Gander International Airport (YQX) → Hermitage-Sandyville
Gander Airport (YQX) to Hermitage and the Gaultois ferry
- Drive time
- 4h 4m
- Distance
- 276.1 km
Conservative model estimate, Gander International Airport (YQX) to Hermitage-Sandyville — 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. The ferry after it is not included. Source: OSRM driving profile, terminal door to town, checked 2026-09-03.
⛴ Then the ferry to Gaultois — sailings & schedule →
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 terminal side — parking, arrivals, ground transport — is the airport's own information: Gander International Airport →
This is the site’s purest ferry route: a hair over four hours of measured road that exist to deliver you to a wharf, where a mapped crossing — both directions drawn in OpenStreetMap — connects the road network to Gaultois, a town that has never had one. The south coast once ran entirely on boats; Hermitage is one of the last places where you can still watch the old system work on a schedule.
The discipline here is the ferry discipline established on the Fogo and Long Island pages: the crossing is mapped and cited, the schedule is linked and never mirrored, and the honest planning order is boat first, drive second. Everything else — the falls lookout at the turn, the fuel warning, the moose arithmetic — is shared with the whole Route 360 family, measured once and told the same way each time.
Faded on the map: the other measured drives from Gander International into this same region, each its own page — Harbour Breton (4h 9m), St. Alban's (3h 27m). Where a faded line leaves the solid one is where that drive forks from this one.
Then a ferry to Gaultois
The Hermitage–Gaultois crossing is mapped in OpenStreetMap in both directions (relations 13094369/13094370), and Gaultois has no road at all — the boat is the town's street. Sailings, fares and the McCallum connection change with season and vessel; check the provincial schedule pages rather than any figure written elsewhere, including here.
Operated by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Current schedule →Worth stopping for
Upper Falls Lookout
One of three viewpoints mapped together beside the Trans-Canada at the Norris Arm junction. The Bay d'Espoir Highway turn at Bishop's Falls is 21.9 km further along, so this comes while the drive is still easy. OpenStreetMap gives the name, the position and a northward direction and nothing else, and no publisher we could find accounts for the name, so this page claims no view it has not checked.
Stopping here adds about 3 min and 2 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · Waze
What has been recorded near here
Species reported within 50 km of Hermitage-Sandyville 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 August, June, July46 reports on record
- Humpback whalewhaleMegaptera novaeangliaeReports cluster in August, June, July21 reports on record
- Atlantic puffinseabirdFratercula arcticaReports cluster in June, July, August11 reports on record
- Fin whalewhaleBalaenoptera physalusReports cluster in August, June, September8 reports on record
- Minke whalewhaleBalaenoptera acutorostrataReports cluster in June, October3 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 Hermitage-Sandyville
- Where to eat in Hermitage-Sandyville → — 1 places the open map records, alphabetically, with addresses and phone numbers.
Doing it electric
- Fast chargers on this drive
- Gander km 3
- Longest stretch without one
- 273 km
- Gander → Hermitage-Sandyville, of 276 km driven
- Nearest fast charger to Hermitage-Sandyville
- 209.1 km
- 3h 13m by road, at Bishop’s Falls
NL Hydro lists an ultra-fast site coming in 2026 at Gander (km 3) — not counted above until it opens.
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
- none
- Mapped as paved
- 82%
- 209.9 km of 276.1 km driven
- No surface tag on the map
- 18%
- 46.9 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 2026-09-06. 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
31 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 179.4 km — after Riverside Diner, until Dashwoods Diner. That is the figure worth planning around.
