This resumption of Chris and Heather Hartridge’s cross-Canada bike tour is dedicated to friend and fellow musician Murray Boal who died in 2015. Based on one of Murray’s songs, Good Neighbours, the bikers have named this tour the Good Neighbours Tour and look forward to meeting many new neighbours along the way.
Hello again neighbours! In our last story from the road on our Good Neighbour Tour Part 2, we left off as we were ready to leave Fredericton, New Brunswick. Anxious to get back on the road after a layover there, our next stop was a suburb of Moncton, NB called Dieppe. In another one of those Good Neighbour turn of events, we had been contacted through our blog by a couple that lived in Dieppe with an offer to stay over at their place. The husband, Valmond, had been reading our blog for two years!
He first discovered our Good Neighbour Tour Part 2 when he noticed the place name, “Haida Gwaii” where we started. Helene and Valmond have visited the islands off B.C.’s coast and are very much into studying Haida art and customs. They sent us a message and now we find ourselves riding up to their doorstep. We didn’t even know there was a place in Canada called Dieppe! Our visit with these two wonderful people ended with a bicycle ride the next day all the way to the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island: 98 kilometers!
We fell in love with PEI the minute we arrived. In our first couple of days there we rode the Confederation Trail and we experienced the hilly but very beautiful backroads across the island. We chose to settle in for a few days on the north coast near Cavendish, home to the Green Gables house that inspired Lucy Maude Montgomery to write her famous novels about Anne of Green Gables. At the Prince Edward Island National Park’s campground in Cavendish, we took the time to walk the sandy beach, smell the sea air and make a concerted effort to relax after months of riding eastward. Our next route on PEI took us south to the historic city of Charlottetown and eventually to the Wood Islands ferry that goes to Nova Scotia. We arrived back at the PEI side of Northumberland Strait by riding the Confederation Trail again. This network of well-groomed trails is a provincially funded project and draws thousands of people to the island each year.
The ferry ride over to mainland Nova Scotia is about 75 minutes and we had a perfect day for our trip across. After rolling the bikes off the ferry, we had a short ride to our stop for the night in New Glasgow. It’s another important city with a long history of ship building, coal mining and steel production.
Moving along the upper coast of Nova Scotia we noted the change in the topography from the past weeks on the road. The best way we can describe it is… it’s a rollercoaster! We have a saying: “You have to get up to get down,” and that was the case here. Climb, climb, climb and then wheeee! Just relax as you whiz down the other side. Along the way, we met some folks who were very interested in our tour. As we talked to more and more people, we noticed the changing accents as we headed eastward. Wonderful to hear!
At the top of the last hill before the Canso Causeway over to Cape Breton Island we could see the legendary island disappearing into the horizon to our left. It was a remarkable view and one that made us think about where we really were; almost to the ferry that would take us to the last province… Newfoundland.
It all seems a tad dreamlike looking back trying to remember all the places we’ve ridden through and all the Good Neighbours we’ve met since starting this tour in July 2016. For now, it’s safe to say it has been a personally rewarding accomplishment just to get to this spot. But… we have some more riding to do before we’re finished! In our next story, we’ll report on those final weeks getting to “The Rock.”
It’s been very odd to be away from Quesnel at such a time but we’ll be back soon and, if we can, we’ll try to grasp what has gone on in our hometown and the region around it.
Chris and Heather Hartridge are long-time Quesnel residents with a passion for cycling the North American continent.
