Travel Blog: South Shore and Annapolis Valley

On Wednesday, we made the most of our vehicle rental to tour the south-western point of the province, exiting Halifax and following the scenic lighthouse route towards Peggy’s Cove. It’s a tiny village of 60 that’s easy to miss when cruising along the main road, tucked away just off the eastern coast of St. Margaret’s Bay. Entering the cove is a surreal experience, so picture-perfect it is that it feels as though you’ve stepped straight into one of the postcards that are likely the spot’s primary export.

We were fortunate to arrive early enough in the day and in the season that the village wasn’t packed with tour groups—I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the locals simply left during the high season to avoid the rush, which is likely to make the barely-inhabited atmopshere all the more unsettling. Though it’s beautiful, it just has a feeling of being almost too calm, like the remote, ghostly island of Half-Life 2‘s Lost Coast.

My dad inadvertently became the poster boy for the Peggy's Cove safety crew, ignoring the warnings and suffering the consequences

Prior to arriving at the lighthouse, we were warned in the vistors’ centre to stay off the black rocks closer to the shoreline. Evidently, these are the spots where the kelp and algae have accumulated to create a deceptively slippery surface that’s claimed the bones (and even lives) of more than a few outsiders. However, these spots do offer some of the best photo ops, and I was able to escape with only a minor slip. As the inset shows, my dad wasn’t so lucky. He’s okay, though; the black eye comes from an unrelated incident the night before that involved a bad case of food poisoning, blacking out, and landing on the bathroom tile. I’m now taking bets on the location and severity of his next injury.

From Peggy’s Cove, we made a whirlwind tour through Mahone Bay and pressed on to Lunenburg, one of the South Shore’s most notable fishing towns. It’s got the typical selection of tourist amenities, but is no less beautiful, especially in the perfect weather conditions that the day brought.

It’s typical for most road-trippers on this route to continue further down the coast towards Liverpool, and eventually Yarmouth, but my own historical interests took precedence over the ordinary. We changed course and headed north up towards the Annapolis Valley, the northern coast that creates the Bay of Fundy’s Nova Scotia shore. You see, the valley’s namesake comes from Annapolis Royal, or formerly, Port Royal, one of the earliest Canadian settlements and the birthplace of the Acadian peoples at the hands of Samuel de Champlain. You may have heard of him.

A recreation of the Port's original crest above the entrance

I’ll skip the history lesson, but I’d recommend looking it up for an interesting piece of early Canadian lore. Sadly, the reconstruction on the historic site was closed by the time we arrived; I had hoped to become a full-fledged member of the Order of Good Cheer, one of the country’s oldest social clubs, founded to fight the crippling boredom of spending month after month in a remote settlement, but alas, it was not to be. Hopefully I’ll return here some day and share a pint with the ghosts of the nation’s past. Until then, I’ll toast to the explorers from the comfort of the inn.

Having made the two-hour trek across the province, it only seemed natural to make our final stop in Digby, world-famous for its scallops, and to a much lesser extent, its ferry to Saint John. Like the other towns before it, it’s a small, quiet, and remote spot that runs at a notably different pace from the kind of Edmonton life I’m used to, or even Halifax for that matter. Truthfully, there’s not much I can say about the town beyond offering more praises for the scallops that live up to their fame and yet another gorgeous Atlantic town that’s full of plenty of great photo ops. It’s quite out of the way, so if you’re not in the area, it may or may not be worth the extra trip, but if you’re as excited about pre-Confederation history as I am, you’ve got nothing to lose.

We leave Halifax for Cape Breton Island tomorrow; expect more photos and updates within the next few days.