- The Newfoundland Tea Co. Restaurant & Shoprestaurantkm 1.8 · 782 m off the road
- Rosie's Restaurant & Bakeryrestaurantkm 1.8 · 898 m off the road
- Swiss Chaletrestaurantkm 2 · 235 m off the road
- Robin's Donutsfast foodkm 2 · 264 m off the road
- Subwayfast foodkm 2.1
- McDonald'sfast foodkm 2.1
- Wing 'n Itrestaurantkm 2.1 · 703 m off the road
- Tim Hortonscafékm 2.1 · 398 m off the road
- KFCfast foodkm 2.2
- Pizza Delightrestaurantkm 2.2 · 268 m off the road
- Tim Hortonscafékm 2.2
- Little Caesarsfast foodkm 2.4 · 816 m off the road
- Mystic Roomrestaurantkm 2.4 · 269 m off the road
- The Shawarma Stationrestaurantkm 2.4
- Ches's Fish & Chipsrestaurantkm 2.5
- Jumping Bean Coffee Companycafékm 2.6
- Lilly's Landing Family Restaurantrestaurantkm 2.6
- Jade Garden Restaurantrestaurantkm 2.6
- New Highlight Restaurantrestaurantkm 2.6
- Pizza Housefast foodkm 2.6
- East Ocean Restaurantfast foodkm 2.6
- Grecofast foodkm 2.6
- DQ Grill & Chillfast foodkm 2.6 · 958 m off the road
- Louis Geesfast foodkm 2.7 · 189 m off the road
- Tim Hortonscafékm 3.1 · 918 m off the road
- A&Wfast foodkm 3.2 · 774 m off the road
- Mary Brown'sfast foodkm 3.2 · 845 m off the road
- Subwayfast foodkm 3.2 · 784 m off the road
- Riverside Dinerfast foodkm 25.1 · 598 m off the road
- Dashwoods Dinerrestaurantkm 204.5
- Sophie's Kitchenrestaurantkm 274.9 · 231 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.
Fuel and servicesYear round — plan at the turn
The same warning as every 360 drive: over a hundred kilometres of uninhabited interior before the Bay d'Espoir communities. Fill up before the turn.
Check it now →MooseYear round, worst between dusk and dawn
The province states that the likelihood of injury in a moose collision is twice as high between dusk and dawn as in daytime. Missing an evening boat because you drove carefully is the correct outcome.
Check it now →Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
Routes 360 and 364 are the only way in — check both directions, and check before the drive back to a flight.
Check it now →
The trails
Arriving without a car
Every distance and time on this page is a drive. If you are not renting, here is what Gander International Airport Authority lists at this door — operators and numbers, not fares: a tariff is theirs to change, so it is linked and not copied.
No rideshare here.
No rideshare service is named anywhere on the Airport Authority's transport page. That is an absence read off the page on 2026-09-15, not an assumption — but it is the Authority's page, not a licensing register, so it says what the airport lists rather than what is legal.
Taxi
Busy Bee Cabs, which the Airport Authority says runs a 24-hour service available curbside in the Domestic Arrivals area.
Coach
DRL Coachlines runs a scheduled coach service across Newfoundland. The Airport Authority says a wheelchair-accessible bus needs 48 hours' notice.
Limousine
Nobel Limousines, listed by the Airport Authority.
Avis, Budget, National and Enterprise are listed at the airport. The Authority says accessible vehicles with wheelchair accommodation or hand controls are limited and need 48 hours' notice.
Gander International Airport Authority, read 2026-09-15 — the authority on what operates at this kerb, and the only place a current fare or timetable should come from.
Questions people actually ask
Should I fly into Gander or Deer Lake for Hermitage?＋
Gander: about 4h04 against five-plus hours from Deer Lake — and if the point is the ferry, the schedule matters more than either number. Plan the boat first, the drive second.
What is Gaultois?＋
An outport across the tickle with no road to anywhere — one of the last of its kind, reached only by this crossing or by boat from McCallum further along. The ferry note above carries the mapped relations and the schedule link; the town itself is its own storyteller.
Can I take a car across?＋
The vessel and its rules are the operator's to state, and Gaultois's roadless geography answers most of the question anyway. Check the provincial schedule page before assuming anything about what crosses.
What is the drive actually like?＋
The shared 360 run south — falls, interior, the height of land — then Route 364 peels off through the Hermitage Peninsula's hills to the coast. The last act is the reason: the road ends at salt water with a working wharf and a boat that is somebody's only way home.
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/yqx-hermitage"
width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
title="Driving route: Gander International Airport (YQX) to Hermitage-Sandyville"></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 3, 2026. Origin: OpenStreetMap way/154350645 — passenger terminal. Destination: OpenStreetMap node/7616947148 — Hermitage-Sandyville place node.