Chez Christie Pulls Out All the Stops

After the glories of our bike ride to PEI we iced the cake with a two-day visit to Chez Christie at Amherst Shore. Garth and Carole could give lessons in the fine art of being good hosts. Our friends are the clan chiefs of a remarkable family of 15 children and grandchildren. We hung out with a good percentage of them and came away with the impression that the Christies in their summer compound at Amherst Shore make Beaver Cleaver’s family look dysfunctional.

Our friends led us on a backroad tour of Cumberland County. At Springhill we exchanged favours: I showed off the town’s fine Emanuel Hahn-designed war memorial; Garth showed us the scene of the Springhill mine disasters of the 1950s. We went to Joggins to see some of the wonders of the UNESCO-recognized fossil cliffs.

At Parrsboro we indulged in strawberries-and-shortcake and a big dollop of history at Ottawa House, which goes back all the way to 1775 and a century after that was home to Sir Charles Tupper, Father of Confederation and one-time prime minister of Canada.

Garth is a believer in the value of local intel. He sought advice on Parrsboro’s best eatery from a gang of tattooed kids hanging around a doorway. The kids knew their stuff: we dined well at the Portside, then capped our day with worthwhile local culture: The Ship’s Company Theatre production of The Girl from Diligent River.

Our hosts even provided good birding. They have a family of merlins – marvelous little falcons – nesting beside the cottage. Filling the niche served elsewhere by randy roosters, the merlins greeted each day with a cacophony of sound: mom and pop hollering instructions to the kids on the fine arts of flying and feeding. No alarm clock was necessary.

We aim to reciprocate our Amherst Shore revel with a good time in Cape Breton during October’s Celtic Colours music festival. Given the standards set at Amherst Shore, the pressure is on.

The Purpose of a 5-Day Bike Slog

Years ago, during a hot summer’s day hike to Kelly’s Mountain, Bob Nagel’s young great-niece Brooke posed an unforgettable question we have referenced many times since: Just what is the purpose of this hike? Brooke and her question were much in mind this past week as we rode the bicycles on a five-day odyssey through southeastern New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. It was our first multi-day ride in six years.

As much as possible we rode bike trails and back roads. We pedaled bits of the Trans-Canada Trail and pieces of PEI’s Confederation Trail. We braked for birds, wildflowers and war memorials and paused to photograph vivid tableaux wherever inspiration struck. Mostly, the weather was blithe, if occasionally a tad hot.

Our start point was the summer shangri-la of friends Garth and Carole at Amherst Shore, just 12 km on the Nova Scotia side of the NS-NB border. We typically rode about 65 km each day and managed to find comfortable and convivial B&Bs to rest weary old bones. But by the end of Day 2, as we rode into Charlottetown I was hard-pressed to imagine a positive answer to Brooke’s iconic question. I went to bed fighting depletion and fierce leg cramps. Was I just a broken-down hulk? 

Fortuitously, the third day dawned brighter: I rebounded and managed to avoid outright disgrace. By the fourth day, riding 73 km from near Caribou to Wallace in Nova Scotia, I felt transformed, Charlottetown a faded memory.

At Melville in Pictou County New Scotland delivered the promise inherent in its honest name. Back in 2007, with pals Mary and Mike we rode 28 days in the highlands and islands of Old Scotland. Twenty-four of those days featured rain. My fellow riders were good soldiers. I spazzed. It didn’t help: the rain persevered. Back then I railed against the land of my forebears. Now, at Melville we rode into the heaviest rain we ever encountered on bikes, Scotland included. I might well have spazzed again. Instead, wonder of wonders, I managed to change my mind.

In the first minute we were sodden. I decided not to gripe. After all, we couldn’t get wetter. Maybe the getting-of-wisdom is possible even for a halfwitted heatbag such as myself. It was fine. Indeed I felt retroactive remorse for the tedium inflicted on my pals seven years ago. Rain notwithstanding Day 4 turned out to be the best one of the adventure. We both felt on top of the world.

I remembered the answer to Brooke’s question. The purpose? Achieving the feeling of well-being and vitality that comes from fitness. Now of course the ride is over and we are reminded as we were in earlier long rides that the only way to retain the high is to keep on riding. Sixty-five kilometres a day is not in the cards but for a while at least we are motivated to ride often and long enough that we don’t forget the answer to Brooke’s pregnant question.

Nelsonville Delivers a Three-Ring Circus

While visiting Doris at Truro Jan and I stayed at one of our favourite domiciles, Nelsonville, at nearby Black Rock. Nelsonville is owned and cherished by my sister Nancy and bro-in-law Don. It commands a million dollar view of the Bay of Fundy’s Cobequid Basin at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River, where the ocean tides are some of the highest on planet Earth. Folks come from far and wide for the joy of riding the tidal bore in zodiac boats whilst getting wet and muddy all over.

There is plenty to do at Nelsonville, apart from eating and drinking like potentates. The birding is terrific and apt too: one of the avian specialties at Nelsonville is the habitat-specialized Nelson’s sharp-tailed sparrow, a denizen of seaside marshes and grasslands. How many folks have an uncommon namesake bird hanging out just beyond the margin of the front yard?

While not attending to the birds we indulged in other diversions. We played horseshoes, in my case for the first time in about five decades. We managed not to disgrace ourselves, indeed I feel impelled to report that only one among the foursome achieved as many as three ‘ringers’. Feel free to guess that I refer to your faithful correspondent. Jan and I managed to hold our own against the host couple. We played croquet too, but with results less amenable to providing bragging rights.

In anticipation of our imminent bicycle expedition we gave the Treks a 30-km workout on the lovely and scenic Cobequid Trail. Apart from terrific landscapes the trail availed good birding too, not least being closeup looks at an attractive but, sadly, declining bird in these parts, the bobolink.

Songbirds are frequently darker above, lighter below. The bobolink reverses the customary pattern, being black below and largely white above. It hangs out in expanses of grassland and field; any day I see one I count myself lucky. On this day we had two bright males skirmishing for territorial advantage in prime habitat.

We always enjoy our sojourns at Nelsonville; the latest stay was no exception notwithstanding the humiliations that arose in the croquet battlefield.

Tougher Than the Rest

Doris rules. A couple of months back, the old girl took a tumble, fracturing an arm, and for good measure, her pelvis too. Those of her friends inclined to worry might have fretted that this could augur the approach of sunset. But no, the dear old thing herself put it best, ‘I’ll be back, I’m no pussy’. She healed quickly, got out of hospital in jig time and will doubtless soon be back to clearing fire hydrants with a short running leap. Jan and I went to Truro to check on her progress and were blown away by how well she is looking and doing. She’s down a bit of weight but looks in fighting trim at 105 pounds. Facing her 90th birthday on the near horizon, me old Mum shows no sign of fading away without another bang or ten.

The reigning shuffleboard master at Edinburgh Hall, Doris organized a two set doubles match – herself and her first-born vs her fellow shuffleboard maestra Jean and my Jan. At the risk of sounding a tad immodest, mother & son blew the adversaries away, and no, the credit was not all mine. Flushed with the shuffleboard glory, she challenged me to a best-of-three cribbage match and capped that by kicking my butt.

She memorizes poems to recite for her friends at Edinburgh and reads omnivorously. On Friday we arrived with a stack of books including a couple of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. By Saturday noon she was half way through the first of them, keen to chew up the rest of that and move on to the next. I’d like to imagine that there’s a bit of my Mum’s tenacity and vitality in me but, truth to tell, I fear I’m not half the trooper she is.