Lunenburg Winter 2015

We didn’t have a white Christmas here at Lunenburg, but we’ve seen nothing but the white stuff since the New Year.

The Back Harbour is usually frozen over in the winter, but it seems even more so this year, with the covering of snow on top of the ice.

It’s difficult to see what is land and what is sea, although you can clearly see the ocean in the background.

The Polar Prince icebreaker, sits in the ice.

I have never seen the front harbour frozen like this, since we came here in 2007!

It doesn’t look as if the lobster boats are going to get to their traps any time soon.

The snow around the town is loaded onto lorries and cleared away, but there are still some big heaps.

Even more snow is heaped at the roadside at St. John’s Church.

Hanging icicles look very pretty.

Today is another snowy, stormy day, with several more snow days forecast for this week. I really love winter and snow, but it’s so cold that there’s not much we can do outside. It’s even too cold to go skiing!

Winter in Mahone Bay

I love the different seasons and enjoy each and every one. In the middle of summer, I am too busy enjoying the coastline here to think about winter. But then when winter comes, it has its own beauty.

Here Cameron and I are taking out his canoe for a first trip on the Back Harbour at Lunenburg in 2008.

Then Jeff and I bought a kayak and again launched it from the little beach at Back Harbour,

before paddling around the Bay and into Martin’s Cove.

But every winter the bays change and are more suited to hockey, skating and fishing.

This is looking across from our launch beach.

A few miles along the coast is Mahone Bay, where we first rented a kayak and tried out the sport.

The yachts are all lifted out of the water and wrapped up for the winter.

These three churches are on all the pictures and calendars of Mahone Bay.

We kayaked around this island, on that first paddle. It is called Strum Island and is one of 300 islands in Mahone Bay. It was bought in 2003 and denuded of all its trees, causing a great deal of controversy.  The owners built this massive mansion on it, which sticks up like a sore thumb.

Looking across to the town of  Mahone Bay from the Oakland road.

That same wharf from the other side.

The ice splits and heaves up around boulders.

This seal found a break onto the surface to rest. But Jeff took this photo for me and didn’t seem to be able to zoom in!

I dont seem to have photos of Mahone Bay in the summer – when it is packed full of yachts. That’s a project for this summer.

Kayaking around Lunenburg

Lat weekend we went up to Halifax and bought ourselves a tandem kayak. This is something we have been promising ourselves since we had a day trip around Mahone Bay in a rented kayak last year. Louise and Cameron bought a 17′ canoe and have already had a few trips out, in fact we had a wee shot the first time they put it into the water. Here we are below in their canoe, although I look as if I am paddling a kayak and not a canoe.

I went shopping for life jackets and we had to find a roof rack for our Honda CRV this week, before we could try out our new toy. So, this morning we rose nice and early and loaded everything up. Yesterday’s fog had gone and it was a lovely morning.

We were only driving to the Back Harbour at Lunenburg, a distance of about a mile, but the kayak had to be tied down no matter how far we were travelling. Jeff thought he’d pose to show you how he looks in his new life jacket and kayak skirt, before we set off.

We headed across Back Harbour and around the coast past Heckman’s Island.

We saw a tiny island with about 50 cormorants drying their wings, but my camera would not take any photos! Then a seal popped up not faraway, but again no photo! We paddled across to Second Peninsula and then right up the length of  the Peninsula to a little beach, where we hauled up and had our picnic in a field. The black flies were quite bad, so we didn’t sit too long, before almost retracing our route, back to the start.

This was a great first paddle for us, only about 15 km, but hopefully we’ll have lots of adventures to share with you this summer. And I might get some good photos. I did find out when I got home that the Memory card in the camera was full – still with wedding photos from the evening reception at Insch!

Anyone have any good ideas for a name for our new craft – I wondered about Blue Queen – obviously because of the famous Bluenose here in Lunenburg.