August 3 – Lower Barney’s River to Whycocomagh

Bike log: 150.7km, 1087m of vertical, avg. speed 29.1 km/h

We are in the home stretch now – onto Cape Breton Island. We are under 100km from the ferry to Newfoundland, so we should have no problem getting there tomorrow (jinx!). I do not know what the ferry schedule will be like. We have a tourism “brouchure” put out by the Nova Scotia government that is over 350 pages long. I haven’t gotten to the part about the ferry schedule yet, it’s kind of difficult to use…

I was back on the Trans-Canada highway (104 and 105) for a lot of today. I can’t say I missed it – there was lots of traffic, although the condition of the road was mostly good. However, once we got onto Cape Breton island this seemed to decrease quite a bit. There are 2 roads that lead up to Sydney, one around each side of Bras d’Or Lake essentially. Most of the traffic must take the south road, because we took the north one and it is not too bad. Very hilly though! In the 50km we took along there there were 2 x100m climbs and 2 x 50m climbs, plus lots of smaller ups and downs. The other way may be hilly too, all of the roads on Nova Scotia have been so far.

There is a causeway that connects Cape Breton Island to the rest of Nova Scotia. It was pretty hairy crossing as there was a really strong crosswind coming through. I was grateful for (though puzzled by) a big gap in the traffic going my way – no cars passed me in my direction the whole way. Finally I got to the other side, where a cop was actually stopping cars going the other way. I looked back and a truck was moving a massive double wide mobile home that barely fit across the road. Glad he was behind me!