Coast at Baleine Head

Taken 2007 June 19 from Baleine Head looking west

Baleine is a tiny fishing community on the Atlantic coast of Cape Breton Island. The mouth of Baleine Harbour is at the right of this photo and the Atlantic Ocean is at the left. Baleine is the inhabited community closest to the geographical feature for which Cape Breton Island is named, viz., Cape Breton. Unfortunately, the map referenced in the introduction shows neither Baleine nor Cape Breton by name. If you look at that map, you will see northeast of Louisbourg along the coast a place named Little Lorraine. East of it you will see a gravel road ending at the ‘e’ of “Little”: that is where Baleine is found. Cape Breton is the point of land which sticks into the Atlantic to the right of that gravel road; it is Cape Breton Island’s easternmost point.

The Nova Scotia Atlas (sixth edition, ISBN 10: 0-88780-707-0; ISBN 13: 978-0-88780-707-7) shows a trail following the coast line from Baleine to Cape Breton and around it to Main-à-Dieu; Michael Haynes describes an 18 km (11.25 mi) loop hike following this same route in his Hiking Trails of Cape Breton (revised edition, ISBN 0-86492-350-3, pp. 130-134, including map). If any formal trail exists, I haven’t found it on two different trips to the area. An ATV trail does lead over the cobblestone beach from Baleine along the harbour to Baleine Head, the rocky promontory from which this photo looking west was taken; from there, there are occasional paths along the coast to the east, but nothing like what I think of as a hiking trail with even rudimentary trail markings.

As one can see from this photo, there was some sun when I started this hike, though the sky was predominantly cloudy—the normal state of affairs along this coast in summer in my experience. A very strong wind was blowing from off shore, as one can see in the spray of the surf being blown backwards out to sea. I made better progress down the shore towards Cape Breton than during my previous visit here a few years ago, but was forced to turn back when it began to mist: my outer garments were soaked in seconds by the driving winds which would have torn the lightweight plastic rain poncho I carry in my pack to shreds had I tried to deploy it.

Even though it has twice frustrated me from reaching Cape Breton, this coast is a wild, beautiful place well worth visiting. As can also be seen from Louisbourg Lighthouse and from the Louisbourg Fortress itself, the Atlantic coast here is very rocky; Haynes describes the land bordering that coast as “glacial till, sand, and gravel”; it is covered with mossy peat bogs of a reddish hue, making for a springy walking surface that is criss-crossed with rills and standing water, which one can avoid by keeping to the rocky shore. It is no wonder that the French thought that Louisbourg was impregnable from the land where the terrain is the same as here (they concentrated their defensive efforts on the harbour) as dragging cannon over this land to attack the fortress seemed to require superhuman efforts in those days (though they were proven wrong in the siege of 1745, as described here).

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