[2023 – Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia – 297 km – Loop, Badeck to Badeck]
I start the trail in Badeck with a coffee and pastry in a local café.
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I am pumped from spending the previous day in Mabou, eating fish and chips, drinking local beer, and listening to a Celtic band – fiddle, guitar, piano, and briefly, bagpipes.
Locals took turns dancing the jig while tourists stood taking videos with their phones.
The last time I was on Cape Breton Island, cell phones didn’t exist.
People just clapped and tapped their feet, laughing with the joy of the experience.
How surreal to see half the audience with phones held out in front of them.
Myself, I didn’t take even a single photograph, though I jotted a couple of things in a notebook, like I used to do in the old days.
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The Cabot Trail is a cycling mecca, and even this late in the season, there are at least a hundred cyclists that I see, slowly climbing the steep hills through Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
One hill has a 13-degree slope, but I don’t see anyone walking their bikes up it.
The views all along the route are spectacular, whether along the shore, or looking into the island’s interior.
The villages along the coast are still filled with tourists, but they are thinning out.
There always seems to be an empty bench to rest my weary legs and enjoy a snack from a local grocer.
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I don’t need bug repellent on this trail.
I guess the season has passed mostly; the perpetual wind helps too.
I see many people, but talk to few, except for an off-duty worker reading a book on a hill overlooking a fishing village.
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We talk about job opportunities on the island, literature, education.
He’s reading a classic by Charles Dickens.
He’s learning to speak Gaelic.
His children travel far by bus to go to school.
He says that most of his friends leave the island for work.
Some come back to buy property, but property is getting crazy expensive, even on the island where prices are traditionally very low.
Some never come back at all, having built lives elsewhere in Canada, in Alberta and Ontario primarily.
He says he’s one of the lucky ones who has work he likes and can stay home with his wife and children.
He and his family live in the house of his in-laws.
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Back in Badeck, I check my van and see that I didn’t get a parking ticket.
That’s good news.
I visit my favourite café again, clean myself up in the washroom, and settle down with a coffee, pastry, and a good book.
