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Bike trip in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island leaves travelers happily tired

Sunday, September 08, 2002

By Eric Walters

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia - We landed at the airport in Halifax, Nova Scotia, last Sept. 20, nine days after the World Trade Center disaster. Four hours earlier, my brother Brian and I had driven to Pittsburgh International Airport with our bikes and wheeled them past the empty ticket counters. The lack of activity was sad, but the airline workers found a couple of dusty bike boxes that we proceeded to stuff our bikes inside and then to secure with tape.

We had planned our week or two of biking in Nova Scotia at the tail end of the tourist season. Our idea was to take an unscripted vacation with just the right amount of physical misery.

People go on vacations for different reasons: We like to feel worn out by the end. Typically, we had achieved this by hiking in the Rockies, but I'd injured my foot several months earlier. Mysteriously, it ached even when I walked around Shadyside, but it seemed quite content to push a bike pedal.

At Halifax airport, Brian retrieved our bikes, while I rented a car. The woman at the desk said legions of tourists had canceled their trips. "Nova Scotia is empty," she said.

		If you go ... Biking in Nova Scotia If you don't want to take your own bikes, there are plenty of places in Halifax that will rent them to you, such as Pedal and Sea Adventures. They can be reached at 1-902-857-9319 or www.pedalandsea adventures.com. There is a great Web site for planning a bike trip in Nova Scotia: www.atl-canadacycling.com. When planning your bike routes, always take into account the coastal winds. Most of the routes are flat or rolling, but the wind makes it feel as if you are climbing hills. You don't have to be young to stay in youth hostels. Finally, if you plan to rent a car for a biking trip, don't tell the rental company. Just about none of them will rent you a bike carrier, and when you return the car, they will use a magnifying glass to examine the back bumper in search of the tiny nicks they can bill you for. -- Eric Walters

In a way, this wasn't bad news. Since we were going to be riding on bikes, the fewer fellow humans zooming past in smoke-spewing buses and SUVs, the better.

We drove north to Wentworth in search of a youth hostel, arriving at the isolated, rustic hostel late in the evening. Not a single car was parked in the gravel lot.

We wandered through the empty rooms in search of human life, but all we found were cots, each with its own scratchy wool blanket. Finally, as we were coming down the creaky stairs, we ran into an American guy and a young German woman who also had just arrived. They had some wine, and we had some cookies, so we dragged our bags in from the cars and sat around the main room talking and worrying about the new state of the world.

Eventually, the hostel-keeper showed up with his large and ebullient dog and billed us $12 each. We drank some more wine, and later crawled up to our beds. The cots with their scratchy wool blankets provided some of the physical misery that we had come in search of.

The following morning, we drove to the north coast and parked our car in the coastal town of Wallace. Nova Scotia is mostly a large and empty peninsula ringed by coastal towns, some arrestingly beautiful, but most sort of sleepy and mundane. A friend told me that visiting Nova Scotia was like traveling back to small-town America in the 1950s. Except for the few main cities, there are no chain stores, and this, to an American weary of strip malls, can be reason enough to visit.

To warm up our legs, we biked west along the coast for several hours, stopping frequently to look out at the iron blue water of the Northumberland Strait. We passed through a pleasant town called Pugwash, which, like its brethren, had a busy little harbor, a hardware store, some mild-mannered restaurants and trinket shop or two.

Farther up the coast, we began to pass small farms and white cottages that seemed to be used for weekend getaways. Hardly any cars passed by. We watched some older locals nearby picking wild cranberries. "We want to get them before the bears do!" they said. I tasted one: very tart.

The weather was pleasant, although a bit windy. Back in Pittsburgh, it was fighting to stay in the 50s, but we were enjoying sunny weather in the low 70s. The Maritime Provinces benefit from warm ocean currents that extend the summer season.

Sand and chain

Later that evening, we drove west and crossed the impressive, eight-mile-long Confederation Bridge, the only way other than ferry to get onto Prince Edward Island. We found a nice B&B in a town aptly named Victoria-by-the-Sea. The owner allowed us to sit in her living room and watch President Bush's speech to Congress. For the first time we heard the words "Al-Qaida."

The following morning, we breakfasted on French toast and planned our day ride along the French shore of the island. At one time, French settlers owned a significant part of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, but English-speaking settlers seized their land and drove these "Acadians" out. Many settled around New Orleans. The French shore now has a population of about 2,500, and almost all of them still speak French.

We set out on our bikes from the town of Wellington and passed through rolling countryside, not unlike parts of Washington County. Along the coast, we stopped on the dock of a fishing co-op, ate a plum or two and watched fishermen return with the morning's catch. Shortly after noon, we rounded the northern tip of the island and headed east, directly into the coastal wind. If you want to be tired, frustrated and worn to the bone, I recommend finding a strong coastal head wind and then biking directly into it.

		Related story Nova Scotia's Sunrise Trail worth exploring

We spotted a large church on a bluff, fought our way out to it, and then collapsed in a stark, beautiful graveyard. All of the graves of Mount Carmel Parish were marked by small, whitewashed crosses and lettered in French with black paint. The wind howled around the little cemetery building we propped ourselves against, while we nibbled like hobbits on what was left of our food. We had planned to eat a traditional, robust Acadian meal at a nearby tourist re-creation of an Acadian village, but it was closed for lack of tourists.

We pedaled back to our car, using an unpaved clay road that cut through beautiful patches of farmland. Prince Edward Island is laced with these Heritage Roads, which are paved a reddish color and easy to bike on. After the constant noise and pressure of the wind, it was wonderful to pedal along this tree-lined route, hearing nothing but the soft whirr of our tires.

