Day 51 – Port Hastings, Nova Scotia (Friday, June 26, 2015)
I woke to my alarm at 4:48am, packed up my tent and was on the road by 5:30am determined to make the first ferry to Nova Scotia. I arrived at the ferry dock almost 1 hour before the departure but I had enough time to eat breakfast of muffins and fruit that I had bought the day before.
The ferry arrived in Nova Scotia about 7:30am and I set off toward Pictou. At the fork near Pictou I decided not to visit Halifax in favour of a direct route to Sydney.
Highway 104 in Nova Scotia was hilly but otherwise not especially interesting. At one point I decided to take a secondary road running parallel in hopes to get a sense of countryside. But while the road was quiet it was poorly maintained and wove around like a snake and I ended up returning to the main highway.
I ate and stayed at the Heartstone Inn in Port Hastings for the night. Ideally I would have liked to have gone another 20-30km to shorten tomorrow’s distance to Sydney. The weather and the wind were favorable but the people at the information booth could not confidently assure me there was any suitable accommodation for some distance. The Heartstone was a pretty good place; better than the hotel franchises and had a clear view of the channel between Cape Breton and the mainland.
