Mary wrote: We docked at around 0800 in Sydney, Nova Scotia. We had got up early and were in for early breakfast in the Ballindalloch at just after 0700. We had to be ready in the Neptune Lounge for 1815 for an 0830 departure. We were on Tour 3 of the buses, on a 7hr trip of the Cabot Trail.
We left promptly on time with two wheelchair users on board. Our guide was too verbose and never seemed to stop talking. He did have some good samples of leaves and needles and cones from the various pine trees so we could distinguish them. When we started off it was more pine trees than anything else. It is mainly the hardwood trees that gave the autumn colour, but it seemed we were a little too early to see it at its best. Our male tour leader was dressed in a Black Watch tartan kilt and gave more information than we could digest on the breakdown of people in Nova Scotia (this means New Scotland in Gaelic). Gaelic, Scottish and French are all spoken. Our journey took us from Sydney along the Atlantic Coast to Ingonish beach. We had two stops in laybys which were not good places for photos. We never had a coffee break which we really would have liked. After about 3 hours we stopped at an information place for a loo stop and a photo stop again. We finally got to our lunch stop just before 1300 (i.e. after nearly 4½ hours) we had to wait a further 5 minutes as they had also fed coaches 1 and 2 of the same trip before us. There were two decent soups and bread and rolls, and basic salad ingredients, followed by some home-made desserts. We left at 1345 for the return journey and had one stop to view the bridge below us. We got back around 1615 and went to the Palm Restaurant for cups of tea. The captain has announced that tropical storm Philip is currently due to affect our journey on October the 8th when we should be at St Johns, New Brunswick. St Johns may be closed, and waves may be 6 metres or more. We are due in Halifax at 1300 tomorrow. The flautist was playing again this evening, but I felt very tired so I went to bed and was fast asleep when Mel returned to go to bed.