Views from the Cabots Landing Provincial Park

On Monday, I headed to the “Top of the Island”, northern Cape Breton. Because of my serious addiction to traditional Cape Breton music, I don’t get that way anywhere near as often as I’d like, but at this time in early June, the weekdays are generally music-free enough that I can spend most of a week there without missing out greatly on the music along the Cèilidh Trail (Highway 19). The weather was rainy and foggy along the western coast of Cape Breton, so I got no photos on that section of the beautiful drive, but the bad weather ended at the summit of North Mountain: blue skies and the sun brightened my way down to the Aspy Bay. In Cape North Village, I turned onto the Bay St Lawrence Road and drove 9.9 km (6⅙ mi) north to Cabots Landing Provincial Park, a gorgeous place from which to view the Cape North Massif (locally known both as Money Point Mountain and as the Aspy Mountain Ridge) and Aspy Bay from near Money Point all around to White Point to the southeast. The views on this page come from there, my first photo stop of the day.

Photo #1 is a fairly wide-angled view looking out along the beautifully distinctive forms of the Cape North Massif as it reaches its end at Money Point. This is a continuous chain of mountains running southwest to northeast along the Aspy Fault from the Margaree Wilderness Area to beyond Money Point; the fault here lies underwater at the edge of the Massif. The beach area is about 2 metres/yards below the grassy picnic area, seen at the far left of this photo; that area has undergone significant erosion in the past years, requiring the park road to be moved inland from its former course. In the warmer days of high summer, the beach is a popular swimming spot, the furthest north of Cape Breton’s sandy beaches.

Photo #2 is a telephoto view of the northeastern end of the Cape North Massif. The hump at the centre of the photo is actually part of the plateau at the top of the massif: a stream known as Gulch Brook has carved a deep valley into the plateau, causing it to become separated from the plateau continuation at the left. Money Point is on the north side of the massif and is hidden behind the centre prominence; the distance along the shore from the mouth of Gulch Brook to Money Point is some 4.1 km (2⅗ mi), so a considerable part of the northern portion of the Massif is concealed in this view. The point seen at the far right is not Money Point, but another point left unnamed on the topographical maps. Notice the grey band above the water: this is a bank of fog, not part of the sky; the thin grey cloud running across the right two-thirds of the photo is the same hue as the fog bank below, probably a remnant of that fog bank which, I suspect, covered the entire Massif earlier in the day.

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Photo #3 is a telephoto view of the middle portion of the Aspy Bay Coast below the Cape North Massif; it overlaps in part with photo #2. This is not a hospitable shoreline, with high rock cliffs rising above the water and numerous rocky shoals directly offshore. They are very hard to make out in this view, but if you look carefully you will see many small dots all over the waters here; each is a float marking a lobster trap. The waves at the far left of the photo are from a lobster boat (the front half of which was cut off in this photo) belonging to a fisherman who has just returned from inspecting his traps.

Photo #4 continues to the left of photo #3, with which there is considerable overlap; this time, the lobster boat is in full view, just below a scalloped cliff at the base of the Massif. The several long folds of the Massif here are very pleasing to the eye as they travel from the plateau down to the sea; the brooks shown on the topographical map are responsible for the deeper clefts one sees in this photo.

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Photo #5 shows the remainder of the northeastern coast below the Massif, which here forms a shallow bay: the topographical map labels the point seen at the left as Halibut Head; in the lower left foreground, the sand is part of the beach at Cabot Landing. You can walk a good ways north on that beach—it’s a lovely walk with fine views on a warm day—but pay attention to the tides! (I learned that the hard way.) The waterfall in the centre of the photo seems to always be flowing, no matter how dry the summer; it is the mouth of Pollys Brook, which accompanies for a short distance the Bay St Lawrence Road as it turns inland from Sugarloaf into Bay Road Valley to cross around the back side of the Massif.

Photo #6 looks to the east out over the Atlantic, where another lobster boat was heading south to one of the several harbours on Aspy Bay. Again, notice the fog bank that hovers offshore in the Cabot Strait. The lack of any lobster trap floats in these waters is a testimony to their depth (I did espy one dot of light that might have been a float, but magnification reveals it to be a gull).

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Photo #7 looks west of south across Aspy Bay. The beach in the foreground is that at Cabots Landing Provincial Park, but that beach connects with North Harbour Beach which continues a goodly distance down the coast, broken occasionally by streams crossing it (the one at the right is swollen with the recent rain, but is easily crossed in bare feet most days). The Four Mile Beach Inn in Sugarloaf bears the old local name for this popular sand beach, which the topographical map now labels as North Harbour Beach. It is still wet from the day’s rains, but two hardy beach walkers are out enjoying it nevertheless; in high summer, this is a blazingly bright white sand beach. The prominence in the distance is South Mountain, at the southern end of Aspy Bay. The coast curves around the edges of South Mountain to White Point at the left, where it turns south towards Neils Harbour; the White Point Road along the southern Aspy Bay Coast offers a gorgeous drive along South Harbour, Yellow Head Cove, Black Head Cove, Smelt Brook, Scotch Cove, and White Point, with stunning scenery along the way as the road winds along and above the spectacular coast.

Photo #8 is a telephoto view of part of the southern coast of Aspy Bay, most of it hidden here by the fog bank, though some houses along the far shore can be espied through the fog. Another lobster boat is just right of centre, working the waters of the southern bay. In my opinion, this is a far more beautiful coast when the fog is missing, but fog does have its appeal to some.