A Chilly Bike Ride to Lunenburg: Exploring Nova Scotia with Kids

Travel date: July 2, 2018

On the day we planned a bike ride from Mahone Bay to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, the weather app on my phone warned me of a heat advisory. So we left our jackets in the van and set off on our bike ride….only to spend the afternoon FREEZING in the drizzly, 60 degree weather.

I guess heat advisories are different in Nova Scotia.

A word about family bike rides: one of the main reasons we bought our toy hauler was so that we could easily bring six bikes along on trips. We were tired of wrestling them through the tiny door of the old trailer, and, since we tow with a van instead of a truck, we didn’t really have many other options. And, indeed, it’s fairly easy to get bikes in and out of the toy hauler. The only trouble is that we feel like we NEED to bring the bikes on trips with us every time now, because we went and bought a toy hauler for just that reason. And then, since we’ve bought the bikes, we have to make sure we actually use them on trips so we don’t feel like it was all a waste.

But good bike rides often prove elusive. Let me clarify that we are very, very casual bikers, so when I say “good bike rides” I mean I want easy, smooth paths without a lot of elevation change. I want to be off the road. And I want to GO somewhere. I’m totally fine with a hike that is just a pretty walk in the woods, but, for whatever reason, just a pleasant bike ride doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s because it’s kind of a pain to bring out bikes and helmets and all that, and I need a bigger payoff. At any rate, I want some kind of reward for my trouble on the other end of a bike ride: at least ice cream or a meal, but, ideally, a charming seaside town with a fisheries museum that’s also an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

So when I found out we could park in one charming fishing village and ride our bikes to another one, Lunenburg, we were all over it. Our route took us from Mahone Bay to Lunenburg and back via the Bay to Bay Trail. I found this site really helpful in figuring out where to park and what to expect (the lack of clear information like this is often why I have a hard time finding good bike rides).

In Mahone Bay, we parked on Fauxburg Rd:

There’s only enough room here for one or maybe two cars to park, and it’s tricky to spot; we passed it the first time and had to turn around. There’s more parking on the Lunenburg side of things….but we wanted to ride into Lunenburg because that’s where we wanted to see the most stuff and because there doesn’t appear to be any way to bike right into the town of Mahone Bay without a fair amount of riding on the road (in Lunenburg, you park a short walk from the town center). So get there early to grab that parking space, because I have no backup plan to offer! There might be more parking nearby, but we didn’t see it.

The bike path is crushed gravel rather than asphalt; we rode about 10 km each way (which is to say, a long way for us), and–not gonna lie–it was kind of challenging in places. Mostly because the surface was tougher to ride on than we expected. When you get close to Lunenburg, you have to cross a road and go down some stairs to hook up with the path that takes you into town. There’s a rail built in along the side of the stairs for bikes, but it was still fairly tricky.

And then we were in Lunenburg! And it was time for lunch! So we went to the Knot Pub, because I guess that’s a pun? and also we came to it first, and I’d heard of it, and it had good reviews:

After lunch, we made our way over to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic (admission was included with our Nova Scotia Museum pass; otherwise it’s $3.50CDN for kids/$13 for adults).

The exhibit halls are surprisingly extensive, and there are lots of events and talks going on in season as well. And we were officially in season now! We’d made it to July! So Abe got to participate in launching a model ship:

Everyone was very excited about designing their own fish:

And learning about fishing. So much about fishing and fish:

Lots of hands on stuff for kids. There was a touch tank in one room, and a series of activities in another, like this one about weighing fish.

Outside you can tour a retired fishing boat:

Look at this hot, summer day! J/K

Also you can pretend to be lobsters:

After the Fisheries Museum, we walked over to see the Bluenose II:

The Bluenose II is a replica of the original Bluenose, which was a fishing and racing schooner that won a whole bunch of races back in the day, before she was wrecked in 1946. They’re very proud of the Bluenose in Canada–it appears on their dimes, and there are songs about it!

You can pay to go aboard the Bluenose II, either for a harbour cruise or as a deckhand. But we settled for admiring it from the dock. And from the boat next door, which is another one you can explore as part of your Fisheries Museum admission:

Then we wandered around a bit in town:

Interesting thing I did not realize about Lunenburg: the iconic view of all the colorful buildings along the water that you might have seen in guidebooks or on websites? You can’t actually see it when you’re in the town. You have to get across the water (where, I gather, there’s a golf course or something?) This makes sense, of course, but it still hadn’t really occurred to me in advance.

Now we were cold and had a long bike ride back, so we headed out of town and back to the path.

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