Rob-n-Hild, Eastward Ho!

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Cabot Trail 421.2 km. 6:22 hours. Elevation maximum 450 metres

With a look at the weather forecast (significant rainfall) and the possibility that the walking trails around Louisbourg might stil be closed due to fire risk (all trails in Nova Scotia were closed last week), we decided today might be the best day to drive the Cabot Trail. For those non-Canadians, the Cabot Trail is a road trip around the coast and through the middle of north-west Cape Breton Island and is famed as a special driving experience. Most people drive the trail in the summer or autumn, but we figured it would be nice in the spring too, with all of the new leaves - and we are here now anyway!

As the trail is a loop, you can drive it either way and we chose clockwise so that we could visit the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site on the way. The weather was very misty in Sydney (and positively foggy as we climbed away from the coast) and we thought that we would give it some time to clear up if we drove down the middle before crossing over to the coast for lunch. The Bells (his wife Mabel was very involved in hs work) had built a house at Baddeck on the shore of Bras d'Or where and, as much of his later work was done here, this is the site chose for a museum of his life and work. Bell did a lot more than just invent the telephone (as noted above, he was worried that would be all he was remembered for) and we noticed that much of his work was based on solving specific problems - even the telephone grew out of his interest in teaching deaf people to speak! in 1907 he got involved in early aircraft developement and this developed into hydrofoil boats, in which he was a pioneer. We spent over an hour and could easily have been there longer, but the weather was looking brighter - and we needed our lunch!

As we drove over to the western shore of Cape Breton Island the weather got nicer and when we got to Cheticamp we found a picnic table (in a camping site) and made tea to have with our lunch in quite pleasant weather. The coastal road was nice with lots of small villages along the way.

As we drove on up the coast after lunch the scenery became quite spectacular with the road twisting along the coast, then climbing into the hills. There were a lot of curves on the up and down slopes - the video below is at 4x speed because we were not going that fast I can assure you!

No-one is quite sure exactly where John Cabot made landfall on Cape Breton, but this is considered a likely spot - not quite at the northern tip. There is a monument here, along with the interesting information that that isn't even his real name. He was actually from Genoa and named Giovanni Cabota! We were getting back into the wet, cold weather now though so we didn't hang around any more and drove back to our hotel in Sydney. There was another of the little ferries at Englishtown - this one called "The Torquil MacLean" after a long-time ferry operator. This crossing was 190 meters, so longer than Little Narrows yesterday (clocked at 135!), but it was just as efficient. As soon as we felt the boat hit the landing stage (with a bump, I might add), the ramp was down and the cars were off. Not a bit like the loading and unloading of the other ferries we have been on, where it takes 20 minutes to tie them up securely before they even open the doors!
Oh, and yes, the Cabot Trail is a special experience - do give it a go if you are ever up in this part of the world!

Coming up: Louisbourg

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