Cape Breton Roadtrip: Fielding Road to Wreck Cove Hydro Station

Warning: this post has an overload of pictures. I take many more on a driving trip than a walking trip. Asides from the added logistical difficulty of snapping while walking, I suppose that when I hike, I'm often all wrapped up in the sometimes meditative (sometimes tiring) aspects of the journey it takes to get to a destination. A long drive is very different. Here is a panoramic shot taken from Wreck Cove, looking out to Bird Islands.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to Russell that I hadn't yet been in to see the Wreck Cove Hydro Station. He had been there a couple of times, the most recent being about eight years ago, and so he wanted to check it out as well. To add a bit to the adventure, we decided to drive in from Margaree via the Highland road system (and not the Wreck Cove end), making it an entirely dirt-road trek

The Wreck Cove station is the only non-private hydroelectric plant in Cape Breton. To get there, we we drove from Fielding Road in Margaree Valley to the end of Highland Road, passing the road to go to Wreck Cove, and having to turn around a couple of times to locate it. Even with a map in hand from the Department of Natural Resources office in Margaree, it gets tricky out there. After selecting the right trail, it was a slower drive the rest of the way, as we moved from the wide Highland Road to something much narrower and maintained only by the Snowmobilers Association of Nova Scotia. Still, my little Civic made it through and the roads improved again once we got closer to Wreck Cove end.