The Hills of Upper Glencoe
from the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road

The Sunday of the festival was a lovely day. After a fine Thanksgiving dinner at the Mabou Community Hall, I drove up the Southwest Ridge Road and continued on the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road to Glencoe Mills. When I first arrived in Cape Breton, the bridge over Kewstoke Brook was closed, in the process of being replaced, rendering the route to Whycocomagh impassible; this day, I noticed that the “Road Closed” sign had been taken down at the junction of the Glencoe Road and the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road in Glencoe Mills; curious, I drove down the mountain and discovered that the bridge was now complete and the road, though rather soft on either side of it where new fill had been placed, was now passable. I drove on to Whycocomagh, got gas, and returned to Glencoe Mills as I had come. The photos on this page are from the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road on my way to Whycocomagh.

Photos #1 and #2 form a connected panorama of the hills in Upper Glencoe south of the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road in Glencoe Mills. The field in the foreground is a blueberry field, the reason that this lovely view is as open as it is; it is wearing its fall colours, as if touched by a frost, though, so far as I am aware, there had not been any to date. Three days after the views from the Churchview Road summit, it’s hard to say that there’s been much change, yet the hills seem to be showing somewhat less mottling and more orange, perhaps because they are closer.

Photo #2 overlaps on the right with photo #1 and looks a bit to the left. The lovely complex folds of these rounded mountains always catch my eye. The area in the centre of the photo is not a field, but an area that was apparently logged some years ago; it is now covered by small trees and will soon revert to full-grown forest. A bit closer at hand, the colours seem definitively brighter, with oranges predominating, but other colours seen as well. If you look carefully across the middle of both photos, you can trace the course of the Mull River, hidden by the trees.

[continued below]

Photo #3, which does not overlap with photo #2, looks to the southeast at the Churchview Road summit. The green triangular field at the upper right marks the farm on the MacKinnon Road, which runs along the lower part of the ridge across the full width of the photo. The stand of trees left of centre at the summit is just to the left of where the Churchview Road arrives on the summit, from which the photos on the two previous pages were taken. The tallest of the trees standing at the right of the road is the evergreen tree seen on the previous page.

Photo #4 looks to the southwest across the valley at St Joseph’s Church in Glencoe Mills, with a colourful backdrop of changing trees on the sides of the hill behind. Newly painted a brilliant white this summer, it gleams brightly, even though the front of the church is not in the sun. The fence, newly painted too, surrounds the churchyard. The Parish Hall is to the left of the church, outside the scope of this photo.

[continued below]

In photo #5, Big Bertha captures a small part of the hillside east southeast of the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road which the MacKinnon Road crosses. Fine red trees are often seen in the fall in this section of the MacKinnon Road, which is to the north of the Mull River crossing, and red trees are in evidence in the forest seen here.

Photo #6 is a view well to the right of photo #5, but still along the MacKinnon Road, though south of the Mull River crossing; a tiny patch of the gravel on that road can be seen beneath the evergreens in the form of a fan at the far right of the photo. Mother Nature is rapidly reclaiming the field at the left of the photo. Some very pretty lime greens along with some lemon yellows, oranges, and reds are present here. Also notice the vivid red of the tree in the centre of the photo halfway up the hillside.