The forecast the next morning was for rain, but we set out anyway. Hadn't we come in search of misery? We had rain gear, and living in Pittsburgh has given us a deep-seated distrust of weather predictions.

We decided to avoid the main reason more than 700,000 people visit Prince Edward Island each year -- to see the homestead that inspired "Anne of Green Gables." Friends had warned us it is a silly, touristy place, and a quick ride-by proved the point. Instead, we set out from the town of Montague and biked along the east coast on a busy road.

Another lesson: When biking on Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia, don't always use the coastal roads. Many cars will whiz by, and the wind can be horrendous.

After several hours, we were starved and fatigued, and the clouds were gathering in the west. We pedaled across a thin strip of land that led to Panmure Island Provincial Park. There wasn't a single car in the long thin parking lot that bordered the beach. A bit over-enthusiastic, Brian pedaled his bike up a sandy path and down onto the long stretch of deserted beach. Younger but wiser, I left my bike on the cement, and joined him. Sand and bike chains don't mix!

The view was stupendous. A tall lighthouse, stood alone at the beach's far end. The wind was strong, the sun was out, and small waves rushed toward us. We ate some cold chicken and fruit, and walked along the sand for a mile or so. Again, not a soul in site.

Brian was spraying WD-40 on his chain to clean off the gritty sand as the first raindrops fell. We donned our rain gear and started off. Within minutes, the rain was torrential. Our jackets did their best, but rain has a way of finding its way in. In fact, my Gore-Tex shoes seemed to act as buckets, allowing water in, but refusing to let it out. After several hours of pedaling in constant rain, we made it back to our car and attempted to change into dry clothing. It didn't really work.

"Now this is what I call a vacation!" I said, quite content in my squishy shoes.

We drove through the rain to the ferry, and as the night came on, the large boat pulled out of the harbor. Brian snoozed on a bench, but I just had to watch the boat maneuver into Pictou Harbor, while gulls that had hitched a ride across the strait dispersed into the night sky.

Cape crusaders

That night, we drove to the town of Baddeck on Cape Breton, and stayed at a rustic resort called Iverny. Early the next morning we drove north to the entranceway to the famous Cabot Trail, a road that winds around the hilly north coast of the Cape. It's the kind of road that they film in those commercials for zippy sports cars. The drive normally takes about four hours, so a round trip can be done in a single day.

So before we set out, we decided to take a morning hike before the drive and parked at the ranger station. The ranger recommended a route that took us to the top of a nearby mountain. "You'll be able to look out over the ocean and see everything!" she said. We wound up the hill along the edge of a creek, reaching the summit in 21/2 hours. The view from the top was worth the effort, even if due north of us the entire cape was shrouded in fog.

"You don't suppose that fog will interfere with our drive?" my brother asked.

We descended to the car and set off to do the Cabot Trail. After about three miles, we turned around. The fog was seriously thick; it was like watching TV with no signal. My brother was grossly disappointed, but I didn't mind. Driving, no matter how beautiful the scenery, is not my thing. We stopped in one of the many Tim Horton's doughnut shops in the area. The coffee is excellent, and I recommend the teacake with lots and lots of butter.

That night, we stayed at the coastal town of Mabou, which, all told, probably has seven buildings -- two of them churches. The youth hostel was once a seminary, but the present owners have turned it into a clean and pleasant place. Brian spent that night in the one local pub, The Red Shoe, and drank into the wee hours, sharing stories with the bartender who had moved out from Toronto to get away from it all. The Maritime Provinces seem to inhabit a special place in the Canadian mental space: a simple, earthy world to which one can retreat and mentally heal.

Morning brought us the best bike ride of our trip. We wound along a semipaved coastal road from Mabou to the town of Port Hood, passing dairy farms and bluffs with wide views of the ocean. A bald eagle passed overhead and perched atop a nearby pine.

Why is that fish smiling?

We drove to Halifax and spent two nights at the hostel, and visited tourist sites, such as the nearby fishing village of Peggy's Cove. An odd place, it's a tiny cluster of shacks and small homes built on a mass of up-heaved rock, all of it watched over by a picturesque red-and-white lighthouse. But the place is half ruined by the constant flow of tourist buses disgorging folks by the hundreds.

Halifax sits along a harbor, and large industrial and tourist ships slowly arrive and embark throughout the day and night. There is a marvelous formal Victorian garden near the part of the town where the universities cluster, and the students lend their energy to the city's night life. We went on a pub crawl with the other denizens of the hostel, and, although we were a good 10 years older, they welcomed us anyway.

On the last day of our trip, we biked along the coastal road between the nearby towns of Mahone Bay and Lunenburg. As towns go, they don't get more beautiful. Both offer a mixture of brightly painted Victorian homes, gift shops, church spires, rocky outcrops and watery inlets that just can't be improved upon. The blend of human dwellings and nature seems so right.

A gentle rain fell, but not hard enough to ruin the biking. We enjoyed a big bowl of fish soup at a restaurant in Lunenburg, and toured the surprisingly enjoyable Fisheries Museum, which provided a good sense of how the entire area relied on cod fishing for more than a century.

This museum has a good mix of folksy artifacts, fish tanks full of flat ugly fish and monstrous lobsters, dioramas of how cod are caught, cleaned, salted, and so on. Also, there is a smiling, man-sized codfish made of papier-mache, wearing a jaunty crown. I stood next to the happy fish while my brother snapped a picture; it's probably our favorite photo of the trip.

Eric Walters is a free-lance writer who lives in Shadyside.