Gambo → Gambo
Kittiwake Coast: Road to the Shore
- Drive time
- 4h 50m
- Distance
- 286.4 km
Conservative model estimate, Gambo to Gambo — 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, Gambo round by Musgrave Harbour, New-Wes-Valley and Greenspond and back, checked 2026-09-09.
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 four Kittiwake Coast drives and this is the one that goes east, out along the shore that takes the Atlantic first. Route 320 from Gambo, Route 330 up to Musgrave Harbour, and the run out to Greenspond on its island at the end of a causeway.
Nearly five hours of driving, which is the honest headline: this is a full day rather than an afternoon, and the beach at Windmill Bight is the kind of stop that turns it into a longer one. What is measured is the circuit. What the shore is doing on the day it takes is its own business.
Worth stopping for
Windmill Bight Park Reserve
Three kilometres from Lumsden off Route 330, protecting a beach complex — a long sand and beachrock bar separating the sea from a placid barachois — and habitat for migrating shorebirds. The province classes it as a park RESERVE, which is a specific thing and worth knowing before you turn in: reserves have no day-use or camping facilities. Many were former provincial parks whose campground was leased out, and the reserve is what remains. The beach is the reason to stop; bring what you need with you.
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 Gambo and shared to GBIF, the international record of species occurrences. The useful column is when — the months the reports cluster in.
- Humpback whalewhaleMegaptera novaeangliaeReports cluster in July, August, June299 reports on record
- Northern gannetseabirdMorus bassanusReports cluster in July, June, August64 reports on record
- Atlantic puffinseabirdFratercula arcticaReports cluster in June, July, August43 reports on record
- Minke whalewhaleBalaenoptera acutorostrataReports cluster in June, August10 reports on record
- Fin whalewhaleBalaenoptera physalusReports cluster in July, June6 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.
When you get to Gambo
- Where to eat in Gambo → — 7 places the open map records, alphabetically, with addresses and phone numbers.
Doing it electric
- Fast chargers on this drive
- none
- Longest stretch without one
- 286 km
- the start → Gambo, of 286 km driven
- Nearest fast charger to Gambo
- 31.9 km
- 31 min by road, at Glowertown
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
- 0.8 km
- Cemetery Road (0.3 km, 55.6 km from Gambo); Cemetary Road (0.09 km, 55.6 km from Gambo); Burt's Drive (0.42 km, 75.1 km from Gambo)
- Mapped as paved
- 21%
- 27.5 km of 286.4 km driven
- No surface tag on the map
- 78%
- 103.4 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 2026-09-09. 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
9 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 84.8 km — after Rocky Ridge Diner, until Ida's place. That is the figure worth planning around.
- Washed Ashorecafékm 35.3
- Aunt Hannah's Cafe and Gallerycafékm 39.8
- Sunset Grillrestaurantkm 40
- Silver Fox Loungecafékm 40.6
- Amy's Placerestaurantkm 75.2
- Rocky Ridge Dinerrestaurantkm 125.4
- Ida's placecafékm 210.2 · 335 m off the road
- Dykes Marinefast foodkm 210.8 · 307 m off the road
- Family Pizzarestaurantkm 285.4 · 806 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.
ShorebirdsMigration — timing is the birds' and it moves
Windmill Bight is protected in part as habitat for migrating shorebirds, and the barachois behind the bar is the reason. When they are there is not a date this page can give you; it is a question for people who watch them and count them.
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. Nearly five hours of driving is a full day out here, and Routes 320 and 330 run long unlit stretches between communities.
Check it now →Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
This shore takes the weather off the open Atlantic first. Check before you commit to a five-hour circuit with a causeway on the end of it.
Check it now →
Questions people actually ask
How long is the Road to the Shore?＋
Measured here as a circuit from Gambo out through Musgrave Harbour, New-Wes-Valley and Greenspond and back: 286.4 km and about 4 hours 50 minutes of driving. Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, which names the drive and gives Gander or Gambo as its start, publishes about 307 km. The two figures are closer than on the other loops here — the same drive, measured through a slightly different set of points.
How is this different from the Road to the Isles?＋
They are two of the four Kittiwake Coast drives the province names, and they go opposite ways out of the same corner. The Road to the Isles runs north-west on Route 340 to Twillingate and the causeways; this one runs north-east on 320 and 330 along the open Atlantic shore to Musgrave Harbour and Greenspond. Both have pages here, measured the same way.
Where does this connect to the airport routes?＋
Gander is the door, and several destinations on this circuit already have their own measured drives from it — Musgrave Harbour, New-Wes-Valley and Greenspond among them. This page is the whole circuit; those are the ways into pieces of it from the 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-shore"
width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
title="Driving route: Gambo to Gambo"></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 9, 2026. Origin: OpenStreetMap node/14158511372. Destination: OpenStreetMap node/14158511372.