Monday, 12 June 2006

Kempt Shore to Maitland

I was having a great sexy dream, when blow me (no pun intended) if my alarm didn't go off and spoil it. I'm going to turn my alarm off and just wake up whenever.

It had rained a lot during the night again and was cool and grey in the morning, so I didn't feel inclined to make an early start. At 8 am however the sun suddenly came out and within minutes it seemed, the sky was clear and blue. I packed up some things and let the tent dry out a bit in the sun, but by the time I set off at 9 am it had clouded over again. I was following the 215 (The scenic Glooscap Trail) east alongside the top end of the Bay of Fundy. This area is pretty much a rural farming region and there isn't much in the way of services along the way - I passed one pub/eatery (closed) and one cafe (closed) all day.

In the morning there there were some fine views of the Minas Basin as I cycled along and I stopped at the Dragonfly grocery store in Pembroke. They didn't have tea, but they did have a little urn of [good, hot] free coffee. ("Help yourself to refills") I had a good chat with the owners originally from Ontario ("Oh, yah") who had some good tales. they'd recently been flounder fishing - basically you sit in your boat, on the mud, lookin' foolish, waiting for the tide to come in (Like Noah waitin' for the flood)

I think I might have to move to Canada; people here are so friendly. I was stopped by the side of the road - trying to locate a mystery soound from the bike - when a passing garbage truck stopped and the young driver came over for a chat. It turned out he was a keen cyclist and was keen to know what I was up, and hoping to do something similar in the future.

A few kilometres further on I passed the closed eatery in Walton, but detoured to the Walton lighthouse. It has some interesting photos of Walton Harbour where some quite big ships would come into port on a high tide, and moor up at the wharf. As the tide went out the ship would settle down onto wooden blocks and be grounded. Once loaded up with the locally quarried minerals, they would wait for high tide to leave. Inevitably there have been a few accidents! Just as I was preparing to leave, the Dutch couple from the B&B in Wolfville arrived; another good excuse for a natter.

Blue sky and sun were appearing more and more, and continued to improve all afternoon. The road was quite rough and broken up in places, and though still hilly it was not as steep and tiring, or at least it seemed that way to me. Maybe the effect of a bit of sun! I detoured briefly from the 215 to follow the coast road through Burntcoat (or burncoat - I notice that place names vary a lot in their spelling) and then stopped at the convenience store in Noel to buy some drink and chocolate. I asked how far it was to Maitland. "Oh, about 20 minutes by car." It's not the first time I've had that sort of answer. People here seem to judge distance by travelling time rather than any unit of distance, and if you do get an answer it might be in either miles or kilometres (either of which is fine by me)

In Lower Selma I stopped at a little museum housed in an old church and spent a while browsing around the old artefacts and photos. Not much was open in Maitland when I arrived; the cafe was closed, as was the Visitor Information Centre. Luckily the Millpond Campground, 3 km up a side road was open. ($20, showers free) I put up the tent, and spread out the remaining wet things I had in the sun. If the ground wasn't so wet and the mosquitoes and black-flies so annoying, I might have spread myself out in the sun too. I'm beginning to get that really amusing cyclists tan; nut-brown arms, and legs, with a pasty white body. I also have funny sandal-tanned feet and half a brown face.

Distance: 77.2 km
Cycling time: 4:25
Total distance: 1518.4 km