Flashback Friday: Southern Nova Scotia Adventure

Day 3: Liverpool to Lunenburg

Michael, who had report back to home in Halifax, departed on the Strom  in the early hours of the morning, but Rob and I kept pushing up the so-called Lighthouse route that by accident we’d realized that we’d pretty much followed to date. We’d originally planned to criss-cross the province through Route 8 and Route 12, but figured we’d be better off sticking around White Point. Especially after scarfing down another delicious breakfast and watching the waves crash on the beach to the sound of ‘Arris belching. Today, because we’d greatly cut down our planned mileage, we were able to make more stops along the way, taking our time and checking out the communities en route. Although Big Money is making inroads to the region, with the odd swanky house sticking out on a corner overlooking the ocean, most of this area is still filled with average folks scraping a living out of the woods or the ocean. It’s also some of the best riding on the east coast.

Surprisingly, the roads are still pretty good – most of Atlantic Canada has pavement on par with 1995-era Sarajevo once you get out of the monied regions. Down here, although there were bumpy stretches, they didn’t last long enough to ruin your day. Lunchtime in Broad Cove gave CMG a chance to enter the records of infamy. Rob stopped at the Best Coast Coffee Gallery, and ordered some coffee and eats. Then, after sitting down and tucking in, we saw the sign: Cash Only.

These days, most folks don’t carry a lot of cash, and Rob and I are no exception. We asked the waitress what the consequences off our potential indigence could be. Somewhat gleefully, she informed us that if we couldn’t pay, we’d be banished to the Wall of Shame. Apparently, there was actual wall space that kept record of bums like us. Relieved to hear we wouldn’t be stuck doing dishes for the afternoon, we tucked in with gusto. Shame is nothing new to us, and the food was too good to worry about the consequences anyway. Thankfully, Rob found a $20 bill tucked into his wallet with the moths, and all was good. Plus, he knew the owners anyway, so he was pretty sure we could skate on the consequences.

After lunch, we crossed the road to chat with the owners, off doing some yard maintenance while wrapped up in bug suits to ward off the many black flies in the area. They gave us a tip on a fun, twisty road to check out en route to Lunenburg, and also a ferry pass. The Italy Crossing Road turned out to be typical of the secondary routes in the Bridgewater area: As long as the pavement has been kept up, there are a lot of fun twisties around this town, for some reason. A fast blast fix had, we pointed the bikes towards the LaHave River and caught the ferry that cuts out a significant distance up one side of the river to Bridgewater and back down the other side.

And an expensive ferry it would’ve been, too, if we hadn’t had the punch card, which drops fares from $5.50 per vehicle (no motorcycle discount) to a mere $13.50 per 10 – obviously designed to milk the one-trip tourist traffic such as us. Even worse, the ferryman didn’t honour his profession’s ancient pact with motorcyclists, and made us wait for all the other cars to disembark before he let us leave. Still, we managed to lose the traffic pretty quickly on the back road into Lunenburg, where the tourism department had put us up in the Lunenburg Arms that had been nicely converted from an old 19th century rooming house.

Our room was perched on the top floor and looking over the roofs of all the old-fashioned buildings between us and the harbour, it was almost possible to feel like you were going back in time (there was too much traffic for the illusion), but Lunenburg does have the feel of an old Atlantic fishing port stuck in time. A good thing too. Eats: White Point Beach Resort, Best Coast Coffee Gallery, Knot Pub Accommodations: Lunenburg Arms View CMG Spring Tour, Day 3 in a larger map DAY 4 >