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Lunenburg, Nova ScotiaWholepotato

The harbour

Two harbours, one ridge between them, and a street grid that has not changed since 1753.

The town, the hill and the harbour Four streets run along the hill above the front harbour. The house stands on the third of them. The wharves are at the bottom, the academy is at the top, and the back harbour lies over the ridge. front harbour Montague Street, the wharves Lincoln Street Pelham Street the house, no. 14 Fox Street, and the academy above it back harbour, over the ridge four minutes down
Pelham Street is the third one up. The wharves are at the bottom.

On foot

  • The wharves – four minutes down. Steeply down, and therefore not four minutes back up.
  • Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic – six minutes, on Montague Street, in the old fish plant. Two schooners alongside when they are in.
  • St John's Anglican – three minutes. It burned in 2001 and was rebuilt by hand over four years; go and look at the ceiling.
  • The academy – eight minutes up. The big wooden school on the top of the hill, built 1895, and still a school.
  • The back harbour – twelve minutes over the ridge, where the working boats actually are.

Boats

Harbour tours run from the wharves between May and October. The Bluenose II sails out of here when she is not elsewhere, and whether she is in is the first question anybody asks in this town. The desk will tell you and will not sell you a ticket.

Weather

Fog from June to August, often in the morning and gone by eleven. The best weather is September and early October. Winter is cold, bright and windy, and a nor'easter will put water over the lower wharves two or three times a season.

Getting here

Halifax Stanfield airport is 120 kilometres and about an hour and a half. There is no train and no useful bus, so it is a car or a shuttle; the desk can book a shuttle and takes nothing for it. Once you are here, nothing in the old town needs a car and the hill will do more for you than any gym.

The grid

Eight blocks by four, laid out by a surveyor in 1753 on a hill that did not want a grid on it. That is why Pelham Street has a slope that will put a chair across a room if you let it, and why floors here are measured in degrees rather than millimetres.

The plantation road that climbs away from the town
The plantation road above the town, which is the walk when the fog is in.

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