Land of the Silver Birch

Land of the silver birch

Home of the beaver

Where still the mighty moose

Wanders at will

Blue lake and rocky shore

I will return once more

Boom did-y-ah-dah

Boom did-y-ah-dah

Boom did-y-ah-dah, boom

Nova Scotia certainly has a lot of silver birch trees, and when we woke up on our first morning in the Fisherman’s Cottage, we realised that we were totally surrounded by them. Beautiful.

Our new ‘home’ was at the northernmost point of Big Tracadie Island, and sat high above the water with fantastic views. Again, the owner had built us a ramp so that Racheal could access the single story building. Once inside it was nice and spacious with a twin room for Racheal and me, a double room for Summer, a big sitting room and kitchen diner with a sunroom on the side overlooking the bay. Steps climbed up to a small deck which looked out to sea.

Unfortunately, the weather on our first day here was not at all nice, we can’t really complain though as this was the first really bad weather we had had during our whole trip. We drove to Pictou hoping to find some indoor things to do, but everything was closed for the season. We found about three shops open and even the cafés were closed. We were about to give up when we spotted a restaurant overlooking the sea. When we went in to ask if we could just buy a coffee, the lady couldn’t have been kinder, she took our wet things and told us we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted we didn’t even need to buy anything. Of course we did have a coffee and there were some very appealing desserts on the menu - yes I gave in to temptation! The only picture we took was of a sculpture on the quay.

On the second day we decided to explore Antigonish which was the nearest town, though still half an hour away. We started with lunch at a waffle restaurant that had been recommended to us, then we walked into the town and did some souvenir shopping in the main street. It was a pleasant town and the weather was at least dry, if not sunny.

The third and fourth days the weather was much better. We even had some sunshine. We used both these days to explore a little of Cape Breton. Driving up the West Coast one day and enjoying a walk on the beach at Inverness. And the next day driving to Baddeck, which is on Bras d’Or Lake.

At Inverness, I was pleased to see a changing places symbol on the outside of the public toilets. This is the first we had seen during our entire trip to Canada. The excitement was short-lived because it was locked, presumably because in Nova Scotia everything is shutting down for the winter. We were able to use the boardwalk and rather steep, rocky ‘ramp’ down to the beach and enjoy a walk on the sand.

The route to Baddeck took us along the Trans Canada Highway, so there were a few more places open along the way. As this was our last day in Canada, we decided to have lunch out and we found a traditional Canadian diner in a farm shop on the way to Baddeck. We also did some thrift shopping and souvenir shopping to use up the last of our Canadian dollars before we flew home. By the time we drove home, the sun was setting and Summer got a very nice photograph of the sun through the bridge as we crossed over from Cape Breton Island to the mainland. We still had all our packing to do ready to fly home, so it was a busy evening!

A few more photos of our island before we fly home.