Lunenburg has UNESCO World Heritage status for very good reason. It’s a wonderful, historic town. I thought it was the most gorgeous place with its colourful buildings.
As I walked down Lincoln Street from the art gallery where I was staying overnight, everywhere was a delight, I went in no end of art shops to view lovely paintings and crafts and earrings. There were some really beautiful earrings that caught my eye, but at $360 they were out of my price range.
As a tea connoisseur, I’m always looking for unusual tea and had a totally amazing one that was from a shop just down the road in Mahone Bay. It was lavender cream Earl Grey and was an absolutely delicious tea.
After my short tea break I continued to wander round the streets looking in the shops and ended up at the Anglican Cathedral of St John which is one of the most stunning churches I’ve ever seen. It’s the second oldest English origin church in Canada. Half of it was destroyed in a fire in 2001, no one is sure what started it, but it’s suspected it was fireworks thrown by kids on Halloween as several other fires were started that night by fireworks too.
I chatted to a couple of local kids, who were possibly choir members, and I was allowed to go up to the balcony, but not up to the bell tower because the ladder was steep. When I looked at it, it was no more difficult than anything I’d seen in English castles and churches, it was very easily manageable. It certainly wasn’t like the one in Batopilas in the Copper Canyon in Mexico which was steep and looked impossible to climb due to the tight turn you had to make on a steeply sloped wall! I did pass on the bell tower in Batopilas, but I was invited to climb it if I wanted to. That was the difference between Canada and Mexico and if that’s the price I had to pay for being in Canada, that was fine. I wasn’t a huge fan of Mexico, but I love Canada.
The Jessen Bell was originally in the bell tower of the cathedral from 1814 until 2001 when it was too badly damaged by the Halloween fire to be used any more. The bell was cast in the Whitechapel Foundry in London and has been on display in the park since it was removed from the cathedral bell tower. The bell is named after Christopher Jessen, a leading Lunenburg citizen.
I walked from the church to the bandstand and looked at the Lunenburg sign in the park which gave a history of the town and the reason it had become a UNESCO World Heritage site. This was because Lunenburg, founded in 1753, was an outstanding example of British Colonial settlement in North America. It has been conserved very well and the evolution of Lunenburg was based on shipbuilding and the fishing industry.
While I was wandering I came across a historic house that was open as a museum, so I went inside to look. I had a guided tour round the Knaut Rhuland House with Nathan because it wasn’t busy and as Nathan was fairly new, he was very eager to tell me as much about the house as he could.
This included explaining the geometric Georgian design of the house, one side mirroring the other, the parlour on the right had two windows missing, but they had been there originally, they had just been removed. The parlour was also only for men, if the wife of the house wanted some time to herself, she was basically banished to her bedroom! She also couldn’t go out without her husband’s permission. It was the same the world over at that time, generally women didn’t have any rights.
The artefacts in the house had mostly been donated, including things like a Chinese lacquer miniature cabinet which was representative of what was in the house in the Georgian period. As Lunenburg was a port, items were brought in from all over the world.
The British wanted to claim Lunenburg, but didn’t want to settle British people there and have the associated costs of defending them, so they brought in Protestants from Germany and Switzerland and also French Protestants. They told them they would get land and a house already built, but when they arrived the settlers found this wasn’t the case. A piece of land had been assigned to the new settlers and divided up and given a lot number. The settlers would then draw lots for which bit of the land they got and when they arrived at their lot, they found a pile of wood and nails and were expected to build their own house.
The settlers also had to maintain a part of the defensive perimeter fence which they were not happy about. Eventually the British did give them some help with that as these settlers had no military experience and so were very susceptible to invasions and did not have the training to defend themselves. Lunenburg was ransacked during the American Civil War as a result of the lack of British military presence defending the town.
One of the most interesting things in the house was a shoe hidden in the wall of the house. Concealed shoes have been found in Western Europe and New England in houses constructed in the 1600s and 1700s, but appear to be unique to Lunenburg in Canada. The shoe had been moulded by the foot of one of the house’s inhabitants and it was put into the wall so the devil would take the shoe and not venture further into the house and take the soul of the owner of the shoe while they were sleeping.
Now it was time for me to head off in the car to see a few of the beaches in the area at low tide. William, one of the artists who owned the gallery where I was staying said that Flat Rocks should be visited at low tide which was 8pm today. It was a lot earlier than that, but as I had a few places I wanted to see first, by the time I got to Flat Rocks it would be getting on for low tide time.
William had cobbled together his own map of Flat Rocks, Blue Rocks and Hospital Road where I could get a good view down onto the town of Lunenburg from the top of a hill.
First off though, I was going to Mahone Bay to buy some of that marvellous tea I’d had in the café that morning. I sat outside the café with a pot of green tea with blueberry, a speciality of Nova Scotia, since Oxford, Nova Scotia was the blueberry capital of Canada. It wasn’t as good as the spectacular Earl Grey, but it was still very good. Certainly good enough for me to buy a tin of, as well as the Lavender Cream Earl Grey.
