Somedays you just have to knock at a door to ask for water. Somedays you just see a tap on a side of a building. This evening as we start a journey down the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia we pass a large house where a man is washing a pick-up truck. I walk up the drive with our water bag and ask if we can get some water. Come inside, he invites, what part of England are you from? David explains he's worked with Brits on oil rigs, so he immediately picked up the accent. Where are you camping tonight?, he asks. Down the road, somewhere. I know a good place - on a tiny peninsula - just down the road. David gives us directions to find it and then tells us he'll roll along in his car to check we've found it okay.
It turns out to be a small clearing with a track leading to it - a bit open for us, but David assures us we'll be fine. He then makes us an offer we can't refuse: would we like to spend a few nights at a cabin by a lake that he and his wife have. In the morning he returns in his pick-up initially to give us directions and instructions, but then he suggests it'd be easier if he took us there. So we load the bikes and bags in the back and he takes us down the road. Do we have food? Good question - we don't. So David kindly takes us first to the next town, Guysborough, which has a supermarket.
The cabin is quite a substantial building with a deck out on the water. The lake is big and there are quite a few buildings dotted around. Maybe three are permanent homes but the rest are holiday homes and, as David points out, as the summer holidays are over, it's pretty quiet now. The weather is perfect and the lake is mirror flat. He shows us what we need to know and heads off with instructions for when we leave. Wow. Such kindness and hospitality.
We spend three days here relaxing, reading, doing little jobs we never get round to normally, sunbathing, swimming. Is it really September? On the second day David brings his wife Nancy over to meet us. She's brought fish and cooks it for our dinner. We spend a lovely day chatting and relaxing with them. After we have said our goodbyes and they've driven off we realise we only know their first names. David and Nancy. We even have no photo of them. How to thank them for all this?
It turns out to be a small clearing with a track leading to it - a bit open for us, but David assures us we'll be fine. He then makes us an offer we can't refuse: would we like to spend a few nights at a cabin by a lake that he and his wife have. In the morning he returns in his pick-up initially to give us directions and instructions, but then he suggests it'd be easier if he took us there. So we load the bikes and bags in the back and he takes us down the road. Do we have food? Good question - we don't. So David kindly takes us first to the next town, Guysborough, which has a supermarket.
The cabin is quite a substantial building with a deck out on the water. The lake is big and there are quite a few buildings dotted around. Maybe three are permanent homes but the rest are holiday homes and, as David points out, as the summer holidays are over, it's pretty quiet now. The weather is perfect and the lake is mirror flat. He shows us what we need to know and heads off with instructions for when we leave. Wow. Such kindness and hospitality.
We spend three days here relaxing, reading, doing little jobs we never get round to normally, sunbathing, swimming. Is it really September? On the second day David brings his wife Nancy over to meet us. She's brought fish and cooks it for our dinner. We spend a lovely day chatting and relaxing with them. After we have said our goodbyes and they've driven off we realise we only know their first names. David and Nancy. We even have no photo of them. How to thank them for all this?
