 | CAPE BRETON ISLAND |
| CAPE BRETON ISLAND |
THE LAND OF GIANTS
With my little visit to Sydney now completed I can hit the highway again - well, rather, the Expressway around the Sydney harbour complex and then travel south-westwards to the Canso Causeway
The road itself is called the Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell Way, and I've no idea who Mabel might be - "she's the wife of Bell" ...ed - and why she might be commemorated by a Highway.
They do say that behind every successful man there's a hardworking woman, but I know from my own experience that when I was married I much preferred to have my wife out in front of me where I could keep a wary eye on her.
Be that as it may, there's plenty to see here and its worth the drive down, but I wonder what on earth goes on in this place just here. I drove past it once but I had to turn round and come back to take another look.
I shall have to add it to the list of attractions to be visited on the coach tour that I shall be arranging to Eastern North America once I return home, along with that place in Covington in upstate New York
But there was one thing that was confusing me round here right now. Back in 2003 I drove around for quite a while looking for a motel for the night, and you might remember that I ended up staying at a bed-and-breakfast along the Cabot Trail.
But along here I've just driven past 7 or 8 motels and most of them look like they've been here for quite a while. So where were they back in 2003? The going rate right now seems to be about $79 a night and in those days it would have been much less than that. So how on earth did I manage to miss them?
Now hands up all of you who recognise this bridge. You ought to as we have been here before as well.
It's Seal Island Bridge of course, at the base of Kelly's Mountain and the bridge crosses the Great Bras d'Or that connects the Bras d'Or lake with the open sea. But then of course you knew that because your memory from 2003 is much better than mine.
Just as in 2003 I took a photo down the Great Bras d'Or. I wonder what the huge industrial plant is over there. Might it be the big power station at Lingan? It's not far enough round the coast if you ask me, but what do I know? E- me if you know.
But look closely at the photo, for just as in 2003 it didn't come out at all like it ought to have done. I'm not quite sure whether there's some kind of optical illusion here that affects everything. The photos were taken at different times of the day - this one in the early morning and that of 2003 in the evening so they should have produced considerably-different lighting effects. It was all very strange.
And so off we go on our climb up Kelly's Mountain - 240 metres of altitude in the next 7 kilometres, a gradient of 3.5% and in places it would be even steeper than that - "you said that last time too" ...ed.
The view from the top is pretty spectacular too. This is St Ann's Lookout and I'm looking down on St Ann's Bay, upstream towards the interior. That is the town of St Ann's right over there at the entrance to the little bay.
I didn't drive that way round last time I was here. You may remember that one of the crew of the ferry down there pointed me in the direction of a Bed-and-Breakfast along the Cabot Trail. But with the view from up here today looking as nice as that, I resolved to go that way round to the Canso Causeway on this trip.
I remember seeing this view back in 2003 though, but why I didn't take a photograph of it then, I really don't know because it's one of the most spectacular views of the whole of Cape Breton Island.
Over there in the distance are the Cape Breton Highlands and they are magnificent too. At their foot is the Cabot Trail, around which I drove in 2003. And with the view from up here you can understand why it was that I decided to go that way.
Mind you, it wasn't just the view that took me out over there. With a decent lens, cropping and expending a selection from a larger photograph works quite well and you can see quite clearly that there's a ferry down there too across the bay.
That's the Englishtown Ferry, that is, and me, having a nautical bent as you might say, I won't ever pass up the opportunity to take to the water. Mind you, the causeway spoils the effect somewhat and reduces what would have been an exciting 15-minute crossing to a mere cockstride of about 200 metres across the water
I'm not used to having my ideas listened to by other people, and having them actually acted upon is something totally new to me. And I remember talking to people around here last time of an idea that I had when I first moved to France .
