After a stay at the Cheticamp area of Cape Breton and some hiking in the area, we decided to continue to the east side of Cape Breton down around Ingonish and beach campsites.
For a lot of visitors to Cape Breton, the entire drive on the Cabot Trail can be done in several hours, but we had wanted to stop, camp and hike. The scenery and the winding roads most associated with the Cabot Trail continued to be quite interesting and I reminded my wife, Claudia, of an earlier trip with our kids. We had stopped at one time to get our cooler out of the hard-top tent trailer that we had at the time. Continuing on down the road, we were passed by a car with people shouting at us and motioning back to our trailer. When we pulled over to see what the problem was, Claudia realized she had left her purse on top of the trailer when we stopped. It was amazing that it hadn’t fallen off along the way, and we were thankful for the folks that spotted it and let us know.
One area I had wanted to stop near was at a bluff near Black Brook Beach. Back in the day, before children, we had been there with several others to do some scuba diving. We had found, during a hike, a lovely little cove, or what locally is referred to as a ‘gut’ off the ocean called Squeeker’s Hole. We took turns, over two days, hauling dive gear out to the area and doing a dive in this cove. It had felt like being submerged in a saltwater aquarium with the numbers of small fish, and kelp, crabs and lobsters along the bottom. We even surprised some canoeists who had spotted our bubbles just before we popped our heads out of the water.
The rugged rocks along the shore and the blue water with waves crashing onshore is something that always holds my attention. We stopped close to the Black Brook area at a cobble beach, and another memory from that past trip surfaced. While snorkelling along the shore, toward where the brook entered the sea, we observed that the bottom appeared to be moving. Then we realized it was eels migrating from the sea up the brook. Claudia let out a scream and climbed on my back at that point!
As we drove the Cabot Trail we observed a lot of boats along the shore. A closer look and we could spot floats marking the location of pots. It was crab season, and the folks on board the boats were busy lifting pots, checking them, setting them again and dropping them back in.
As we continued along the trail, we were able to pull over several times at the scenic overlooks that have been added. Many businesses didn’t seem to be open quite yet but, after spotting an OPEN sign, we managed to stop for a break at a delightful bakery and cafe called The Clucking Hen at Englishtown. Home-cooked bread, muffins, oat cakes, scones and other delightful baked goods are all available with fresh coffee. A lot of locals pulled in for breakfast, to take advantage of the seating outside on the side and back porch. We left with an armful of baked goods ourselves.
We finished our Cape Breton and Cabot Trail experience at Baddeck with a visit to the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. This is one great museum! It is well laid out, and the displays certainly expand one’s knowledge of this great man. He was much more complex in his achievements and his collaborations than we generally know.
The museum also describes how his wife, Mabel, his closest “collaborator and confidante,” played an important part in bringing his ideas to life. We learned that she was also an accomplished gardener who, as I suggested, developed this pastime because her husband was always on the phone.