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Published: June 10th 2023
So the whole point of our outing today was to find somewhere for me to have a dip in the Bay of Fundy (BoF). This has the highest tidal range in the world – up to 16m (52 feet). The Bristol Channel where I live has the second highest tidal range in the world at up to 14m (46 feet). Swimming in the BoF was one of my ‘I’d REALLY like to do this’ things on my trip over the Atlantic. Actually it’s on my bucket list!
Marg joined us for the day and after a quick detour to get her new phone we headed off towards Wolfville, a university town about an hour away where we planned to get lunch. We passed signs to Windsor (apparently the birthplace of Hockey) and Chester, drove through some vineyards and once parked, bagged a table outside Paddy’s Bar for lunch. With the promise of BoF scallops later in the day I ordered a starter of stuffed Irish potato skins. So did Marg. Susan ordered sweet potato fries, and when the plates came out I think Susan had the right idea. Marg and I thought the potato skins would be a couple of
Tide coming in.
When I started watching about 5 minutes earlier the water was only at the level of approx halfway along the side of the rock in the centre of the photo! half potato skins, but we each received a large number of pieces of skin piled up and loaded with cheese and bacon bits. We both made a good effort.
As we drove on after lunch, we passed a mobility scooter pootling along the side of the highway. For those of you in the UK, the highway is a large road, often dual carriageway (divided highway) or wider, with huge trucks thundering down them, similar I suppose to UK motorways. Blimey!
The roads are lined with hundreds of thousands of fir trees, some green and upright, others bleached, fir-less and squiffy. The verges are home to beautiful lupines, with their purple and pink spears standing to attention and providing a stunning edging to the green of the trees. Every now and then a gap in the trees let us see farm buildings and huge fields of red earth, some with a hint of green as shoots were starting to poke through the earth.
We arrived in Digby, a fishing town famous for scallops. We had a short wander round, watching the tide come in on a small beach. It was phenomenally fast! In the 5 minutes or so
I was standing watching it, the water rose around 18” up the beach! It was very calm water, just lapping its way up the pebbles, lap after lap after lap...
We introduced Marg to caching by finding a traditional cache near the Fire Hall, and saying hello to another couple of cachers who happened to arrive at the same time; an unusual happening in my experience, I think in the 13 years I’ve been geocaching I’ve only bumped into other cachers about half a dozen times. They arrived at GZ a few seconds before us, but we had our hands on the cache first!
Sadly, there wasn’t anywhere to swim in Digby, and we couldn’t find a restaurant for scallops. Marg used her new phone to find a town about half and hour away called Annapolis Royal where we hoped to find a scallop restaurant and a beach. Sadly neither was forthcoming, but we did a short visit to Fort Anne across the road from where we parked, and happened to complete and log a virtual cache.
On her phone again, Marg found a small restaurant less than half an hour away which is recommended for scallops,
and which may or may not have a beach nearby. Well, the Crow’s Nest, a small roadside seafood restaurant definitely had scallops, really fresh, deliciously fried in garlic butter and served with a tangy sauce and fabulous sweet slaw. We sat outside and devoured them while watching a blue jay explore the area. No beach here though.
The wonderful Marg wasn’t letting me get away without a dip though. She found Hampton Beach, close to Annapolis Royal about 20 minutes away and heading towards home, so the lovely Susan drove us there and lo and behold, there was indeed a beach! There was an elderly woman on the beach, with presumably her daughter, as we arrived, and they watched in awe...oh no, actually it was amazement...as I changed into my cossie and walked into the water. They did take the time to warn me that it was very cold, and I reassured them that I do this all year round in the UK.
The water was beautifully calm, silky and cold enough but not too cold, and I loved my brief dip! I floated around for about 5½ minutes before my hands started going numb and I thought
I should get out as the tide was by now fast receding. I had stayed in shallow water where I could always touch the bottom, so I wasn’t concerned that I’d struggle to get out, but I didn’t want my hands so numb that I couldn’t get dressed without assistance!
Susan then drove us home. We passed signs to New Minas, advertising itself as the soccer capital of Canada and Berwick the apple capital of Nova Scotia. At one point Susan said a bad word as a deer lolloped across the highway in front of the car; we saw another couple on the side of the highway a bit later on. According to Google timeline we’d done a total of around 450km, with Susan driving for a total of 5½ hours. Thanks to Susan for driving, and thank you Marg for your tenacity in finding me a beach to tick off my dip in the BoF!
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