It had almost been 2 years to the day since the last time I had been east. The pandemic made it nearly impossible to visit Nova Scotia and there was no way I wanted visit the old folks and possibly bringing a contagion to their homes. With everyone vaccinated and the virus in retreat (at least for the moment) I wanted my partner to finally meet the family there and to see a beautiful part of the country he had never seen before.
Our third day of travel brought us through the Bas-Saint-Laurent of Quebec past Rivière-du-Loup to Rimouski where we happened upon a retired Oberon-class submarine, the HMCS Onandaga. This was the submarine my cousin served on in his early days in the navy. The boat was open to tour and so we had a look see.
From there we drove through the gorgeous Matapédia valley and head for New Brunswick. We arrived to our destination, Kouchibouguac National Park, quite late in the day and hurriedly set up camp and cooked dinner as nightfall was setting in. Kouchibouguac is one of the most beautiful shorelines in Canada.
Sadly we couldn’t enjoy the day there. We had to push on to Cape Breton as we wanted to get there early enough to see one of my favourite fiddlers, Mike Hall, play at the Doryman in Cheticamp. The music was magic to the ears after so many months of being starved of live shows. We treated ourselves to giant bowls of moules marinières and washed it down with a pint of Big Spruce before heading off to beat the darkness and set up camp.
Our first night in CB was spent at the very breezy and desolate Corny Brook campsite just inside the CB Highlands National Park. Once the tent was pitched we hightailed it up to the Skyline trail to enjoy the sunset.
The 8 km hike and a spectacular meal at L’Abri back in Cheticamp should have guaranteed us a good night’s sleep but the howling winds through the night buffeting our tent kept us restless. The next morning the wind continued making decamping a challenge. Turned out this little wind storm was just a warning of Le Suête, a violent, seasonal wind that hits the CB from the southeast. The winds come over the highlands and bare down on the western leeward shoreline of Cheticamp. That was to hit the next night, but fortunately we would be out of there by then.
Leaving Cheticamp we continued clockwise around the Cabot Trail to Cape North where we decided to take a little adventure on a road much less travelled. We turned off just before St. Margaret Village onto a logging road. After 6 or 7 km of crawling along a pot holed rutted gravel road we abandoned the car and hike the Money Point Trail to the site of the former Cape North lighthouse a solid 2 plus hour jaunt through the mist and down a long switchback 500m down to the shoreline where we found horses!
The walk back up the switchbacks of cliff side was damp as the ocean mists grew heavier the higher the elevation. We got back to the car and continued further up the road to nowhere until we got to Meat Cove.
We spent the night at the cozy Markland Coastal Beach Cottages in Dingwall. The inn had its own restaurant where we gourmandized away any of the health benefits of our long hike. The restaurant was excellent and room was comfortable and, luckily, very sturdy. For the storm that night was a humdinger of torrential rain and wind. The next morning at breakfast we were assured by the waitress that it wasn’t a storm at all. It’s only a storm if you lose power. We were told the winds in Cheticamp had reached 160 km/h that night.
sedativegunk 