Along the Ceilidh Trail

Wednesday, July 31

Jane went to bed early last night and slept late this morning (Wednesday). I think all the passenger seat driving she did yesterday wore her out. Once she arose and after we had breakfast (blueberries, croissants with blueberry jam and the last of Jane’s super homemade cereal), we cruised around the campground on our bikes. We departed and before leaving Antigonish, we topped off the diesel tank and visited the Atlantic Superstore to buy food and a few other provisions. 

The drive to Cape Breton over the Canso Causeway was short, and after briefly stopping at the welcome station, we proceeded to the coastal highway, the Cabot Trial.  The southern portion is known as the Ceilidh Trail. Ceilidh (pronounced KAY lee) is a Celtic word for a musical gathering. This area of Cape Breton is world-renowned for its music. The native Cape Breton fiddlers have developed a an eponymous style of playing. 

After driving awhile on this scenic road, we pulled over at Christy’s Look Off for lunch (salad from the Superstore that Jane had improved with added ingredients) in the RV with a beautiful view.

Further down the road in Judique, we stopped to visit the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre. We just heard the last part of the last song of an ongoing ceilidh involving a fiddler and piano. The center was interesting with a history of Gaelic music. There were videos with dance and fiddle lessons. We met a fiddler from France who is  in an Irish music band and she played an Irish tune for us using one of the fiddles (sans rosin) provided for the video lessons. The shoppe was awesome, full of Great Breton fiddle music and CDs of local fiddle players.

We continued down the Ceilidh Trail enjoying the scenery, eventually turned inland some, and arrived at The Lakes Campground. We checked in and rested a bit then headed out to find The Barn to attend a local ceilidh. 

Following directions from the campground hostess, we turned down Egypt Road but we didn’t see The Barn, so when we came to a tee, we took a right turn and followed the road until it was about to turn into gravel. At this point, I turned the RV around in a gravel driveway and after doing that, decided to employ another old-timey navigation method. I remember from my childhood that women would stop to ask for directions. (Men, of course preferred to rely on which side of the tree moss grew on or star patterns.) Nevertheless, I got out of the RV and, emulating my mother’s most friendly voice, approached the man, woman, and barking dog that lived by the driveway. Turns out, they were friendly and sympathetic to our plight and the man was heading our direction, anyway. So after a friendly farewell from the woman, we commenced another time-honored navigation technique, following another vehicle. Our lead vehicle knowledgeably slowed down at all the (many) bad spots in the road and the man pulled over at our venue to say goodbye before going on his way.

As it turns out, The Barn was not visible from the road but was hidden behind the Normaway Inn, a detail that would have greatly assisted a gps-less navigator to locate it. Anyway, we found a parking spot for the RV and entered The Barn. Because we didn’t have reserved tickets, we were asked to sit in a side annex room, but decided to park ourselves in the windows in the back directly in front of the stage. This was a family ceilidh with Kyle MacNeil leading on fiddle and vocals, his brother (Sheumas) on keyboards and his son on guitar. Other members of the family also preformed for various numbers, his daughter and youngest son on fiddle and his wife on soprano sax. Yes, she played some slow airs and Irish jigs on the sax. I anticipated that the dog would show up with bagpipes and the cat with a fife but they apparently were too shy to face the crowd. During intermission we bought a couple of bottles of pure blueberry juice and drank one in the RV and saved the other. (Most people return from their vacation red from too much sun exposure but we’re going to return blue from too much blueberry exposure.) The entire show was very enjoyable. We wearily departed around 10:30 as they began rearranging the chairs for square dancing.