Tragic Halifax

Yes, Kerrie, 'we are there now'!  It felt like we would never get here though.  But, having got here, we managed to sleep for 14 hours straight last night, and are ready for the adventure.

Well thank goodness we are ready, as someone (ie not me....) mis-calculated how long it is going to take us to ride from Halifax to Digby, on the south coast of Nova Scotia, where we already have a ferry booked on 1st July.  Who knows how the actual 250km (ie 3 hard days riding), ended up being doable in 2 comfortable days!!!

Luckily, we can cancel the third night at the hotel with no penalty, and get on the road earlier. Now that we have decent maps, we have worked out that we should go a different way too, one with wineries, and lots of bike trails.  Not keen on riding on busy town roads (me) where someone can stop suddenly in front of me!!! we will get a taxi/mini van to the edge of town tomorrow then start the ride.

Weather is like a normal Wellington summers day, rain, wind, warm and cold. Hopefully it will get better as we go south.  Apparently this is one of the coldest springs here for years.

Halifax, cool little town.  Can certainly see how one could spend a week here, with nice food, bars, tourist spots.  We reckon we are going to see plenty of fishing villages along the way, so have confined ourselves to the Maritime Atlantic Museum and getting the rest of the gear for the trip.

One of my favourites was Theodore the tugboat:

Theodore takes trip to visit all his 'friends' in the harbour.  There is a display in the Museum about him and his friends and books.  Wellington would benefit from something like this!!!

Food last night great, anticipating lots of burgers and sandwiches on the trip, so nice to get some nice fish last night. Nova Scotia is biggest lobster fishery, but fishes the same locations as all down the north eastern coast.  sometime, we will have to try some!

Museum great - some pictures just for Michele:  Now who would have known about the Halifax role in the Titanic disaster.  Along with all the people from the 2 cruise ships in port today, we gawked at the exhibits about the Titanic.  Halifax is where the Atlantic communication cables come on board, and two days after the sinking of the Titanic, the White Line (owner of the Titanic), got the cable laying ships to go and see how many 'people' they could find.  They found around 380, none alive, many given funerals at sea.

In good 1912 style, the first class passengers got coffins, the second and third class passengers got canvas bags and if you were unfortunate enough to be a 'worker' - one of the crew, you only got a stretcher.  I forgot, but the ship sank within 3 hours of hitting the iceberg, and only 750 out of the 2200 on board survived.

Believed to be the only surviving original deck chair from theTitanic

A replica of the deck chair, quite comfortable, I wonder if this was only a First Class deckchair?

The other tragedy that Halifax was involved in was the December 16th 1917 explosion.  Two ships collided in the harbour, the French Mont Blanc and the Norwegian Imo.  The crew of the Mont Blanc jumped into life boats and made it to shore.  Unfortunately, the French Mont Blanc had a cargo of wartime explosives. It drifted in to shore after the first explosion, got the Pier and then blew totally.

All the buildings within 2 square km were obliterated. Over 2000 people were killed, more than 9000 were injured.  The blast was felt over 360km away.  Sadly, the training and methods for identification of people learned in the Titanic tragedy became useful.  Halifax has rebuilt, and this is believed to be the largest ever man-made explosion.

It made us think of what a museum to the Pike River disaster and the Christchurch earthquakes might be like.

The other photo worth mentioning highlights another historic feature of the region - piracy (sadly no Johnny Depp though).  The pirates used to get hung to rot, in view of the town.  I'm sure the birds loved it.  Interesting map of modern day (up to 22nd June this year) piracy locations and attacks in the museum.

Hopefully Peter has both bikes togehther now, and it is now nearly 7pm local time, so we need to head out to dinner and get a good sleep so that we are fit and hearty for our riding tomorrow.