From New Scotland to New England

September 12 – 29

After the highs of our Newfoundland trip we were feeling a little like kids at the end of a day at the rollercoaster park – adrenaline drained and a little sleepy. Luckily, meeting up with friends we haven’t seen in years helped us regain our mojo.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Of all things it was an Australian magazine (Gourmet Traveller) that led us to discover our next stop – a wine and foodie region in Nova Scotia. Al was disbelieving at first, and then skeptical, about a wine region in Nova Scotia; who’d even heard of such a thing?

Wolfville is a small university town on the southern shore of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. We were considering visiting, and then were ultimately convinced based on rave reviews from the Aussie couple we met on a deserted road in Newfoundland. Wolfville a really nice, quaint little town with some very good restaurants, a beautiful craft brewery in an old church and some surprisingly good wines. Also with a nice dose of scenery and history thrown in. Definitely worth a stop if you’re in Nova Scotia.

While Nova Scotia is not well known for wine regions, the Gaspereau Valley of Wolfville is a microclimate for growing white wine grapes. In fact, it is the only place in Canada that has its own Appellation of Origin – Tidal Bay. It’s a light, easy drinking kind of wine that works well on a summer day and with the signature seafood of the area. (Normally, when we see 'light, easy drinking' on the menu we immediately think 'Oh - it's tasteless swill!'... but in this case, it was lovely!)

To carry the name Tidal Bay, the wine must meet a set of criteria:

• 100% Nova Scotian grapes
• At least 51% of the wine must be made from one or more of Nova Scotia’s signature grape varietals including L’Acadie Blanc, Seyval, Vidal or Geisenheim 318.
• The wine can be aged in up to 20% new oak but if the wine tastes oaky, it will be rejected by the tasting panel.
• Concentration – to ensure the concentration of flavours, the yields (amount of grapes as measured in tonnes) per acre of vineyard has a threshold. For Tidal Bay it is four tonnes per acre.
• Balance – To ensure the wines strike the right balance of body, acidity and fruitiness, wineries must adhere to minimum and maximum alcohol standards, minimum acidity levels and maximum sugar levels.

To ensure it is the ‘cool, crisp, aromatic wine’ that represents the area each vintage must also pass a blind tasting by an expert panel. In short, the rigors a winemaker needs to go through each and every year to retain their appelation are... well, rigorous.

So we came up with a plan to rent some bikes from Mercator vineyard and cycle around to a few wineries. However, unlike our experience in Isle d’Orleans these were not (I repeat not) electric bikes. They were "three-speed" ‘cruisers’ which were perfectly designed for wheeling along the local section of the Harvest Moon Trailway, a disused railway line that has been converted into 110km of (FLAT) cycle / walking path through the Annapolis Valley from Wolfville to the historical town of Annapolis Royal. We, however, decided to veer off this trail after less than a km, in order to head to a few wineries. What we didn’t factor in was that vineyards tend to be grown on sloping valleys. As we made our way up the first hill we realised the bikes, while showing three gears, in actual fact only had two gears available at the best of times. And in a kind of reverse karma, Al’s bike mostly only had the one gear. Making up for the super bike he hired in Isle d’Orleans.

We didn’t really know what to expect of the wineries and had in mind small scale growers offering tastings out of their back door. (Which would have been great as we love this type of experience). But in fact, many of the wineries are so large and fancy they put some of the glitzy wineries in Margaret River or Napa a run for their money.

We made a stop at Benjamin Bridge. While it is a beautiful setting, we weren’t overly excited by these wines, even their signature sparklings. Maybe it was that while it was a large venue, it felt a bit deserted as their restaurant was closed and they had very few staff on hand. But we suffered through...

Next stop wasn’t on the wine map but we were curious about a sign we saw along the way, for L’Acadie winery. This may or may not have been in an effort to delay riding back up the steep escarpment. It turned out to be a great call as it was possibly our favourite winery of the day.

L’Acadie has a small, unassuming tasting room run by the family who grow the grapes and make the wine. One of the daughters took us through a wonderful tasting (and then another one the next day!) and explained that her dad, Bruce Ewert, was the sparkling wine maker for top wineries in British Columbia before he set up this winery in the early 2000’s. Not surprisingly, they’ve won several awards for their wines.

We had a brief stop at Gapereau Wines which was not to our taste, being a little too sweet. We couldn’t put off the hill any longer and we made our way back to Mercator which had some nice wines. Hidden upstairs at the back is also a very nice patio where you can sit in comfy couches while you taste.

Having dropped off the bikes, we walked the next leg to dinner at Grand Pre winery and Le Caveau restaurant. Our pleasant stroll along the bike trail turned into a mad dash through giant raindrops as we approached the restaurant, but luckily it was warm rain and the destination was worth it. 

Grand Pre was the driving force behind our decision to stop in this area. Grand Pre has some interesting wines, not surprising given they are wine-making pioneers in the area in the 1990’s. Dinner of Nova Scotian seafood and locally grown produce was indeed delicious and the bar area outside looked very inviting had it not been soaked by the rain. 

