Lake to Lewisporte both use parts of Route 340, and the Lewisporte to Boyd's Cove corridor is a leg of this circuit measured on its own. This page is the whole drive; those pages are the ways into it from a terminal door.
Put this map on your site
If you run a place to stay, a tour, or a town page along this drive, this map answers the question your guests already email you: how far are you from the airport? Free, no account, and the measured figures stay current because they are ours to maintain.
<iframe src="https://fromtheairport.xyz/embed/road-to-the-isles"
width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
title="Driving route: Notre Dame Junction to Notre Dame Junction"></iframe>?lat=&lon=&label= to the URL to pin your own property on the map.Every distance, drive time and coordinate on this page was checked against its source on September 8, 2026. Origin: OpenStreetMap node/1520526222. Destination: OpenStreetMap node/1520526222.