Gran Tourismo in Nova Scotia

I’m already happy as a Digby clam. I’ve just arrived in Halifax International airport with my beloved heading for a jaunt around one of the most feted roads in the world, the Cabot Trail. Then at 11.30 at night, life improves immeasurably when our pre-booked rented Dodge Neon isn’t at the airport. “We still have a Mitsubishi Outlander…it’s a sort of minivan” says the nice young man at the rental office. Sort of a living death, anything else?

“And we have a Mustang…a GT.”

Hmm, “GT”. Gran Tourismo - it sounds so much better when you say it out loud letting the fricatives roll off the tongue and dragging out that last ‘o’ forever. Much like that Italian football commentator. Gran Tourismo means Big Touring; large scale barreling about over long distances. Well, we have swathes of Nova Scotia to cover in the next ten days so a 4.6l V8 with 260 hp and 302 lb-ft of torque might come in handy.

“OK, it’ll do. Same price as the Neon, right?”

One of the first things you’re forced to notice about the Mustang is the styling. It’s so butch. A large protuberance bulges manfully from the hood, a ram air forced induction intake scoop sort of thing we are led to think. Mouldings to the rear also protrude purposefully out into the airstream perhaps to usher cataracts of cooling air towards the rear disks. Closer examination reveals they are both falsies. All these scoops are blanked off admitting nothing but their artifice. Apparently only the SVT and Mach I model Mustangs get working bulges. We will be driving the cheap lie, a silicon injected poseur, a faux muscle car and I don’t care because it’s still not a Neon.

Ford have research grouped the interior into a generic facsimile of every dashboard ever made except the nice ones.

Ford have research grouped the interior into a generic facsimile of every dashboard ever made except the nice ones. It’s black, adequately functional and pretends, although not terribly well or hard, to be made of leather. All is plastic except the seats, which are some form of leather, albeit from a species of plastic cow I think, but they are unusually comfortable and power adjustable in all the right dimensions. So this Mustang is a lying well-padded strumpet but it goes well.

We head north from Halifax airport along an unusually quiet four-lane highway towards Truro. There’s traffic but it’s spread out thin and it stays out of the way while the Mustang cruises at 130kmh ticking over at 2 or 3 rpm. There’s barely any wind or road noise and only a faint throb and a muted growl from the engine when hastened up a hill or past a truck. I may not know much about fast cars but I definitely felt satisfying surges of power, not “Oh (invoke deity of choice here)” thrilling but you can get to “Ooops, too fast.” quite quickly.

Nova Scotia is lovely. Native north Americans, the French and the Scots all left a legacy of place names so you can pass through a Glencoe, a Cap Le-Moine and a Whycocomagh in a day. Much like Old Scotia there are rolling hills, the Borders come to mind, smothered in greenery, pine and fir trees, windy roads, clear tumbling streams by the roadside and long periods of time without seeing other cars. Past Truro, New Glasgow and Antigonish on Highway 104 we head towards the Canso Causeway, which connects the island of Cape Breton to the rest of Nova Scotia.

The Canso causeway itself is cause for admiration. Ask your loved one for forgiveness and have a civil engineering moment here. Half a mountain was dumped into to this deep wide channel in 1955 and you can see quite clearly which half of the mountain they used. Across the causeway at the foot of the Cabot Trail proper we fork right for Baddeck. To the right of us along the way Blue Herons stalk lunch in the lake and a Bald Eagle circles overhead, Very Discovery Channel. The roadkill is particularly diverse ranging from foxes and raccoons to the larger and more startling ex-porcupine, quills erect, head flat. In some of the more remote areas, the wildlife uses the roads for it’s own recreational purposes too. Every day, no matter where we were driving, one chipmunk would inevitably scamper in front of the car throwing itself at the passing wall of tyres. Whether it was the same chipmunk every time we never could tell.

From Baddeck (home of Alexander Graham Bell and his excellent hydroplane), you can go either clockwise or withershins around the Trail, We head clockwise for our first night’s stop at a Margaree. I can’t remember which Margaree because there seem to be several dozen; Margaree Forks, Margaree Centre, Margaree Valley and Margaree’s East, Northeast and Southwest and, for all I know, a Margaree for every point on the compass.

In July much of the greenery was flowering so it looked like mad florists had just done the whole island.

A big fish-filled river runs through the valley and the land is verdant like Borneo North. All along the roadside a veritable salad of species is leaping out of the ground right up to the very edge of the tarmac. In the gravel, in the hard shoulders, anywhere a bit of plant life can get a grip, the opportunistic little photosynthesisers move in; road edge to mountain top, green everywhere. In July much of the greenery was flowering so it looked like mad florists had just done the whole island. Just try not to wince when you go past a clear cutting scar. Along most of the roads you can only ever see one bend ahead but there isn’t an adverse camber anywhere so driving can spirited should the mood take you. And it will. Winters are obviously hard on the roads though as the edges are crumbling and the surfaces can get lumpy and corrugated in parts. The Mustang skitters a bit across the corrugations but it’s got big boots on and holds on without inducing any sphincter tightening moments. This is perhaps where the Traction Control device is doing its job best.

At the end of the Valley, Margaree Harbour presides over the meeting of the river and the sea where the Trail leads North. From the many Margaree’s we follow the Trail and coastline to Cheticamp, pausing only to catch sight of a pod of whales offshore tourist-watching. There’s a lot of whale watching to be done all round the trail so you don’t have to stop at the first one you see. We opted for a Zodiac and survival suit version; the go-fast, see whales, seals etc get wet, great fun version. Two 100 hp four-stroke Mercury’s provided the power but I saw a larger boat boasting 600 hp so shop wisely.

