Both fishing villages, Digby revolves around the scallop fishing industry, St John, ship building, and fishing as well. But we've been so exhausted from our long gruelling riding days we haven't had a chance to see any of the local sites apart from the roads and the camping grounds!
Today is Canada Day, and St John has around 80,000 people. So the plan is to find a campground, put up the tent (it is wet from the dew when we pulled it down at 6.15am this morning), do the laundry and then go and find some Canada Day celebrations. This ferry trip is 3 hours, plenty of time to get all our electronics recharged, do the blog and some work!
So - we have left Nova Scotia. Best way to describe it is to look at what we liked and didn't like about the place:
What did we like about Nova Scotia?
1. The Weather. We had warm weather and no rain or thunderstorms - Yay!!
2. The People. The people were over the top nice. And genuinely nice. I only hope that that is the experience that tourists get when they come to New Zealand. Even the majority of the drivers were nice and tooted politely to let us know they were coming up, or swerved to avoid us.
3. NSLC, or Nova Scotia Liquor Co-op, where we could purchase nice Argentinian or Chilean red wine for $12 - $15 a bottle. Our many years of travel experience in the USA means that we KNOW that we hate American wine, so we won't even consider buying it.
4. SuperStore. Great place to buy groceries, and so friendly too!
5. Wolfville. A very pretty town, a University town, could have stayed there for a day and explored. Lots of wineries around it as well.
6. Halifax, pretty interesting, but don't know if we would go back.
7. Wireless internet access and the iphone! Everywhere we have been we have had FREE wireless internet access. With the iphone, it means we can email people, keep up with Wimbledon results (Tsonga beat Federer, wow, first time in 179 matches that Federer lost from 2 sets up) and do research on where we are going. Lets hope this trend continues where we are going!
What did we not like (hate) about Nova Scotia?
1. The 'flat roads'. We were told several times that once we got over that hill it was flat and downhill. A nice man, an academic at Acadia University who had just been on secondment to Curtin University in Perth, stopped on his bike ride to give us directions. He assured us that from Wolfville to Digby, it was pretty much all flat on 1, and mostly downhill. Liar. Then a nice old man in a service station told us to take 201 to avoid the traffic, and that it was all flat and downhill to Digby. Double Liar!! And then there was the nice man in the information centre at Halifax who told us 'I've never seen a mountain at Mt Uniacke. It is pretty flat.' Triple Liar!
What a way to break ourselves in to riding. Coming from both having done no exercise for months, both having a cold/flu/virus in the 2 weeks before we left, acclimatising to the time zone. Talk about a shell shock!
the first day was a climb up to around 200m up Mt Uniack.
This was after Peters 'punctureless tyres' got a puncture and we had to stop at a bike store in Bedford. We think the tyres aren't designed to carry the weight we are carrying on the bikes. Unfortunately, Peter got severe cramps every time we went up a hill too, so ended up having to walk a lot of them. Dehydration, remains of the virus, plus the 26 degree heat and uphill route!!
But the reward was the 'snot sandwich' - see below.
So the first day was 76 hard km. The goal on the trip is to do 50-70km a day, maybe with the odd 100km day and rest days every 5 or so days. So the first day was definitely at the top of the range!
First night, no camping grounds, thank goodness, we were too exhausted, so stayed in a motel in an undesirable place called Windsor.
Day 2 riding. The map said 70km. By the time we had avoided the motorway and gone where cyclists can go, it was a 100.6km day. Got to camp. Found out we had both been authorised as AFAs with no conditions -YAY!
Day 3 riding. We had been told it was all downhill and flat. Map said about 80km, easy therefore! Nah!!! Muscles pretty sore by now. Not great sleep, a raccoon decided to eat the cardboard box from the pizza that was under the fly of the tent at 3am and woke us both up! But not only that, this trip was FAR from flat.
We hope it is a record, but we stopped counting at 45 hills in a 26km stretch. Most of the hills required the lowest gear on the bike. One was the same as the Waihi Hill (Greg, you know what that is like to ride). Several were just too steep to ride up with tired bodies and 25kg of gear each on the bikes! Then at the end of the trip, very tired - we had to go on the motorway, there was no other way to get to Digby. So, ended up walking our bikes up a very steep motorway hill.
Finally, 94.5km from the start we found the campground. Relief. And bugs (see below!)
2. Bugs! I didn't understand when Peter warned me about the Bugs. I think they will exist on the whole trip. We have super powerful bug spray, but there are still thousands of mosquitos, 'no see ems', as they sound, but they bite! Fortunately we haven't had any black fly bites yet!
3. Snot sandwiches. We couldn't believe this. At the top of the climb up to Mt Uniacke, exhausted, hot, we stopped at a roadhouse for lunch. We ordered a roast turkey sandwich with fries each (thought a sandwich, even in North America would be safe!). Well the fries were nice - thank goodness, as I couldn't eat any of the snot sandwich. It looked like someone had poured bile or snot all over the sandwich (which wasn't toasted, it was just soggy revolting bread). Yuck!!
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| Snot Turkey Sandwich |
Finally
Just a few photos for posterity sake:
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| First night of putting tent up |
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| Exhaustion and this is before all the hills on day one! |
Loved reading your blog - tip for america.... never ever ask an American directions...so as not be seen as not knowing.... they tell you anything as you have found out!
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