Friday 3 July 2009

Cape Breton Island, more farm work, and a strange B&B.

On Sunday afternoon, we bid a sad farewell to Gros Morne, and headed to Port Aux Basque, on the south coast of Newfoundland. From here, we'd take the ferry to North Sydney, Nova Scotia. We arrived in Port Aux Basque at 9.30pm, and were staying in a B&B "5 minutes walk from the bus terminal, just up the street". Having met the woman who wrote these words to me, I can safely say that there is no way she could've walked it in 5 minues. Seamus and I walked down a busy highway in the dark for 15 minutes before admitting defeat, walking back to the bus terminal and catching a cab to the B&B. I was all ready to be angry at the owner...until we arrived, and I realised there was no way she'd understand me anyway. Really, I sometimes feel like my home life is surrounded by old people who don't understand me (not YOU, Daddy), but this lady was the most difficult I'd encountered. It was like staying with your grandma, if your grandma was very deaf, and had an immaculate house that you were afraid to breathe in. Really, it seems silly to run a B&B if it's going to be so...scary and clean. And pink. But enough about that. We had a long, good sleep and then headed to the ferry port. The journey (5 hours) was pretty rough, but the boat had a cinema (how emotional is 'My friend Flicka'?), and a cafeteria, so we were set. On arriving in North Sydney, we took a short bus trip to Baddeck, in the middle of Cape Breton Island, where we were met by our farm hosts who took us to their house and fed us dinner. I love that about farm hosts. We're staying in the sunporch, which would be nicer if there were more sun (yeah, the rain continues to follow us....watch out on August 9th, if it's not pouring in England already, I'll definitely be bringing some rain for you). It's nice to have our privacy, and this farm is huge, and they have a baby sheep who is my new BFF. She's an orphan, so I have adopted her. Today we worked HARD. We drove the truck to the forest and collected loads of felled trees, loaded them into the truck, drove them back to the farm and unloaded them. I worked harder than I've ever worked, I think. It was exhausting. The household is very chaotic, but nice and relaxed. We're here for a couple of weeks now, so it'll be nice to chill and settle a bit. Unfortunately, there's no wireless, just dial-up which isn't great at...dialling up, and we have no mobile reception, so if you need to contact me, probably best just to send a pigeon....

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