A grizzled North Carolina biker complained the turns are so tight he grounded his Harley’s pegs too often

North of Cheticamp the Cape Breton Trail enters the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The geology is different here, here be drama. So it costs a buck or two to get in, pay up, it’s worth it. Pay to stay for a few days. You can drive the whole 187 mile Trail in a longish day but don’t. Four days lets you slow down enough to explore and there’s a lot to find. The excellent well-marked road coils and winds upwards, ever upwards around bluffs and promontories and other forms of lofty geology revealing a surfeit of gob-smacking vistas. Curiously the outlook points weren’t packed with tour buses and tourists. 

There were more bikers than grannies. The bikers came from everywhere. The Quebecois bikers live close enough to bring their chopped and raked Hogs for a spin while the High Mileage brigade on Gold Wings and Touring Harleys paraded more sedately around the Trail. The two Beemers I scoped earlier with 80,000 on the clock passed me again and were having a much better time on the wiggly bits as were the crotch rocket tourers. A grizzled North Carolina biker complained the turns are so tight he grounded his Harley’s pegs too often. I wept for him. With all the gear stirring and braking necessary for the descending switchbacks, an automatic gearbox is a necessity. Then I was free to concentrate on steering while Freda, staring, unblinking into the steep, deep treelined abyss to her right tries not to scream. 

The Trail was first paved in 1957 and when it runs through the National Park, the Trail is kept in excellent condition. But when the Trail weaves out of the park again it can feel like it hasn’t been paved since 1957. Road conditions can vary from slightly lumpy to very lumpy, like old dog lumpy, with loose and decaying shoulders in parts. But when it’s good, it’s very, very good and you have to make a choice between going whee or slowing down enough to go wow. For a truly slo-mo wow take the sideroad off the Trail itself at Cape North and drive to the end of the road. A small gravel road – a dotted line on the map - winds on to Meat Cove. 

After several minutes rattling along at little more than walking pace and wrapping the car around ever diminishing radius curves where the path teaches you that sometimes you have to look sideways to see forward, we reached Meat Cove itself, a small, cosy bay with steep rocky sides. There’s almost nothing there there. Some houses, a small campsite and a handful of kayaks. Nothing but scenery. Rocks, cliffs, trees, waves, whales, fresh air, a stream, and pebbles as smooth as peppermints, perfect skimmers. Let the absence of noise and the awareness that you haven’t seen a billboard for days sink in slowly. And you can see the edge of the world from here. Savour and repeat.

Heading back south leads you past Aspy Bay, John Cabot’s purported landing place in North America. He did pick a lovely spot, perfect for picnics and colonising. The Eastern half of the trail tracks south through the Ingonsish’s plural to the hyperluxurious Keltic Lodge where the corporate hominids frolic. Across the bay from the Keltic Lodge stands Cape Smokey, a high point of the Trail at 900 feet. The hiking trail here is regarded as one the better ones. The Cabot Trail, now becoming markedly less rugged, more Scottish Bordersesque again, swings back to Baddeck again where the people are. We’re in road blight country now. RV’s, the size of RockStar on Tour buses, tow SUV’s as support vehicles. On weekends they migrate north at a stately 80kmh (50mph in real money). Smaller RV’s, the size of retirement bungalows, wear spray skirts that swing jauntily like a hula dancer’s skirt if you can pass them. If you can’t pass you’re stuck behind a mutant road sweeper. These rolling road blocks sport names such as ‘Jaguar’, ‘Kestrel’ and ‘Dolphin’ betokening nimbleness and a certain fleetness of foot, fluke or feather which kills me because the way these things are driven, they should have names like ‘Road Manatee’ or ‘Cow’.

With an economy based heavily on dead or doomed sealife, Cape Breton fish producers have a vested interest in getting their catch to market as quickly as possible. The trouble is, the market is now in either Boston or Japan so eighteen-wheelers have to deliver fish to Halifax airport at rally car speeds. 

No campers, SUV’s or minivans. No Buicks. Clear road ahead.

The truck driver’s enthusiasm can spook the poor touring minivan driver when he looks rearward to see one of these 53 foot monsters barreling downhill at him at over 120 kmh. It’s fairly easy to blow by the trucks and slowpokes in the Mustang. Most of the time it doesn’t even have to downshift, give it a tad more throttle there’s a faint throaty burbling and whoosh, we’re done and that’s $15 of gas gulped down. Twenty litres of gasoline per 100km isn’t exactly economical but it’s not economical with the fun either. 

Planting one’s foot to the plush makes it much noisier and faster but the field of vision shrinks rapidly to nothing but road so that’s not the best tactic for actually seeing something of the passing countryside. With so little traffic on the road I’m amazed to find I can go at my own pace for long stretches. No campers, SUV’s or minivans. No Buicks. Clear road ahead. With good cambers. It finally sinks in that I’m not watching Joe Blow’s brake lights come on at every green light, every junction, every time the road deviates by so much as a degree from straight and this is pure, heavenly tarmac’d bliss, the best of all possible driving conditions. 

Us townies don’t get much time with empty road ahead and traffic far behind so just for a while there, driving became a pleasure again. I almost felt grateful to Henry Ford for a moment but it passed. It was Cape Breton that made the touring grand.