Views from Ponds Cove

From the spot where I took the photos on the previous page, I continued south on Grande-Grève Road, stopping at an inlet where I took additional photos and startled a bird on the near shore; there was not enough room in this (already large) essay for them. I then continued on to the end of the road, which can be seen next to the beach in the middle of the cove at the left of photo #1, where I turned around. After taking photos there, I came back up to the white rail fence just below the white house that sits on the hill above the cove, where I took photo #1 showing the entire cove, which ends at Godie Point, at the far right of the photo. What a beautiful spot! It is certainly well worth the short drive (3 km (1.9 mi)) from Highway 247.

Photo #2, taken from the middle of the cove where I turned around, looks to the east and shows the high protective dunes that have been thrown up along the shore, visible in photo #1, but without as good a feeling of their height (compare them with the height of the trees on the shore). The topographical map shows a couple of ponds here, a larger one with a cottage on its shores out of the scope of this photo, and the smaller one seen at the left; both are likely barachois, originally created by the action of the ocean. So far as I was able to tell, neither pond now has any outlet into St Peters Bay, so they are likely to be fresh water. I do not know if these ponds were responsible for the name given to the cove or whether is was named for a Pond family.

Better seen in photo #1 than in photo #2, kelp has already begun to wash up on the shores of this cove; see this discussion for more information about this useful plant.

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The two final photos look across St Peters Bay to the shore on the opposite side. In photo #3, the view is well to the south of west and looks down Lennox Passage in the centre of the photo. Cap La Ronde, on Isle Madame, is at the far left; the area around River Bourgeois, on Cape Breton Island, is at the right (the village is inland: in the original at high magnification, I can barely make out on the horizon a white structure above the distinctly lighter headland or island about a third of the way in from the right, which might possibly be the church at River Bourgeois — I was once told that the churches in this area, nearly all of which are white, were placed on elevations to serve as a guide to the fishermen and mariners of the area and I can confirm that those I have visited are indeed well above the water).

Photo #4 looks to the west; in it, you can see the Lennox Passage, which separates Isle Madame (the land in the far distance at the left and middle) from Cape Breton Island (the land at the far right of the photo). The topographical map offers several candidates for the islands at the left, but I am not certain enough of their profiles to venture to identify them here.