I had a classic conversation yesterday as I waited for my room to be cleaned, where I was mispronouncing a place name without even knowing it. I was telling Bob, the minivan driver, that I’d spent a night camping beside the beautiful Bras D’or lake near Sydney NS, his home town. “Where?’, he said. I said it again, pronouncing it Brass (short a) Door, as I thought I’d heard it said in St Peter’s beside the lake. ‘Where?’ he asked again, with such a confused expression on his face. I tried one more time, but started to lose my nerve. I was completely forgetting that the habit in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is to be more French, not less. ‘Oh!’, he said, delighted to have finally understood this idiot, ‘You mean Br’dor Lake, eh? Yup, lovely spot. A lot of folks think it’s pronounced ‘Brass Door’ or something’ (doing an exact impression of how I had just said it). ‘No, it’s Br’dor. It’s French, see?’ I should say that Bob himself had a great accent, like a more clipped and Celtic version of the more familiar (to me, at least) Canadian one. He was also not that easy for me to understand.

He warmed to the subject. ‘You know Newf’n’lan’ then?’, after I’d told him I’d cycled there for a week too. I’d also tried to pronounce ‘Newfoundland’ right – just as I’d been told on the island, stress on the ‘land’ – but Bob wasn’t having it. ‘It’s Newf’n’lan’. Those Newfies, I can’t understand a word they’re saying half the time.’ A woman sitting on the other side of the lobby was listening to us chat, and called out ‘You’re telling me!”. I gave up and tried to steer the conversation away from me pronouncing anything of any kind.

I’m pretty sure that I visited Halifax this morning. The only doubt in my mind is that most of it was shrouded in a muggy fog so I could have gone somewhere else by mistake. If I did, it was a fantastic spot.

I passed some great-looking bars and restaurants on my way down the hill to the Waterfront area that everyone had told me not to miss..

Then I took a few minutes to admire the various ships docked along the boardwalk waterfront.

Just before a torrential downpour began, I stepped in to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. It was so full of fascinating stuff that I think I’ll do a separate post at some point rather try to cram it in today, which was a very full day even without the museum.

Back at the hotel I changed into cycling gear, retrieved my bike from the luggage store, and left for my next stop, the West Sydney Campground, where I’m writing this.

It was great to finally be back on the bike, and everything seemed to fall into place quite nicely given all that it’s taken to get myself this far. All except for the first three miles of cycling, that is.

I crossed all of the tricky roads from the hotel, avoiding the highway, then turned off onto a road that appeared, at least on ‘street view’ and according to the people at the hotel, to be ok. A bit of gravel here and there, but useable. The alternative was a long stretch of awful busy highway with no hard shoulder, so I was keen to give it a go. For a mile or so of steep downhill it was fine, but then it deteriorated into an unbelievably rough and craggy track, by which time it was too late to contemplate struggling back up the long hill with all of my weight. The road was the sort of thing that a vehicle designed to work at quarries would have had no trouble with, but a road bike with 50lbs of pack is a different matter. Huge pools of water at the bottom of every dip, large and small rocks all over the place, and sudden patches of soft sand. I unclipped one foot to act as emergency steerage against the rocks, and just went for it. I think if I hadn’t been doing all of the gym work before this trip, I would have had a tougher time negotiating the road, because it meant being out of the saddle and steering for the entire time. The only redeeming feature was that it was mostly downhill, even if it led to some fairly urgent braking. After two more miles of this I came upon a couple out walking their dog, who stared at me in disbelief. They told me the rough stuff ended very soon, and I arrived at the proper tarmac with a euphoric cheer. I got more pleasure from the next 20 miles to the campground than I can describe.(No pics of the worst bits for obvious reasons!)

So now I’m all set up at my first Canadian campground for a few years, I’ve swum, cooked, eaten, washed up, and listened to the sound of all the excited kids who have mostly arrived here today like me, because today was the last day of school right across Canada, and they now have 65 days of freedom (this info came from one of the kids messing about at the outdoor pool where I swam.) And tomorrow it’s Canada Day!

A couple of Signs That Are Funny today:

First ‘official’ day starts tomorrow, so I’d better try and get some sleep. See you there.