We must also mention Lightfoot and Wolfville winery, where we had a delicious lunch in their stunning outdoor patio overlooking the vines and the Minas Basin. Great food and lovely staff. 

Luckett winery was the only one in the area offering lunch and apparently was absolutely heaving on the Wednesday in September when we visited. So, pack a picnic or book ahead would be our advice.

 

Grand Pre

Being new fans of UNESCO sites after our recent Gros Morne adventure, we decided to check out the site just outside of Wolfville: Grand Pre. Unfortunately, the Visitors Centre paled in comparison to the one in Gros Morne, but the landscape was still very cool.

As you may know, the Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world (the second highest being in Derby WA which we by chance have also visited on our trip across Australia). And by high tides we’re talking several metres. So, when the French settled in the area 400 years ago you can imagine it was quite frustrating to have your vegetable fields flooded by salty water twice a day. Those ingenious Acadians used a clever solution from Europe of creating a huge, dyked area that allowed fresh water to flow out but didn’t allow salt water in. A whole lot of work building dam walls by hand and a few simple one way ‘sluices’ and you’re off to the races. These work so well they are still in use today.

 

Low  tide in the town of Wolfville

 

A few hours later at high tide

 

Left side is fields of vegetables, right side is salt water mud flats at low tide

New England

Over 20 years ago we met our friend Beth when she and her friend Michelle came to stay with us in our flat in London. They were on a long world tour and stopped in to visit our flatmate, Phil. Fast forward 15 years and we’ve been seeing Beth’s stunning photos of Cape Cod on social media and wanting to visit for a while now. And so the last part of our East Coast summer adventure was planned around a visit to Cape Cod.

Acadia National Park, Maine

On theme with following tips from friends new and old, we camped a couple of nights in Acadia National Park in the very North-Eastern corner of the US.

One of the highlights of the park is the Carriage Roads, 45 miles of unsealed paths through the park. They were established by J.D. Rockefeller between 1913 and 1940 as a way of getting around the park on horseback without being near roads. The carriageways are designed to work with the contours of the hills and within the existing forest, with gentle gradients that could be used by horse drawn carriages. This makes them perfect for bikes and walking as well as for horses. It must have been a huge undertaking to both establish the roads and then for the full rehabilitation that just finished in 2021.

 We found the town of Bar Harbor (the base for the park) a little overwhelming after the peace and quiet of small towns in Eastern Canada. It was a real tourist town -- and the tourists were out in force -- making the most of the September weather. We retreated to our campsite to plan our next adventures and play some cribbage. 

 We hired bikes from Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop as they had the best reviews and they didn’t disappoint. The added bonus is that the shop is on the edge of town, so you only have to ride on the roads for a few minutes before you get to the park. We opted for the regular bikes this time rather then the electric ones and for the ‘Around the Mountain’ loop. The shop owner seemed a little disbelieving that we’d be able to make it around the full 25 mile loop (couple of oldies!). But actually it’s not as hard as they make it out to be. Yes, there are some steep parts, but these are short and then there’s plenty of flat and down hill to keep you motivated. A fun and different way to get around a national park as an alternative to hiking.

 

There are about a dozen stone bridges along the carriageway 

Rockefeller’s Teeth – the granite rocks that line the carriageroads

Shoulda got the e-bikes...

On a driving day pit stop we discovered that Maine is very serious about Disc Golf. There are a stack of courses including this one at Sabattus Disc Golf Course where we played that had an enormous shop. A little different to buying a disc from out of the trunk of some guy's car, which is the usual way these things go in Canada. 

Boston

Our stop in Boston on the way to Cape Cod happened to coincide with Michelle celebrating a half century of ‘orbits of the sun’ so there was to be some good food and wine as well as sightseeing. And we splurged on a hip hotel. When we told the bell hop it was over 25 years since we’d been to Boston he made a valiant effort to hide the fact he hadn’t even been born then.

 Our friend Patrick visits Boston several times a year for work and when we mentioned we would be there and hinted it would be great to see him, he made it happen. Three fun nights out catching up, with delicious dinners in the backstreets of Beacon Hill at 75 Chestnut, a share plate mezze at Ilona as well as birthday treat at Mooncusser.

 

We also hit the local theatre with the show Sing Street, a fun musical based on a movie set in 1980’s Ireland. It was initially set to premiere on Broadway in April 2020, but that didn’t happen so we got to see its pre-Broadway run. The story is based on a teenage boy, Conner, who starts a band to impress an older girl and dreams of leaving Ireland for the greener pastures of far away London. The music was all designed to bring us oldies right back to our high school years, with a soundtrack including the Cure, Duran Duran, and (of course) A-ha. Great fun. 

Boston Central Library

We had done the Freedom Trail historical walk on previous visits so weren’t sure what else there was to see in Boston. Luckily our friend Patrick had a couple of gems of ideas.

