Taken 2008 October 20 in Rear Barachois from the Rear Barachois Road near house number 119
GPS 46°21.20?'N 60°33.67?'W
As I mentioned in this essay’s introduction, I discovered the Rear Barachois Road in Tarbotvale for the first time this year. I also explored two other roads in this area for the first time as well, but neither had anything approaching the magnificent views of the Rear Barachois Road.
The road is only 1.6 km (1.0 mi) long, but it packs a lot of beauty into its short span. When it leaves the Cabot Trail in Tarbotvale, it is at first a lane lined on both sides with trees, very colourful at this time of year, leading on to an equally colourful high mountain wall at what initially appears to be the end of the road. 0.8 km (0.5 mi) later, the road reaches the banks of the Barachois River, a boulder-strewn fast-moving stream whose source is several kilometres (some miles) inland in the Cape Breton Highlands plateau and whose mouth is in St Anns Bay; the Barachois River is said¹ to be a good river for fishing Atlantic salmon. An old-style green-painted steel bridge spans the river a short distance upstream where the road crosses the river and then continues along the side of the mountain that one saw as one entered the road, soon beginning to climb and ending a short distance later.
The lovely view one sees here is from the road beside a summer home labelled “Guthro’s Paradise” on a moose antler rack not far from the end of the road. The Barachois River runs below, hidden in this photo, and flows through the gap between the unnamed mountain at the left and Murray Mountain at the right into St Anns Bay; beyond the gap between these two mountains, across the hidden St Anns Bay, one sees Cape Dauphin Mountain (the north end of Kellys Mountain) on the far horizon. The mixed forest in the lower elevations and the deciduous trees ablaze there and in the higher elevations transform this naturally beautiful spot into something much more intense. And this is without any direct sun; imagine what it would be were the sun to shine on it full bore! How refreshing it would be to spend the fall here, basking in this beautiful terrain’s glorious colours. A paradise indeed!
¹ This link is courtesy of the Wayback Machine archive, as the original site no longer exists.↩