Ride Day 3: Over the Hills to Dingwall

Today starts with an update from last night. Shortly after I posted the blog, we went out for a stroll to walk off some of Larry and Louis. We went down to the harbour again and walked along the beach. As we walked we saw dozens of whales surfacing just about 100 meter offshore. It was impossible to catch them in a photo, but we learned that they are Minke whales and that they are there feeding on mackerel. It was really cool to watch them.

Pleasant Bay on the Gulf of St. Lawrence

There was also group of very nice locals putting up a huge whale tail at the harbour wall. We chatted them up and they are part of a community group that is promoting whale watching tourism. They have a company called Guaranteed Whales (guaranteedwhales.com). I expect that they can always make good on their guarantee, based on what we saw. But the whale tail sculpture is actually an Orca's tail. I asked about that and the locals said that they rarely (if ever) have Orcas here -- they explained and said that the Orca coloration is more interesting than Minke whales, who are all black, so what the heck.

Watching the whale tail being installed

Returning to today, We got a fairly early start this morning. Pretty cold, but dry. Our destination is Dingwall, which is near the northeastern corner of Cape Breton. We heard that it is beautiful and we hope that the predictions are right and that the weather cooperates. They also say that it is notoriously windy. The one big lump that you see in the route map below shows that the hill is 2.6 miles long with an average gradient of 7.9% and a maximum gradient of 16.8%.

 

Here's the close up of the steep part. We’ll see how it goes...

Oh Boy!

...

Remember that you heard it here first: Ride With GPS isn't very accurate in its gradient metrics, at least for this part of Cape Breton. The first 6 km of the hill were between 13 and 16 percent without letup. Yikes. We went so slow that you could have walked past us.

But we made it to the top. Painfully. It was super cold on top and the wind was howling from the north. We didn't linger long, just long enough to look for moose. No luck.

Moose, but only on a sign

The ride down was civilized, all the more so since we were freezing cold and didn't want to go any faster. We stopped several times where we could find a spot of out the wind to warm up a bit.

Heading down, away from and out of the National Park

We are very near the farthest northeastern tip of the north American continent

We saw maybe 2 cars for the first three hours that we rode. It is just very early in this area. In fact, most stores and nearly all of the restaurants are closed -- they open in June.

As soon as we got to Dinwall (a tiny fishing community) we rode out to the coast to take a look at the ocean. Here it is, and you can tell that the wind is really up today. It is actually pretty warm when you're out of the wind, but step into the wind and it is pretty cold.

Our first view of the Atlantic ocean

The snow crab season opened just today and so the boats are doing double duty: setting both lobster traps and crab pots. We talked to a fisherman and he said that after this morning's first "set" he pulled up one crab pot with 350 kg of crab. That's a lot, but then the season lasts only a short while.

Part of the Dingwall fleet of lobster and crab boats

A restored lighthouse that is now located near the little town of Dingwall and which is a museum.

Our clockwise circumnavigation of Cape Breton resumes tomorrow and we turn south, down the east coast.