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The Cabot Trail

Leanne Haughian
Oct 25, 2017
2 min read

After seeing Mary off at the Halifax airport we felt as if we had seen enough of the south of Nova Scotia. We were both excited to start the Cabot Trail and felt a little push from the weather. We are planning to see the trail via motorcycle. So we headed North! We crossed the Canso Causeway and onto Cape Breton Island. We planned to stop one night in Port Hawkesbury. Here we noticed another issue with Van Morrison. So up to this point we have replaced the governor on the transmission, the alternator, brake master cylinder and now the van is stalling at acceleration. It always was a little tricky when starting that it would take some time to warm up and sometimes of the hop it would stall. Also we would have to manually release the choke. But now it is not drivable. Most of the repairs have been fairly quick and inexpensive to fix. Luckily there is a parts place in Port Hawkesbury. Here we are in a Wal Mart parking lot using a shopping cart as a work bench while Paul pretty much rebuilds the carburetor. We spent 2 days in Port Hawkesbury the van is now fixed and running better than ever. We now head to Baddeck Nova Scotia.

Baddeck is beautiful and a starting point for the Cabot Trail. Its funny that with this lifestyle things are always quickly changing. The 2 days at Port Hawkesbury were definitely not Instagram type van life! It was cold, not a very pretty town and we had broken down, however we kept fairly good spirits and moved on and Baddeck turned out to be great! We stayed for 3 nights, had a great time seeing the trail, found a shower for really cheap, talked with some great people. Its important I think to take things as they come!

We toured the Cabot Trail in 2 days first we travelled the eastern side to the North and the second day west to the opposite North side.

It is hard to explain the experience. For those not familiar with the trail you ride along the coast through winding switch back roads along the cliffs of the northern tip of Cape Breton Island. The vibrant red, orange and yellow of the maple leaves seem almost painted amongst the dark green evergreens on a mountainous backdrop. Every turn either my bottom jaw was dropped or I was nudging Paul to stop for a picture. So we ended up and so does everyone else attempt to master the drive by shooting!

Our favorite section and most scenic is the west side. The ocean is more visible, I think the altitude is higher on this side. This does make for a chillier ride, but its worth it. We did only one hike however there are many to do. You could spend much time exploring Cape Breton National Park. We did the skyline trail. It was recommended by a local the day before. Again it allowed for some pretty great view points of the trail.