And that's why I'm surprised to see this here. A Bristol-engined Lodekka chassis with an Eastern Coachworks half-cab body dating from 1966 - one of the very last designs for a 2-man crew before One-Man-Operation became the fashion. I remember well when I was a lad and Crosville, my local bus company in Crewe, had its first delivery of these
You can see what they've done to it too. Kitchen downstairs and dining room upstairs, just like I would do. The only difference of course is that mine would be mobile and have a fixed "round" - village A on Mondays, village B on Tuesdays, village C on Wednesdays and so on. If you can't go to the restaurant then the restaurant shall come to you.
I was really disappointed that my partner at the time wouldn't take up the idea, but there again she didn't seem to want to take up any if my ideas, or any of anyone else's, for that matter.
Somewhere else that I didn't visit when I was here last time was the Auld Cemetery at Englishtown. An obvious port of call for tourists out here because it contains the grave of Giant Angus MacAskill
He was born on Berneray, an island in the Sound of Harris off the coast of Scotland, sometime in 1825 and emigrated with his family to here when he was about 5 or 6. There was no suggestion that he was of abnormal size as a child, but had a growth spurt in his adolescence, reaching a height of 7 feet 9 inches, a full 2 feet taller than his father. Whatever records or reports that exist seem to suggest that despite his size, he was in what might be called "the usual proportions".
Life out here was tough and he died quite early, on 8th August 1863.
During his life he had been billed as a freak of nature and toured with one of Barnum's travelling fairs, before returning home to become a miller. He told tales of having been taunted in the streets of the cities that he had visited, yet had he been alive today, not only would he be extremely old, he would be making a fortune playing netball or whatever they call it over here
I had a good wander around the cemetery because I think that they are fascinating places. There's so much history in a place such as this.
As far as I could tell, every single person - "and all the married ones too" ...ed - in the cemetery is a MacAskill or a MacLean or a McLeod or a Morrison or something like that, Scotspersons to a person as far as I could see.
There is one guy in here, a certain Morrison, who was born on Harris, off the Scottish coast, in 1823. Not just a contemporary but a neighbour of MacAskill and so we can have a good guess about what all of this represents. My opinion is that everyone here is a victim of the tail-end of the Highland Clearances. With the collapse of the clan system the greater part of the population of Northern Scotland was evicted by the new owners and replaced by sheep. The lucky ones were pushed onto a ship and if they were really lucky they survived the voyage. A really dreadful fate awaited those who could not find a ship
So having been to the cemetery, and a right dead end that was too, I made my way down to the ferry terminal for a ship.
Now I'm not much into moving images and so I don't have a film camera, but there are times when I really wish that I one was handy, such as right now.
There's a whole series of clouds being blown across the sky by the high wind, and they casting the most extraordinary shadows across the hills and valleys over there. Its as if there's a whole herd of dinosaurs flying past overhead. It really is quite amazing.
I now know exactly what they mean by the phrase "scudding clouds".
I was curious to know how it is that the ferry is powered. Diesel is of course the one obvious option, but I was prepared for anything.
It is however winched across the channel by presumably an electric motor. I suppose that with a free-moving ferry taking a comparatively long time to dock, they can turn round much quicker with a cable. Although, of course, turning round is a turn of phrase, these ferries being of the "push me- pull you" type.
The big issue with cable ferried though is that the cable impedes the passage of maritime craft up and down the bay. It's a well-known form of harbour defence used by the British at Scapa Flow and even by the defenders of Constantinople during the seige of 1453. It would certainly bring a trawler to a dead stop.
We're on the Torquil MacLean, the ferry that does the crossing here. This was built in 2008, so I didn't travel on this last time I was here but on the Angus MacAskill, which had made the crossing since 1977. They say that this is the busiest ferry in Nova Scotia but having been for a crossing or two on the Halifax-Dartmouth crossing, I'll be intrigued to see their statistics.
It goes without saying that the world-famous Strawberry Moose has to make an appearance for a photo-opportunity. He finds a very-obliging fellow-passenger to assist.
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