Charming Nova Scotia
The note pinned to the banister just inside the open front door read: "Hi. Come on in and make yourselves at home. I am sailing. Help yourself to tea, coffee and shortbread cookies." So we did. We were at the charming Mecklenburgh Inn in Chester, a delightful old colonial fishing and yachting community on the Atlantic South Shore of Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada.
We had driven from Halifax, capital of the Province of Nova Scotia, up to Cape Breton and around the Cabot Trail, then ferried over to Prince Edward Island. We returned to Nova Scotia and explored the North Shore's Sunrise Trail, then crossed the Province to Chester on the South Shore making our way back through Peggy's Cove to Halifax. We comfortably and happily achieved all this in 10 days.
Early on day one, we left our Halifax lodgings, and drove out into a brilliant summer morning along the Eastern Shore with views out to the windswept coastal Atlantic Islands. The colonial history of Nova Scotia dates back to first French settlement in the early 1600s and on crossing the causeway to Cape Breton Island, we visited the historic French fortress town at Louisbourg.
Built by the French between 1719 and 1745, and destroyed by the British in 1779, Louisbourg was recreated in the 1960s. Sixty buildings or one-quarter of the original town and fortifications were reconstructed to original plans from Paris archives. The costumed "inhabitants" go about their daily affairs as bakers, clergy, artisans or soldiers of that era. It is a surreal experience. The inhabitants will discuss their 17th-century occupations but will not acknowledge the present.
At Baddeck on Bras d'Or Lake, the Alexander Graham Bell Museum faces Bell's family home across the lake. The airy glass and timber museum displays an extensive collection of Bell's inventions and artefacts, including replicas of the first telephones and a full-scale model of his 1919 hydrofoil.
Baddeck village was the start for our drive around Cape Breton's Cabot Trail. It soon became clear why the National Geographic includes the trail in its "drives of a lifetime". Spectacular sea, forest and mountain views open out at every bend on the 298km highway.
Prompted by the lobster pot markers bobbing in the bay below, we stopped for a lunch of broiled lobster at the Keltic Lodge, a rambling clifftop summer resort outside - don't even think of eating steak while in the Maritimes. From here, the trail runs around the cape's craggy northern shore to the Gulf of St Lawrence yielding to the gentle terrain of French-speaking Acadia.
We re-crossed the causeway to the Nova Scotia mainland and Pictou, landfall for 189 Scottish settlers on board the Hector in 1773. A replica of the old ship sits in the harbour. The car ferry from Pictou to Wood Island on Prince Edward Island crosses the Northumberland Strait in 75 minutes.
Off the ferry, we were soon in the leafy avenues of Charlottetown and its historic city centre and waterfront. The dominant Confederation building - the birthplace of Canada - was the venue for representatives of the British North America colonies who met to discuss Canadian confederation in 1864. The historic chamber and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery next door are well worth a visit.
Green Gables, the farm which inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables, is a short drive from Charlottetown at Cavendish. The Victorian farmhouse, gardens and farm outbuildings are maintained as they were when young Lucy stayed and played there as a child.
After a walk on Cavendish beach, we crossed Confederation Bridge (at 13km, the world's longest) back into New Brunswick. Lunch was a mountainous feed of fried clams at the Shore Stop Restaurant in Port Elgin. Thus fortified, we motored east along Nova Scotia's winding Sunrise Trail for a tea-stop at the pretty fishing village of Pugwash.
Eighteen-year-old Jimmie Le Fresne bought the Tatamagouche Station for $500 in 1973. He acquired and converted rolling stock from around North America and reopened the train station as an inn in 1989. The 15 cabooses, vintage executive carriages and a dining car are an unusual bed and breakfast (and dinner) experience.
As we entered the nearby Balmoral Grist Mill, Mark Burris - 20 years a miller - was easing the 500kg original Scottish granite grinding stone on to its milling stone base. The old building creaked as he swung the maple gibbet and lowered the monstrous stone into place. Built in the 1870s, and set in the forest, the mill grinds away much as it always has.
We left Tatamagouche and the Sunrise Trail next morning, and crossed to Nova Scotia's South Shore stopping midway at the intriguing Uniacke Mansion. Richard John Uniacke was the first attorney-general of the province. The 1815 mansion is complete with original antique Georgian furnishings, artwork, portraits and chattels. It has no electricity or plumbing and its old whale oil lamps are now lit with mineral oil; it is a unique time capsule of the culture and lifestyle of that period.
Lunenburg on the South Shore best preserves the maritime history of Nova Scotia.
A stroll through the rambling Old Town to the waterfront, with its working boatyards, busy lobster boat wharves and high-stacked lobster pots, evokes its past.
Gaff-rigged dorys scud across the bay and the legendary Bluenose, a racing schooner of the 1920s, sits proudly at the wharf. A collection of historic sailboats and vintage powered craft float beside bright red warehouses, now the Fisheries Museum.
The South Shore drive from Lunenberg to Halifax was a delight. The narrow winding road hugs the Atlantic shoreline past rambling colonial estates and sheltered harbours. The region's long maritime history is linked to the era of West Indian rum runners, dry-cod trading and crown-sanctioned privateering.
The village of Chester is a maritime jewel set beside a sparkling harbour. We took refreshment and dinner at the lusty Fo'c'sle Tavern, mixed and mingled with lobstermen and yachties, and slept well at the Mecklenburgh Inn. Innkeeper Suzi Fraser sent us away well on a grand pancake breakfast the next morning.
Peggy's Cove is a tourism legend. And here we were, standing on the weathered granite rocks peering up at the iconic lighthouse, a sobering sentinel to ships' captains passing in the night. The picture-perfect fishing village with its brightly painted buildings and colourful fishing boats was soon captured by our cameras.
And so back to Halifax, a city so old, that even Captain Cook had walked its cobbled streets.
