First, we went to Murray River, and then to Murray Harbour, where we stopped at Brehaut's Restaurant and had the best seafood chowder. I arrived before the bikers, and talked with an older women who had lived in Southern Ontario before moving back to PEI and a woman who was biking from Halifax, and who declared quite loudly that she was "not in the mood" for talking.
While Barry and Nancy biked, I took the car and went out to Cape Bear (where the signal from the Titanic was received), and did a little tour of the place, along the clay road. Some pictures were taken.
Then along the road towards the ferry, stopping at Rossignol winery, where PEI entered into the world of wine-making a few years ago. After a bit of wine tasting (they make better fruit wine than grape wine), we headed off to the ferry at Wood Islands. We were in time to catch an early ferry, and so made it to the Nova Scotia shore not long after four o'clock. There followed a mis-directed (by me) trip to Pictou to look for a new mirror for Nancy's bike, and then the journey over to the Hart cottage.
It was wonderful to see them again. Their cottage is terrific, well-suited to having many guests.
And the conversation was lively, friendly, and long. Many connections were made with the struggles of community, province and nation between the Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia contingents. We had a terrific evening overall.
I was up through the night, and spent some time marveling at the stars out my window. And the coyotes howling in the night.
The temptation was whether to stay the while of Friday in Pictou or move to Cape Breton. Barry was up early to go and fetch Bruce in Moncton, then I got up about 7:30 and went down stairs to read and do the crossword that Jane had left out. Eventually, the others got up, we had some breakfast, Nancy started some laundry (honestly, she said she enjoyed and wanted to do it!), and I started to look at places to stay in Cape Breton. After this tiring exercise, we walked down to the beach, and along the waterline, than returned to the cottage. Steve gave me a tour of the cottage land, a wonderful 23-acre site with old apple trees and cherries as well as transplanted and growing oak, chestnut and evergreen trees.
(And this is not even counting the large and well-maintained series of vegetable and flower gardens that Jane — mostly — maintains. There were onions, carrots, tomatoes, leeks, chives, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, green onions, squash, asparagus, lettuce; then sunflowers, cosmos, daffodils. In all pretty impressive.)
In the end, we decided to head off after linch and get to Cape Breton. We are staying at Joyce's Motel and Cottages in St Peter's. The drive here was uneventful, with a shopping stop in Port Hawkesbury and a good supper of halibut steaks, beans and salad.
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Location:St. Peters, Cape Breton
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