Whilst in Mahone Bay I had a look at the 3 famous churches which you see on all the postcards of the town. It’s impossible to get the shot you see on the postcard, so I only managed to get 2 of them in my photos. I should have used my panoramic feature on my camera. Never mind. It looked like 2 of the churches had lovely stained glass windows, all 3 churches were locked so I couldn’t get a look inside.
It was now 5pm and everything was closing, so I got in the car for my Jesse Stone odyssey.
I first discovered Jesse Stone, the police chief created by American author Robert B Parker, on television. Several of the Jesse Stone novels had been made into films with Tom Selleck starring as the police chief. I have since read the books and in the books Jesse Stone lives in a condominium. However, in the films, Jesse Stone lives in an isolated little red house across a bridge. The Jesse Stone movies are filmed in Nova Scotia with Halifax representing Boston, scenes in the town of Paradise are shot in Lunenburg and Jesse Stone’s red house across a bridge is in Stonehurst Cove. So that’s where I was going.
I got to a fork in the road and took a chance it was Stonehurst South Road and I was right. There, at the end of this dead end road was a bridge leading over to the red house I’d seen in the films so many times. There was no sign saying it was a private bridge, so I parked up and walked across it. It didn’t look like there was anyone in the red house, although it did look like it was possibly inhabited some of the time by a real person, not just Tom Selleck playing Jesse Stone and a film crew.
The red house wasn’t the only one on that side of the bridge, there were a couple more houses further up. I’d never noticed them in the films. I went past the second house and then a third one, trying to find a path to the beach. That was when a woman came out of the third house and told me it was all private property. So I took a slow wander back the way I’d come, lingering on the bridge, as it certainly wasn’t the private property of just one of the houses, they’d all need to use it to get over there.
At the other side of the bridge was a woman walking her little dog, Udo and she chatted to me asking me where I was from. She said her family were British and she’d lived in Switzerland and Luxembourg and knew Trier in Germany, which is very close to the border of Luxembourg. She told me she was a fan of British programmes, particularly Doc Martin and asked if I’d been to Port Isaac in Cornwall where it was filmed. I have been to Cornwall, but not Port Isaac and she said it was the same for her. She said she loved how un-Hollywood British television was. She said in the States, the actors all had to look like supermodels and acting didn’t matter much and consequently did suffer, but in Britain, if they could act, it didn’t really matter what they looked like.
Udo’s owner confirmed that the red house was Jesse Stone’s house, she said she’d only been in Stonehurst for 2 years and so she’d never seen Tom Selleck filming there. She told me the house was owned by an Ontario University professor who was keen for the film makers to come back because it earned him a lot of money, but Udo’s owner said they weren’t going to come back until he fixed it up, look at the state of it! I got her to take my photo with Jesse Stone’s house behind me, we said our goodbyes and I got back in the car to see the Blue Rocks at low tide.
The Blue Rocks were just that, rocks, and not very interesting rocks at that, and there weren’t any pretty red houses close by either, so I simply had a brief walk across the rocks and then went to Flat Rocks.
Flat Rocks were far nicer than Blue Rocks. You can walk for a long way down the beach at Flat Rocks and I spent a very pleasant time walking along the Flat Rocks of the beach before heading back to Lunenburg. I told William and Deborah, the artists who had recommended I go to Flat Rocks, I did prefer them to Blue Rocks and they both said they preferred Flat Rocks too.
I don’t go out to eat very often when I’m travelling, I’m not a foody and restaurants aren’t a big part of my holiday budget. I don’t even tend to take restaurants into consideration for my travel budget because I eat out so rarely on holiday. However, after spending a fortnight in Canada, I decided tonight I was going to eat in a restaurant.
I went to the Grand Banker, named after a boat, rather than the restaurant being in a building that was formerly a bank, like I assumed from the name. Nova Scotia does produce some good wine, although not in huge quantities, but the Grand Banker did a Nova Scotia wine tasting that you could order alongside your meal.
I asked the waitress if I could choose which wines I wanted to taste. She said they were all white, but I was interested to try a red too, so I asked if I could substitute one of the whites for the red. It took forever for the waitress to come back with an answer, but eventually she came back and said yes. It turned out that one white wine wasn’t available anyway, so they’d substituted a rosé which made the not being able to substitute wines rule a bit of a nonsense. The food was very good and so was the wine, however, it immediately became evident that the waitress had no wine knowledge whatsoever. When I asked her about grape varieties in the various wines, for each one she said “a blend” which didn’t mean anything. She should have sent one of the bar staff over to explain the wines to me if she was clueless, but they probably weren’t trained sommeliers and their knowledge might not have been much better than hers. But I can confirm that Nova Scotia wine is good, which is the main thing you need to know.
I wandered back to the art gallery and spent my second night there. I did really like staying in the art gallery, just another unusual location for my accommodation on this trip. I still had a convent and a pioneer wagon to come when I headed west!
