… from the “Caribou” … “He wasn’t discharged, he was expelled” – ed … at 07:30. We weren’t torpedoed during the night after all. And the first thing that I did, after getting a coffee from Tim Horton’s, was to go to have a look around Sydney.
I’d been here in 2003 but with not being very well at the time I’d never really seen the place and so I resolved to rectify the matter.
So here’s a photo of Main Street, just to prove that I was here. This is actually North Sydney, where the harbour is and I drove all around the harbour and I didn’t find a flaming Opera House or a blasted bridge anywhere.
Nothing for it but to head into Sydney itself, and that’s quite a hike away. And the road down to there has grown a roundabout. 10 years ago you could drive all around North America and not find a single one. Now they are all the rage and everyone wants one.
There may not be an Opera House here at Sydney but this is the next best thing to it.
Someone has certainly been on the fiddle here and I’ll probably find, if I were to go in, that it would be quite a vile inn. But there’s no chance of that at this time of morning.
But anyway, now you know that I’ve been here and seen it. That’s dealt with that outstanding issue.
Climbing up Kelly’s Island, where in a space of 7kms the road climbs 240 metres, we can pull up at the viewpoint and take a good look at one of my favourite works of engineering, the Seal Island bridge.
It’s a shame that I have the early morning sun to deal with, but never mind. Lurking in the shade of a convenient pine tree, I can still manage something and the bridge still looks quite impressive regardless.
On the other side of Kelly’s Mountain there’s a lookout on the way down and I missed that completely in 2003. And it really is beautiful too.
There’s a ferry down there that goes across to the start of the Cabot Trail and I went that way in 2003. I’m going to go down there and cross over on the ferry and then do the Cabot Trail in the other direction.
I had to take a little deviation to visit the cemetery at Englishtown. Here is the grave of Giant MacAskill. A normal-sized baby, during adolescence he just “grew and grew” and reached a height of 7’9″, a height that puts him well up in the ranks of the tallest men in history.
Born in Berneray in 1825 and christened Angus, he came here to Nova Scotia with his family in about 1831 and died in 1863.
Baddeck is said to be the birthplace of canadian aviation, with the flight of the “Silver Dart”, and it was also the home of Alexander Graham Bell.
There’s a museum here that is open for visits, but if you want to see the home of Bell, you can’t because it’s still occupied by his family and so is off limits to tourists. But out of pure interest, it’s over there on that headland where that tower is.
Cape Breton Isle was formerly an island as you might expect, but it’s been joined to the mainland of Canada by a causeway which carries a railway line and a road, as you can see down there.
There’s a canal through the causeway so that ships can still pass from one end of the Canso Strait to the other, and the bridge swivels out of the way whenever a ship needs to pass.
I followed the western shore of the Canso Strait southwards for a while and it really was a beautiful drive, far too nice to ignore, and I must have taken hundreds of photos.
This is Pleasant Street, a very apt name I do say, but I forgot to record the name of the town in which it is situated. But the whole area was as beautiful this and I was having the right weather for sightseeing.
And as well as beauty we were having plenty of history too.
All around here was a very important area 100 years ago, being the part of the North American continent nearest to Western Europe and several submarine trans-Atlantic telegraph cables came ashore here. This was the Hazel Hill terminal of the Commercial Cable Company and the story goes that the company built its offices and staff houses in brick in order to attract employees from urban areas to come and settle here
But after my marathon drive today, I began to lose the light. Here on the Good Ship Ve … Stormont, Strawberry Moose took the helm with his assistants Seaman Staines and Roger the Cabin Boy while I worked out my next move.
According to the crew of the ferry, there’s a place down the road where they take in boarders – “what do they tell them?” … ed – and that’s where I went.
And if I could find more places like this on my route – nice friendly and cheerful proprietors, bed and breakfast in a comfortable room with use of cat and kitchen, for $45 cash, all of my troubles would be over.
>No internet though, but you can’t have everything I suppose.
