Biking the Cobequid Trail

This stop at Scotia Pine Campground near Truro, Nova Scotia was meant just as a stay of convenience to permit us to fly back to Philadelphia for a family wedding.  Other than a couple tourist spots in Halifax, we didn't really expect to find much of interest immediately around us.  This stay just proved again, however, that there is always much more of interest at every stop, than we would have imagined.  Outside our trip to Philadelphia, we had more than enough great adventures to keep us busy, and there are still a couple more things we won't have time for.

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 we took a 12 mile bike ride on the Cobequid Trail, down the Salmon River from Truro to Two Barns, a point close to the Salmon River's mouth at Cobequid Bay.

Our trail took us over a few streams --

-- along a golf course (we wanted to hit the driving range and maybe play 9 holes sometime during this stay, but we never got a chance) --

-- past a cement plant and other industrial properties --

-- and a paving company that decorated trailside with a rock sculpture garden, including this cute little truck:

Eventually, we reached farmland, and found very distinctive irrigation canals:

As it happens, this was the site of Village Lebourque, an Acadian farming village.  The residents lived in the forested uplands and farmed the marshlands by the river.  However, to make the land dry enough to farm, they had to drain the swamps and build dykes along the river to keep the periodic floods from the ground.  They built an intricate irrigation system with gates that could control the flow of water to and from the river.

After the Great Expulsion, when the English forced the Acadians to be deported to France, Louisiana and the Caribbean, the English tried to farm this land and failed, finding it to be too much work and the dyke system unfamiliar.  Eventually, immigrant Dutch people, who had adopted similar farming techniques in Holland, bought up many of these farms and have continued the dyke-and-canal irrigation and drainage system.

Here, along one farming dyke, we caught our first glimpse of the Salmon River:

Interestingly, very few salmon plied the Salmon River; instead, its name comes from the salmon color of the water due to the pinkish red sediments.

The force of river currents - but especially the incoming force of the tidal bore in its twice-a-day flow upstream, erodes the sandy river banks continuously:

Pedalling further along our way, Kathy spotted some ripening raspberries!

We also spotted a birdhouse nestled rustically in the embrace of an old birch tree:

We reached an open overlook (the Canadians call it a "lookoff") that gave us an expansive view of the widening Salmon River and the near entrance of Cobequid Bay:

Eventually, we reached the terminus of the trail at Two Barns - so named because it is the location of a farm with two old barns:

The bike trail is an old railroad bed, and the railroad originally continued along the shore of Cobequid Bay to Maitland (where we would later ride the wild tidal bore!), but for some reason -- either because the right of way had been ceded back to the farmers, or because the original railroad bed had been eroded away by the river, the bike trail stopped here.

And so did we.  After pausing for lunch and some inspiring views of the Salmon River, we turned our bikes back to retrace our route into Truro.  This was a great introduction to the area and its history, so much of which centers around the rivers and the dyke-and-canal farming system used throughout the region.