It is possible for visitors to the Cape Bonavista Area to park their car on the parking lot near the lighthouse and spend many hours enjoying the scenic beauty and history of the area without travelling very far from their vehicle. Whenever I vacation in the area, I always try to spend some time at my favourite spot - the hill overlooking the parking lot. Sitting on the hill on a beautiful sunny day, I have a panoramic view of the area. To my left is a tiny pond. (Picture 1)
To conclude my trip to the Cape I pay a visit to the Bonavista Lighthouse which was built in 1842. 
If I am lucky,I might see a solitary sandpiper (beach bird) searching for insects in the mud around the pond. All around me are tiny blue-bells and the smell of blackberries fills the air. Occasionally I can hear the splash of a whale as it leaps from the water and if I am quick enough I might see its tail as it disappears from sight. As I look out over the Atlantic I can see ice bergs in the distance.
A short distance off shore I can see Green Island (Picture 2)
In my mind I can imagine what it must have been like in the spring of 1705 when the town of Bonavista was being attacked for the third time by the French. The first attempt was made in 1696 and at that time 300 men were able to drive off the French. On August 18, 1704, a second attack was made on Bonavista by a French pirate , LaGrange. After burning a number of ships in Bonavista harbour and capturing a frigate, LaGrange was driven off by Captain Michael Gill. LaGrange's second attempt in 1705 was more successful. Bonavista was at that time defended by George Skeffington (possibly one of my ancestors) who had fortified Green Island with 9 cannon and 90 men. Skeffington, however, didn't put up much of a fight, in fact, he paid a ransom of four thousand five hundred pounds for protection . Over the years Green Island had several families living there but now the only inhabitants are the gulls and occasionally some sheep that some Bonavista farmers take there for summer grazing.
Suddenly my daydream ends and I am brought back to the present by the sound of a longliner steaming through the tickel between Green Island and the Cape.(Picture 3) Years ago this area would be alive with the sounds of motorboats and longliners going and coming from the nearby fishing grounds. Now, however, with the collapse of the cod fishery the sounds are not so frequent. Visitors to Cape Bonavista can still watch the occasional longliner pass by as it heads out to fish for crab or shrimp. 
From my position on the hillside I can look farther to my left and see the statue of John Cabot in the Municipal Park. If I decide to walk across the barrens to the park I will most likely see many types of flowers in the marshy ground surrounding the small pond. (Picture 4 )Even the occasional bakeapple flower or orange/red bakeapple can be found in this area. If you are particularly adventurous you might indulge in what is sometimes known as "foundering cliffs". To experience this you will have to dislodge a fairly large rock from the ground and throw it over a nearby cliff making sure it bounces off the rocky sides as it falls toward the ocean. If you're lucky it will dislodge many more rocks and the sound of these rocks echoing back and forth and finally splashing into the water far below, is a sound that will stay with you always. (For safety's sake this should only be done from inside the protective fence.)
The Lighthouse is now a provincial historic site and tourists are greeted by guides dressed in costumes of the period. The Lighthouse once contained the light from the famous Inchcape Rock - "a red rock reef off the coast of Scotland" Perhaps some of you reading this will remember the poem "the Inchcape Rock" which was found in the Royal Reader # 4 - a book used in Newfoundland schools back in the 1930's and also published in a reader that was used in the 1950's. The poem was written by Robert Southey. To quote two of the approximately 14 or 15 verses from the poem :
Without either sign or sound of their shock,
The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock;
So little they rose so little they fell,
They did not move the Inchcape Bell.
The poem goes on to tell how a pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover, cut the bell from the rock so that mariners would run aground. Ironically, some time later Sir Ralph is drowned when in a dense fog his own ship sinks after colliding with the same rock. Later a lighthouse was built on this rock and the light that was used in it for 30 years was later used in The Bonavista Lighthouse for 119 years. The light was removed from the Bonavista Lighthouse in the 1960's.
Time passses quickly whenever I visit the Cape - especially when daydreaming about the Inchcape Rock. Before leaving, however, I always spend some time watching the Atlantic Puffins flying to and from their nests on the tiny rocky island that is just a stones throw from the Bonavista Lighthouse. The colorful Puffins number in the hundreds and can be watched diving from their nests that cling to the rocky cliff . Quite a sight to end a holiday at the Cape.