I was sad to leave Lunenburg the next day. It was my last day in Nova Scotia and I just had to drive to Halifax today ready for flying out tomorrow.
There was no rush to get to Halifax, so I simply took my time, making the most of my last hours in Lunenburg, writing a couple of postcards in a café next to the post office and had a final pot of Lavender Cream Earl Grey tea. I had got some to take home, but I wouldn’t be opening that until I got back to England.
I decided to take the coastal route to Halifax, the scenic Lighthouse Route, yes Nova Scotia had recommended provincial driving routes too, which was much longer than taking the main road, but who wanted to do that when it was a lovely day and there was plenty of time. The Lighthouse Route took me through Mahone Bay again, so I stopped to see if I could get in the churches to look at the stained glass windows. Sadly the churches were just as locked as the day before and the Tourist Information Centre was also closed. It seemed at this time of year places were only open for tourists from Thursday to Sunday and today was Wednesday…
However, it was a gorgeous drive along the Lighthouse Route with some lovely beaches. Bayswater looked particularly attractive as I drove through, but I didn’t stop here, I pushed on to one of the most famous places in Nova Scotia, just half an hour away from Halifax, Peggy’s Cove with its iconic lighthouse perched on the rocks.
Tourist Information at Peggy’s Cove was open on Wednesday and the lady there suggested I leave my car in the Tourist Information car park and walk up to the lighthouse as it was only a 10 minute walk. After all the hiking I’d been doing, 10 minutes was nothing to me. She said that you could walk around on the granite, but to be careful not to step on the black parts as they were extremely slippery.
At the lighthouse there was a warning about rocks and sea claiming the lives of careless tourists. The rocks were similar to those at Flat Rocks and Blue Rocks and also reminded me a bit of Arches National Park, except these rocks were grey granite and not the red sandstone found in the US Desert States. Some of these rocks at Peggy’s Cove were quite steep and there were gaps between them too, so you did have to be careful what you were doing. It did involve a bit of climbing to get around and there was no obvious path, basically you could walk where you wanted as long as you could find a route suitable to your capabilities and didn’t get too close to the rocks at the edge of the sea. I didn’t want to fall and break my neck so I was cautious.
Everyone went to the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse, which was not open to the public, understandably with the volume of tourists it receives. In the short time I spent there, a large number of tourists were walking around, probably more than any other location I’d visited on this holiday so far.
I could see why so many people go to Peggy’s Cove, it is a very impressive spot, with the lighthouse on the granite rock and coupled with its close proximity to Halifax, that was a recipe for a lot of tourists!
I did spend a very short time in Halifax. As with the day I was planning to look around Fredericton, time had got away from me and it was almost 4pm when I arrived, which didn’t give me a lot of time to look around. I strolled along the Seafront Walk for most of its distance. This is a fairly new initiative and takes you along the seafront passing various modern sculptures. I did walk up the hill to the Citadel Tower, only to find it was now closed, but I did have a nice view of the city from up there. The cathedral was also closed, so I made my way back to the seafront to take some photos of the contemporary sculptures and also a statue of Samuel Cunard, the famous shipping magnate who was born in Halifax in November 1787 and founded the Cunard Line.
Then it was a case of checking into my hotel, returning my hire car and re-packing my suitcases ready for my flight next morning. Tomorrow was a brand new province. Tomorrow was Newfoundland!
I travelled around Atlantic Canada in June 2018.
I stayed in the Queen Room in the art gallery Gallery at the Linc in the centre of Lunenburg. Free street parking is available.
The Knaut Rhuland House is a National Historic Site managed by the Lunenburg Heritage Society. It is open from June to September. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.
The Anglican Cathedral of St John in Lunenburg is open to visitors from June to September daily.
The Grand Banker Bar and Grill is located on Lunenburg Harbour front and has an extensive menu and local Nova Scotia wines available to taste.
Lunenburg is located 100km from Halifax and the drive takes approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Mahone Bay is located 11km from Lunenburg and is a 15 minute drive.
The Tea Brewery is located in Mahone Bay and sells loose leaf tea including a special Canadian collection and my favourite Lavender Cream Earl Grey.https://www.teabrewery.com/
Stonehurst Cove is located along from Blue Rocks at the end of the road. Follow the signs for Stonehurst South.
Blue Rocks beach is located 8km from Lunenburg. The drive takes approximately 10 minutes.
Flat Rocks can be visited on a loop drive from Lunenburg to Blue Rocks beach.
Peggy’s Cove is 42km from Halifax and a 45 minute drive. It is 100km from Lunenburg and takes an hour and 15 minutes to drive on the most direct route.
The Citadel at Halifax is a National Historic Site managed by Parks Canada. Click on the link to find opening hours and entrance fees.
Check out my posts about my other Canadian adventures.
North Cape Coastal Drive Part 1
North Cape Coastal Drive Part 2
Charlottetown – Pocket Capital of Prince Edward Island