Having decided against going away for our holidays this summer (and in the interest of keeping things relaxed and low-stress), this year we opted instead for a three-day “staycation” down on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. I was a bit embarrassed by the fact that I’d never really been further southwest than Lunenburg, and knew there were some interesting sights to be seen. So early on Monday morning last week, we hit the road.
Two hours down Highway 103 got us to the village of Port Joli, where we veered off onto the side road to the Seaside Adjunct of Kejimkujik National Park. I’d heard lots of great things about the Adjunct (though I still have yet to visit the main park – maybe this fall) and we planned to spend the morning hiking to the beach there. It’s really a beautiful spot – a half-hour’s walk through forest and across bogs strewn with pitcher plants brought us to the seashore. The white sand beach stretches for several miles, and had just been re-opened to visitors after several months – access is barred for part of the year as endangered birds use the beach as a nesting place. The large rocks found just off the shoreline are home to lots of cormorants and other seabirds, as well as a colony of seals, who could be seen sunning themselves on the rocks.
The afternoon was spent doubling-back to the town of Lunenburg, where we’d planned to spend the night. We took the scenic option, however, following the Lighthouse Route east along the coast from Port Medway – a very pretty stretch of road, passing through lots of small fishing villages (and a nice local coffee house in the middle of nowhere, at Broad Cove). At LaHave, we queued up to take the cable ferry across the river (sailing time: 10 minutes), then drove into Lunenburg via its southern back roads.
That evening we’d booked dinner at the much-lauded restaurant Fleur de Sel, which last year opened a suite for overnight guests on its second floor. As a treat, we booked a package which gave us a night’s accommodation in the suite, the chef’s seven-course tasting menu for dinner that evening, and breakfast served by the chef the following morning. The suite was lovely – nicely-decorated, spacious and very comfortable. I took a bath in the big clawfoot slipper tub, then dressed for dinner.
The meal was – unsurprisingly – outstanding. Unusually, A. and I were served different dishes throughout – I’ve never been served a tasting in a restaurant where all the guests weren’t served the same things. Of course, we also asked for suitable wine pairings – so in effect, over the course of the evening, we tasted 14 different dishes and 14 different wines between the two of us. The next day, the restaurant emailed me the full menu (posted here), which was a good thing as I'd never have remembered it all! The biggest surprise on the menu was definitely the pig’s head roulade - sounds appalling, but it was absolutely delicious. Also, the Nova Scotia wines – God knows we produce a lot of nasty plonk in this province (I’m looking at you, Jost Wineries), but there are a couple of small vineyards which are beginning to produce some remarkably nice wines. But the entire meal was superb – save the pig’s head, there was nothing weird or exotic about it. Just good, fresh, local food, cooked perfectly and served with style. A memorable meal.
Tuesday morning we awoke to pouring rain, thunder and lightning. It didn’t bode well, so we hibernated at the restaurant (breakfast/reading/packing up) until 11.30 am, when the worst of the storm had passed us by. Then we headed west again, this time bombing down the 103 until we got past Port Joli (where we’d headed into the park the day before). Then we turned towards the coast and followed the scenic route once again.
On a whim, we drove into the town of Liverpool – lured by a sign on the highway that promised an Outhouse Museum. I’m a great fan of eccentric museums, and this seemed like just the spot to check out on a potentially rainy afternoon. The Rossignol Cultural Centre turned out to be an odd place, housing several small museum collections and galleries under one roof. We got natural history collections, guiding/hunting/trapping collections, a Mongolian collection, a stately panelled room purchased wholesale from an auctioneer in England, and a replica of Maud Lewis’s house. Oh, and the outhouses, of course – not only full-size examples, but a collection of outhouse-themed memorabilia as well. It was wonderfully bizarre, and we passed a head-scratching hour or two. Well worth the $5 admission fee!
