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Down the Mine

When you go on holiday it is good to experience things which you don’t get at home, what unusual things have we experienced? Rain and lots of it! I understand you are having a heatwave back home.

On Tuesday we did the Cabot trail (in the truck fortunately), the rain hardly stopped all day which was a shame as the scenery was spectacular. Yesterday we were indoors most of the day so it did not matter and today we went down a coal mine, no rain down there although on the surface we just had showers, not heavy rain.

The tour was great fun largely due to our guide who was an ex miner with a tried and tested series of jokes and stories. The picture below shows him on the left with an attentive audience. The roof of the mine was only 4ft 6in high at this point so we were pleased to be sitting down and not banging our heads.

We have visited a number of little museums over the last few days most of which describe life in this remote part of the world.
Nova Scotia was cut off from the rest of the world between the beginning of October and April, the sea becomes frozen and until the modern roads were built it was difficult to reach here by car. The emphasis was on self sufficiency and community spirit, you had to get on with your neighbours otherwise it would be unbearable. There are lots of churches, most seem to be Roman Catholic, probably because many of the Scottish immigrants were Catholics.
The sea also played a big part, of course fishing was a big food source but there were also many ship wrecks as boats tried to find their way into the St Laurence Straight en route to Quebec and Montreal. A consequence of this is there are a lot of lighthouses along the coast all of which seem to be photogenic, we have lots of lighthouse pictures.

This picture shows a spinning frolic in 1898. It seems all the ladies got together to spin yarn and talk about the men, what the two men were doing in the picture is anyone's guess.

Tomorrow we may visit a large fort where I understand the guides all dress up and play the part of French or English soldiers, I will try not to mention Agincourt.