Nova Scotia Coast

Mirjam and I decide to hire a car and make a tour around the south coast of Nova Scotia. For me this is great because it fills my last few days very nicely and Mirjam is pleased to have the company too. We set off from Halifax travelling south and in a clockwise direction around the coast. She is the driver and I am the navigator. We won’t get lost if we keep the sea on our left. Soon after leaving the city we come to a beautiful area of coast, where the road winds around inlets and very close to the intensely blue water. What look like holiday or retirement properties are built along the shore and the sheltered waters of Shad Bay are dotted with small craft. 

 

Hire Car

Shad Bay

Then the coast changes and low mounds of smooth granite are exposed among low-growing vegetation and shrubs. We arrive at Peggy’s Cove, which is a picture-postcard beautiful small fishing village, with clapboard houses built directly onto bare rock and a stone built lighthouse. There is still some fishing here, but although the main catch here now is tourists, it doesn’t feel spoiled or overly busy as somewhere like this in England would be – Mevagissy for example. The tourists wander on the exposed rocks around the lighthouse and try and take pictures of each other with the lighthouse behind and no other tourists in their shot, if possible. It proves very difficult and I am sure I am inadvertently in several other people’s photos. 

Coast at Peggy's Cove 

Peggy's Cove 

 

Lighthouse at Peggy's Cove

Me and Mirjam at Peggy's Cove

We the drive further along the coast to Mahone Bay, where we are staying overnight in a hostel. Here there are 3 churches built side-by-side; one Anglican, one Evangelical Lutheran and one for the United Church of Canada. I wonder if the church-going residents pick and choose which one to attend on any given Sunday? We wander up and down the street in the early evening and have a meal on the balcony of a pub, looking out across the water of the bay as the sun goes down.

Three Churches at Mahone Bay

Mahone Bay

The next day we drive out along a peninsula and come to a dead end where there is a little community with a working sail loft and a mixed farm with a few horses and cattle. We walk along a farm track alongside a field of cabbages to admire the view across the water to several small islands. Butterflies and dragonflies flutter around us and the only noise is of insects. 

Farm on Second Peninsula

Our next stop is the little town of Lunenburg. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the best preserved example of a settlement laid out in a grid pattern. The settlement was authorised and arranged by the British, but with mainly German and Swiss Protestants, as a counter-measure to the nearby Catholic French Arcadian communities. In 1753, 1453 settlers arrived on 14 transport ships from Rotterdam. The motivation for these families was that they were each given a town lot, a garden lot, a 50 acre farm lot and 300 acres of woodland, arms and munition and some livestock such as a cow, some sheep, a pig and a goat. The lots were allocated to each family literally by the draw of a playing card, on the reverse of which was written which area of the town would be theirs.

When they arrived the ground had been cleared and laid out in a grid, surrounded by a pallisade with a blockhouse for protection from the natives and the French, but there was nothing else here and they had to set about building their houses with the 500 feet of boards and 250 nails, plus a few bricks for a chimney which they were also given. They soon found that the area was not very suitable for farming and so they turned their hands to fishing and boat-building, some of which still continues today.

Lunenburg  

 

Me and Lunenburg

Lunenburg Church

Inside Lunenburg Church

Lunenburg Museum

Lunenburg Town Plan

Choosing a Plot

On the waterfront there is a memorial to the hundreds of local fishermen who have lost their lives to the sea over the years. 1927 was a particularly dangerous year and there are 3 sides of a pillar to these victims, with the same family names repeated several times: Reginald Andrews, Sam Andrews, Wilfred Andrews.

Fishermen’s Memorial

Leaving the town we take a small ferry across the water and stop on the other side at an old bakery and sit on the wharf with tea and cake. I am reminded of one of the entries on the 'In my life I have learned’ boards in Halifax, that everything is better with cake.

Ferry

Tea and Cake at the Bakery

 

We drive on to Yarmouth, at the south western end of the island and stay overnight here at a bed and breakfast. The lady, Robyn, has only just started doing bed and breakfast and we are her first guests. Yarmouth used to have a ferry which went across Portland, Maine in the US, but this is no longer operating and the economy of the town is suffering as a result and the locals feel badly done-by. We drive out to the lighthouse at the end of a spit, but as we approach the sea mist envelops everything and there is no view.

Robyn tells us about a locally-famous chain of second hand clothes stores, called Frenchy’s and she opens her closet which is jam-packed and she pulls out various designer label items which she picked up for $4 a piece. She tells the story of a small red leather handbag which she researched and found out it came from a design house in Italy and its full price would have been $500! As we drive north from Yarmouth we stop at a Frenchy’s store and I find 4 items for $18, which will give me a few extra things to wear once I get home. We stop at a pretty little historic town called Annapolis Royal and meet up with a friend of Mirjam’s, who takes us for a walk around the grounds of the fort. 

Me and Miriam at Fort Anne, Annapolis Royal

Our next night’s stop is at a camp ground on a lake just inland from here. We want to check into the hostel, but it is full, so we are allocated a cabin all to ourselves. We feel very excited about having all this space to ourselves – 2 bedrooms, kitchen cum lounge, barbecue outside and a balcony overlooking the lake. In the evening and again in the morning we swim in the warm dark brown peaty water of the lake.

Lake Swim

 

Our Lakeside Cabin

 

Our journey continues along a valley which runs parallel to the west coast and we drive out to the coast to a small fishing village called Halls Harbour. This coast is on the Bay of Fundy, which is famous for having the highest tides in the world. 

Halls Harbour

 

Tidal Gauge at Halls Harbour

 

Me and Mirjam at the Bay of Fundy

 

We have one more night’s stay in another bed and breakfast. Mirjam has a panic when she thinks she has lost her passport. She is a very polite girl, but her language gets foul when she is stressed and she repeats, fuck, fuck…’. When she calms down she realises that she has just moved it from its usual place to a safer place and then forgotten that she had done that. She apologies for her language to the bed and breakfast lady, who laughs, but looks slightly shocked.

The next day is our last day together and we complete our circuit with a short journey back to Halifax. We have a last lunch together and a big hug before parting. Mirjam is travelling on further in Canada and I am heading to the airport for my flights tomorrow for my final journey back to the UK.