The Boston Central Library would not have been on our radar as a place to go, but it’s actually a stunning building both inside and out. It’s the first municipal library in North America, built in the 1890’s. The library’s first benefactor, Joshua Bates, insisted that the library be ‘an ornament to the city’ and he certainly succeeded. The architecture is stunning on the outside, and the internal courtyard is modelled on the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. Inside the building the walls are adorned with huge murals and paintings by leading European artists of the time. And the reading room is the kind of place where you feel like you should be seriously studying or working to crack some international spy ring. Those of you who have seen the movie Spotlight will recognise the huge room and green lamps. If you can’t visit, they have a cool drone fly-through online here. 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was another unexpected and interesting spot. Isabella strikes us as a person who sets her mind to something and gets it done. Wealthy to start with, she then inherited a chunk of change and quickly set about travelling the world and spending as much of it was possible on an eclectic collection of historical and artistic items.

Naturally when one amasses such a collection you need your own personal museum to display it all. So in 1901 she had a huge gallery built modelled on Italian Palazzos with Roman, Byzantine and Gothic influences. As you can imagine, coming across this in the middle of modern Boston and feeling like we’d been transported to Europe, was more than a little surprising.

Unfortunately, the online guide is not great. It has a huge amount of information but is very difficult to navigate as you walk through the gallery. We opted to walk and soak it all in, then look up specific paintings that we liked.

 Many of the structures in the gallery were ‘architectural fragments’ bought in Europe. The central courtyard in quite stunning and all the plants are changed every three months to provide a seasonal display. Her will states that no works can be bought or sold, so it stays as it was when she died in 1924.

 

One of the interesting parts of the gallery was not planned by Isabella. In 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the gallery in the single largest property theft in the world. Works included those by Degas, Rembrandt and Vermeer, none of which have been recovered. The gallery doesn’t shy away from the embarrassment of the brazen theft, but keeps the empty frames on display as a reminder and provides a description as part of the audio tour. You can hear it here.  

Cape Cod

Our visit to Cape Cod was very low key and local which was perfect as a wind down to the end of our holiday. There was plenty of time just hanging with Beth and we had a couple of visits with Mike and Mary, Beth’s adorable parents who made us feel right at home and in fact a little like we were on the set of an American sit-com.

Our images of walks along the endless beaches rapidly disappeared as we drove towards the Cape in a torrential downpour and then had gale force winds the next day. All the tail end of Hurricane Fiona which was to hit Eastern Canada a few days later with all its force. We were feeling very lucky and also so sad for all the people in the places we’d just visited. as most of the Maritimes and NL were without power, and many homes destroyed.

We took advantage of an indoor day to see a movie at the Cape Cinema with a dozen locals also sheltering from the elements. The cinema is a little piece of history in the Cape. It was built in 1930 and modelled after a church so is a very quaint spot for a movie. Inside the ceiling is covered by a huge 6,400 square foot mural in bright colours and it still has the old school chairs and wooden floorboards. The cinema hosted the very first screening of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. The actor who played the Wicked Witch of the West was a player at the local Playhouse and arranged for a test screening at the Cape Cinema. 

Al doing his Hulk impression

The wonderful Mary and Mike, Cape Code residents for over 50 years! 

In Newfoundland they give directions by looking out the window and explaining the route according to the different coloured houses and random boats left in front yards. In Cape Cod they do something similar: all destinations are pointed out by using your arm held up at a right angle as the guide. Chatham Bars Inn, where Beth works, is on the elbow. On our second day we headed all the way to the fingertips and one of the drawcards of Cape Cod: Provincetown, or P-town as the locals call it (not sure if this is affectionate or not).

The narrow streets and small worker cottage style homes of P-town reminded us of the backstreets of Venice Beach in LA. Its reputation as an artist colony draws all kinds of people but on the day we were there it seemed to be mostly well-heeled types on a day trip from Boston. Once again, the crush of tourists was a little much for us so after a quick walk through the town we headed for the spot Beth had recommended: the Causeway, a mile long rock wall built in 1911 to stop the destruction of the marshland by shifting sand dunes. It was a great walk at low tide and fun to watch gulls collecting, smashing and feasting on fresh clams. 

On our last day in Cape Cod, Beth took us to Live, Love Local where we could lay on the grass while listening to local musicians, meet some of Beth's friends, cruise a stack of local artist stalls and generally chill out. The weather was starting to turn warmer so we did get a glimpse of the stunning beaches at low tide sunset.

 

Our last stop in New England was in Vermont where we were a little early for the fall leaves (or, as we discovered, ‘foliage’ as Americans call it) to change colour. We didn’t have enough time to hike Mt Manfield which had been recommended so we opted for Mount Hunger via the Middlesex Route which was somewhat exhilarating given the sheer rockfaces and threatening rainstorm.

Headed for ‘home’

A quick stop in Ottawa to book end our trip with a visit once again to catch up with Dave, Nori, James and Akiko. Fun times as always with equal shares of reminiscing about Japan, commiserating and laughing about the hiccups of moving back to Canada to live, and dreaming about the future. All over some delicious prawn dumplings, spicy cucumber salad and bao buns at Datsun restaurant.

 Arriving in Huntsville we were greeted by the fall colours at their peak. A nice way to start our month ‘off’ before our next travel adventure begins. Next stop Australia and then South America!