4.10.18 Baddeck & Bras d'Or Lakes - Teatime at Rita's

The house is very noisy and the people who live in the gable of the house probably don't realize that. I get up at 8.00 am - outside the fog hangs low and the clouds are thick and gray.

We have breakfast with the stuff we bought yesterday, with bagels, cream cheese, instant hazelnut coffee and jam. We leave at 10.00 am and first drive to Baddeck as planned. In the post office, the lady is extremely helpful and explains to me for about 10 minutes how I have to stick stamps of different denominations on a postcard, then she stamps everything twice and needs her colleague to take it out - and for the purchase of 6 stamps, I am in the 'customer advisory' for about 15 minutes. We stroll through the town, checking almost every shop and boutique that are open in the morning! Unfortunately, we don't find anything.

So off to the waterfront, where there is a small boardwalk. A food truck with funny decoration catches our attention. If we hadn't just had breakfast, I would have liked to have a lobster roll here. But 1 hour after breakfast - no! After a short walk, we end up back at the Visitor Center where we parked the car. The ladies think that the way around Bras d'Or Lake would be a 'long day trip' and seem a little shocked that we want to do it today. The weather is still gray, but it's not raining anymore as we head south. We pass through two Mi'kmaq settlements, whose language can be read on the signs. In these settlements, you always have to expect more pedestrians on the roadside and you can only drive 50 km/h here. The Hwy205 takes us to Whycocomagh and from there onto a country road towards Bras d'Or Lake. The road winds through endless-looking forest on the left and right, and this scenic drive practically offers no view of the scenery. It is gray and the colorful leaves do not shine. The road is sometimes really bad and then suddenly several kilometers are no longer paved and has many potholes. We have apparently underestimated the route and relied on descriptions that said 145 km would take about 3 hours. We are just behind St. Pete's at 3 p.m. and only reach Big Pond on the east coast of the lake shortly before 4 p.m. We have canceled planned loops in the meantime. So far, this scenic drive has not offered any prospects.

Our destination for teatime is Rita's Tearoom. Apparently a kind of 'must-have' in this region. Rita MacNeil was a Canadian singer-songwriter who grew up in Big Pond and set up a café in this old schoolhouse in the 80s. The parking lot is empty and there is only one other couple besides us. The dining room looks like a collection from a kitsch cabinet. Devotional objects and photos of Rita MacNeil hang in the small adjoining rooms, who died in 2013. Very spooky: her ashes are placed in a teapot on the mantelpiece in front of a photo of her.

We order teatime for two and get a tiered stand with all sorts of things that taste good at the end of an otherwise nutrient-poor day. No comparison to our teatimes with scones and clotted cream last year in Cornwall. There is only 1 kind of tea, of all things Orange Pekoe - I decide on coffee. When we leave again 40 minutes later, the tearoom is almost closed again (5 p.m.).

Our drive now takes us further towards East Bay, still on the south coast of Bras d'Or Lake. We circle the lake at its eastern tip and head for Grand Narrows. We continue to the next island via the isthmus and reach the small cable ferry at Little Narrows around 6 p.m., which brings us to the mainland, so to speak. A bizarre collection of signs hangs next to the access road to the ferry, which takes longer to read than the 5-minute ferry ride for $7. We reach our exception again at around 6:30 p.m. and thus after 6.5 hours and 300 km. Apart from a scant three-quarters of an hour, we have only been sitting in the car and unfortunately had hardly any real prospects. The scenic drive is far too wooded and the short sunny sections were also a bit rare.

We decide to have dinner from our supplies and start a cozy evening of watching TV, without anything on TV that we could follow. The weather report is important. And it promises improvement from tomorrow.