Our niece Paula (Gord's eldest) lives near Shediac and works as a postie in Moncton. She has a "cabin in the woods" not too far from Cocagne and Shediac Bridge. We have visited with her a few times over the years, notably a trip to
St John's (2014) when she was studying at Memorial, and had the pleasure of visiting with her again this year in the land of lobster. None so big as that on the left but there were lots to try.
We were there from Sept 19 through to Sept 28 and stayed at an AirBnB we had rented at Shediac Bridge — that's about 5-10 minutes north of Shediac proper, from our place it's the same time to Cocagne and to Paula's place in the woods between the McDougall and Whites Settlements. Our rental will be described in other postings. Here I'll try to describe some of the photos in the album at left.
Across the Shediac Bridge (a one lane bridge that spans the Shediac River) and along the coastline is
Grande Digue. That translates as "great dike" but we never saw any dike, although there is a nice market "Digue" and across the street an historic village. We drove out to the
Caissie Cape so Paula could give Felix, her youngest dog, a run along the beach. There is a working harbor (I'm guessing lobster) with a nice sandy beach. It was an awfully windy day so finding shelter from the winds was a bit of a challenge. It's also an area where people go wind surfing — where you're on a surf board but have a sail to pull you along. That day there was a fellow wind surfing with a parachute like apparatus. Watching him take it down in the wind was interesting.
Shediac, the town, is about the size of St Marys with a population just over 7,000. In the summer the population swells with tourism being an important activity. There are quite a few summer cottages along the water and several beach areas. And there's the lobster that draws people here.
In Shediac, on the Main Street, there's the
Homarus Centre (Homarus means lobster) where you can learn a bit about the life cycle of lobsters. There's several gift shops, both inside and nearby, and the
"Giant Shediac Lobster" pictured above. These days there's quite an effort to help lobsters along the way. There are hatcheries where they get the little ones started before returning them to the sea. It was quite an interesting place. They do tours in English and French, we three (Kate, Paula and me) timed it right and got on an English guided tour. As it was off season the Centre wasn't very busy and most of the gift shops were closed. Across the bridge is the
Shediac Lobster Shop, more on that in a moment.
In town, not too far down Main Street, we had lunch at
La Coast. Paula was a great guide at steering us to the better restaurants in town. Later, that same day, we returned to have some dessert and enjoy some live music. There was a couple that night celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary — wow! We, of course, had lobster and seafood for our lunch.
Another fine day, again not too far down Main Street, we had lunch outside on the patio at
La Moque-Tortue (the
Mock Turtle of Lewis Carroll). This was again a place that Paula had recommended and where we came after
"The Wedding" for dinner and the "
Witches Crawl" at the end of our stay. For brunch we enjoyed poached eggs with, you guessed it, more lobster. This place is themed around
Alice in Wonderland and decorated to the hilt to emphasize the theme. E.g., the down stairs bathroom is covered with dozens of clocks (in the book the
White Rabbit rushes around: "I'm late, I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say 'hello, goodbye,' I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"). Across the street is the
Adorable Chocolaterie Cafe/Patisserie which continues the same theme. We considered a chocolate dessert for the wedding at our AirBnB but instead opted for dessert at the restaurant.
We were to Paula's cabin several times. Her two dogs are Gerry (the elder) and Felix (the younger). Both are fun critters. Paula is convinced that Felix is a very smart dog and has trained him to do several interesting tricks. We met Gerry back in St John's (2014); Felix is new and, as a youngster, needs a lot of exercise. Hence our trip to Caissie Cape. Paula and I took Felix on a long walk through the woods behind her house. The woods here go on forever! On these regular walks with Felix Paula has found some bleached bones of Moose and other wild life who met their sorry end. She was telling me that there's a Bob-Cat that frequents the woods. One day a young kitten (is that what you call young Bob-Cats) was treed in the woods by some of the local dogs. She managed to get the dogs away and hopefully the cat is repopulating the area and killing off some of the smaller wild life.
Nearby Shediac is Pointe du Chene (where you can take a tour boat out on a lobster trip) and Parlee Beach. Both are popular during the summer high season with a lot of cottage like homes in the ara. At this time of year there's not much going on at either location. We considered going out on a boat tour from Pointe du Chene but the weather was usually quite windy.
Back in Shediac proper we continued to explore for more lobster. We were at the Shediac Lobster Shop a couple of times to take away pre-cooked lobster for dinner at our AirBnB — once with Sam and Barry. This seems to be a proper factory with a store front, there is no dine in. We also had another lobster lunch at the
Lobster Deck on Main St (walking distance from the Lobster Shop). Again, they weren't busy as it's end of season. I enjoyed my steamed lobster, Kate had a lobster roll. I understand that this was the last of the season for them. Busy in those summer months but not so much now.
The photo album ends with a visit to the
Magnetic Hill Winery just outside Moncton. It's about 20-30 minutes away on good roads. On the way back we followed the Shediac River Rd rather than the expressway and bumped into the
Joshua Gallant Covered Bridge which is fairly close to Paula's place — she tells us she sometimes takes Felix there. I understand there are many covered bridges left in New Brunswick. This one we discovered by happy accident, it's no longer in use but seems to be in reasonably good repair. I talked with a local who lamented the graffiti and local kids who deface it.
The Magnetic Hill Winery, surprise, surprise, in on the famous
Magnetic Hill. There's a theme park there but again it was closed for the season. The hill itself, from where we were sitting at the winery, is obviously a hill and anyone who thinks there's some magnetic pull that moves your car is suffering from an illusion.
The winery itself was quite nice. Well appointed, we had some wine outside on the deck. The weather turned a bit on us and we moved into a sheltered area. As for wines, this isn't wine country. It's a fun place to go enjoy a glass or two and enjoy the scenery. The restaurant looks very nice as well, I suspect they probably do special events like weddings. As to the wine, it's drinkable but only.
There were other side trips from Shediac covered in other postings. We had a day in Moncton and out to Hopewell Rocks; another day we went to Charlottetown PEI. Both of those are for another posting.