Canada
Battle Harbour
A restored salt-fish capital on a Labrador island accessible only by boat through iceberg alley.
The boat from Mary's Harbour pitches through the Labrador Sea for two hours before Battle Harbour appears — a scatter of red and white clapboard buildings on a treeless granite island, framed by icebergs. The silence when the engine cuts is total.
Battle Harbour was the unofficial capital of the Labrador fishery from the 18th century to the mid-20th, processing salt cod for export to Europe. The community was resettled in the 1960s when the fishery collapsed, but the buildings were rescued and restored as a National Historic District. Guests sleep in original merchants' homes and salt-box houses, heated by woodstoves, with no phone signal and no internet. Icebergs drift within photographing distance of the wharf between June and August. The island's isolation is its draw — the nearest road is an hour away by sea, and the landscape of bare rock, berry bushes, and subarctic light has changed very little in centuries.
Solo
Battle Harbour offers the kind of total disconnection solo travellers seek — no signal, no internet, just the sound of wind and water and the creak of old timber in a restored fishing station.
Couple
Sleeping in a restored 19th-century merchant's house on a Labrador island, surrounded by icebergs and silence — this is remote romance at its most authentic.
- A restored 19th-century fishing station on an island in the Labrador Sea, accessible only by boat from Mary's Harbour.
- Guest accommodation is in original salt-box merchants' homes — you sleep where the fishing families lived.
- Icebergs drift within arm's reach of the wharf between June and August, calved from Greenland glaciers.
- The isolation is total — no phone signal, no internet, just the sound of wind and water and the creak of old timber.
Cod tongues fried in pork fat, served in a 19th-century merchant's dining room.
Partridgeberry crumble made with berries picked from the rocky hillside behind the inn.
Tea and toutons — fried dough with molasses — the Labrador breakfast of champions.
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