Back on the road that afternoon, we headed for our most westerly stop on the trip: Birchtown. It was once home to the largest settlement of black Loyalists (American colonists who did not support the Revolutionary War with Britain) in North America. At its peak (in the 1780s) it was apparently the largest community of free black people in the world, outside of Africa. Nowadays there is a cultural centre on the site of the original settlement, which relays some of the history of the place itself and the bad deal that the black Loyalists received at the hands of the British. Instead of the promised grants of arable land for each man and woman, the people were dumped at Birchtown, which had poor soil for farming and where almost no ownership of land was ever granted. Onsite are reconstructions of the “pit houses” where the original settlers would have lived for the first few years (basically holes dug in the ground, with log roofs). We also visited the burial ground and church used by the community through the 19th century. A very interesting and historic spot, which not enough people know about.
From Birchtown, it was just a few minutes’ drive east before we reached the town of Shelburne, our stopping place for that evening. I knew a few things about Shelburne’s remarkable history, but had never visited. Its heyday was over two centuries ago – it was first settled in the 1780s by a group of 3,000 (mainly white) Loyalists , and within a couple of years further Loyalist settlement meant the population of the town had swelled to 10,000 - making it the fourth-largest settlement in North America at that point. But its excellent harbour and convenient location for ships sailing up the Eastern seaboard couldn’t make up for the lack of arable land in the area (a problem also experienced by the black Loyalists in nearby Birchtown), and when the local authorities stopped providing provisions to the townspeople in 1787, the Loyalists began moving on to Upper Canada and England. By the 1820s, the population had dwindled to just 300 or so.
Arriving in Shelburne late that afternoon, we went straight to the historic centre – a small area one block wide and about 6-7 short blocks long, peppered with beautiful Georgian buildings constructed by the Loyalists during the boom years of the 1780s. First, we hit the Ross-Thomson House and Store – a well-preserved example of a late eighteenth-century store, with a Georgian house attached that served as home to the Loyalist storeowners, the Ross brothers. Afterwards, we picked up a map and guide to the historic district, and toured around the little “lanes” running between Dock Street on the waterfront and Water Street (the main street of the town). These streets retain some of their eighteenth-century character and are little more than a single lane wide.
I took lots of pictures, and the architecture was wonderful – but the town still had an odd, almost creepy character to it. Even on a sunny summer evening, it was so quiet – it felt like a ghost town. It also felt like a film set – which, in fact, it once was. Most famously, in 1994 the movie “The Scarlet Letter” starring Demi Moore, Gary Oldman and Robert Duvall (based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne) was filmed in the historic district of Shelburne. Two structures built as sets were left standing, and can still be seen today. I suspect that the filming of that movie was one of the last major economic boosts that the town received, however - there’s not much industry left in the area, and nowadays, it’s so remote. I’m glad we visited though, as it’s definitely a special place.
In the early evening, we headed to our B&B just outside the town – a 19th-century riverside house on the site of an old mill, which was very comfortable. We got changed and cleaned up before heading back into town for dinner at the Charlotte Lane Café – whose culinary fame has reached as far as Halifax. We really enjoyed our dinner there, though I wouldn’t say it’s destination dining. But clearly, it’s the best place in the area. The chef (a Swiss émigré) came out of the kitchen at the end of the evening to ask how we’d enjoyed our meal, which was very nice (I had the Swiss pork tenderloin with mushrooms and rosti potatoes – yum).
After a comfortable overnight at the B&B, we were dispatched with a hearty breakfast, then hit the highway back to Halifax. En route, we stopped at Ross Farm in New Ross – again, a place I’d never visited before (though it’s less than an hour’s drive from the city). It serves as a living agricultural museum for the province and made for a pleasant enough stop for the afternoon. Fun to check out all the different farm animals, and we took a ride around the farm in a wagon pulled by two lovely big working horses.
Only three days away, but it felt longer. Had some fun, saw lots of interesting new things, and ate some great food. What more could be asked for?
(Lots of photos to be found here.)
