Inland Views from Hunters Road

With this page, the focus turns from Cape Mabou inland, first returning to Hunters Road on the afternoon of the first day of the festival, this time looking to the northeast, east, and southeast: the “back country” which the next pages of this essay will be looking at from other vantage points. The views here range from Mount Young to Hillsboro¹ to Upper Glencoe and beyond. Peak colours were still well in the future, though the foliage is clearly autumnal and no longer summery.

¹ This is the spelling used on the topographical map and in The Nova Scotia Atlas, but locally, it is often spelled Hillsborough, including on road signs.↩

Photos #1, #2, and #3 form a connected panorama looking from the northeast to the east of Mabou village. In photo #1, the mountain at the far left is Mabou Mountain; the Cèilidh Trail (Highway 19) can be seen at the centre left of the photo climbing through the village up to Hawleys Hill on the far side of Mabou Mountain. The ridges in the far distance are south of Loch Ban, the northwestern arm of Lake Ainslie, in the Mount Young and Mount Pleasant areas northeast of Smithville. In the original, though not in this compressed version, a communications tower, located about halfway between Mount Young and Mount Pleasant, can be seen at the top of the ridge just to the right of where the Cèilidh Trail turns to the left on the side of Mabou Mountain. Smithville lies below and on the west (near) side of those ridges beyond Mabou Mountain. Hillsboro is at the far right of the photo; a small dot there marks the steeple of the church on Highway 252 east of Glendyer. Closer at hand, the water spanning much of the right of the photo is Big Cove; the Southwest Mabou River is in the far right on the near side of the West Mabou Road. The small spire left of the middle of Big Cove is the Mother of Sorrows Shrine on the Southwest Ridge Road, which continues off to the far right, but cannot otherwise be made out here.The brown building at the far right with the teal-coloured superstructure is Dalbrae Academy on the outskirts of the village; the Strathspey Place is the theatre in Dalbrae.

Photo #2, which overlaps slightly with photo #1 (look at Dalbrae at the far left of this photo to orient yourself with respect to that photo), continues the view eastwards. The farm with the single silo at the left is in Rankinville, east of Mabou village; that with double silos is in West Mabou, across from the junction of the West Mabou Road and the Cèilidh Trail, seen at the left of the photo. The view here has not yet swung far enough south to take in Southwest Ridge (Mabou Ridge), which lies to the far right of this view and outside the scope of the photo. The water in the foreground is the Southwest Mabou River.

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Photo #3, which overlaps partially with photo #2 (the silos are a good orientation point) looks to the east at a portion of the Mabou Ridge. The Cèilidh Trail crosses the photo in the middle ground; the utility poles mark its path. The Southwest Ridge Road is harder to see as it passes through the trees on the far side of the silos, but it too crosses the photo on a diagonal ascending to Mabou Ridge at the far right. I regret that I do not have a continuation of this view to the right at the same focal length; I apparently got distracted and began picking out details at full telephoto length (I was still very new to the capabilities of Big Bertha and trying out different views was more important to me that day than getting a complete record of the scene).

Photos #4, #5, and #6 also form a corrected panorama, looking to the southeast at Southwest Ridge (Mabou Ridge) from considerably further south on Hunters Road. The trees at the left of photo are discontinuous with those seen at the far right of photo #3, but the missing portion of the ridge is similar to that seen there. The two communications towers on the summit of Southwest Ridge are seen at the centre and right of the photo. The house at the left of the photo is along the Southwest Ridge Road on its far side; the road continues across the centre of the photo. The trees in the foreground are below Rocky Ridge along the Southwest Mabou River; the Cèilidh Trail (Highway 19) is hidden from view here, but is on the far side of the more colourful trees.

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Photo #5 continues the view of photo #4 to the right; there is a slight amount of overlap. Southwest Ridge Road can be seen ascending towards the summit behind the evergreens at the centre right. The trees near the Southwest Mabou River are deciduous, but the forest on the ridge is predominantly evergreen.

Photo #6 continues the view of photo #5 to the right. The Southwest Ridge Road is at the far left. The ridge continues to the far right and well beyond the scope of this photo, where, southeast of Southwest Mabou, it gives way to the Alpine Ridge.

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Photo #7 is a fairly wide-angled view further to the south, where the Southwest Ridge runs into the Alpine Ridge in the middle ground, leaving a gap that allows one to see the distant hills behind. The Alpine Ridge Road² can be seen as a diagonal slash at the far right of the photo descending into Southwest Mabou. In the far distance the far hills are variously called the Bornish Hills and the Creignish Hills; they lie to the south and east of Glencoe Mills.

Photo #8 concentrates on the middle portion of photo #7; the triangular field in the centre of photo #8 is the farm along the MacKinnon Road in Upper Glencoe, a landmark visible from several places; thanks to Big Bertha, this is the first time I’ve seen it from Hunters Road: the straight-line distance to it is 16.25 km (10.1 mi). To the left of the triangular shaped field, about a quarter of the way in from the left edge of the photo, is the summit on which the Churchview Road ends; photos from there will appear on a subsequent page of this essay.

² This road is apparently officially the northwestern end of the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road, but locally is known as the Alpine Ridge Road, the name I will use in this essay. Historically, the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road connected Whycocomagh and Port Hood, crossing both the Alpine Ridge and the Rocky Ridge. Today, it ends at the Cèilidh Trail (Highway 19) in Southwest Mabou.↩