Why Fall in Cape Breton is the longest fun season

Adjusting expectations is never easy, whether it is watching your child grow up, assessing your self-worth, or planning a golfer’s trip. Twelve months ago, I signed up for a seemingly idyllic trip: a golf-themed cruise in Canada’s Marina Province on a four-masted powered sailboat. The 12-day “Fiddle & Sticks” voyage operated by Expedition Experience includes stopping on the idyllic island of Madeleine, Quebec; Newfoundland’s outer harbors and villages can only be reached by water or by air; Nova Scotia and the French territory of St. Pierre (euro and passport required), and golfing along the way on world-class courses. Despite my severe seasickness, I have sailed most of this voyage before and I love it. But Cape Breton’s promise to tick the box of “must go again”.

Then there is the curve ball. While I was waiting in Toronto for a transfer flight to Nova Scotia, I received a text message from my friend and travel companion from Halifax, reminding me that the voyage had been cancelled due to logistical issues: Our captain was unexpectedly heading to Central Europe. We weren’t intimidated, and it was close to the Cabot Links and Cabot Cliff race, I could taste the salty air, we swapped the keel for the car and accelerated to Cape Breton.

Murphy was my temporary driver with a Paultish fashion taste, and he grew up in Sydney, a historic mining town on the east coast of Cape Breton. When he was young, he sailed on Lake Brador (the inland sea) and visited relatives’ lakeside huts, and while attending St. Francis Xavier University, he continued to escape from reality. His anecdotes drive our adventure more than my English breakfast tea.

As someone from the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t help but compare it to Banden Dunes when I came into contact with Cape Breton. These similarities are not coincidental. When Cabot founder Ben Cowan-Dewar visited the headland between Inverness and the Atlantic Ocean, he contacted Mike Keiser, founder of Bandon Dunes.

Kaiser was completely immersed in his fast-growing Oregon resort, and he gave up on the investment opportunity until he visited the Nova Scotia plot, or more specifically, the 40 plots that Cowan Dewar pieced together. The two formed a partnership with Kaiser serving as a mentor rather than a manager. Canadian architect Rod Whitman was hired to design the Cabot Links Stadium. Just as David McLay Kidd stood out from obscurity and designed the Bandon Dunes, Whitman had never been commissioned by a project of this scale before. Cowan-Dewar and Whitman broke ground in 2009, launching a bold project on the eastern edge of North America, but it was not auspicious. The course will be offered three years later.

Given that Cape Breton is one of the most beautiful terrain in North America, it would be a crime to see Cape Breton from Cabot Trail (a 186-mile roundabout route), if you only focus on driving and not driving here. When the colors of autumn come, it is as beautiful as anywhere on the earth. My first visit to Cape Breton was mainly hiking, boating and chasing moose in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Gaelic culture, Arcadia culture and Mickmark culture add more patterns to the tartan.

The Celtic Colors International Festival is arguably the most exciting celebration of Celtic music and culture in the world, launching in early October, when sugar maple, birch and beech will turn into kaleidoscopes on the trees. Art activities are also dazzling, with over 200 events and 50 musical performances in nine days.

Celtic Colors are in line with the end-of-season price of Cabot Cape Breton. Despite the changing weather in October, strolling these trails in the filtered sunshine of clouds and the cool autumn temperatures is a pleasure, and there are discounts. Cape Town’s location will not disappoint at any other time of the year, with large swaths of alpine forests surrounding glacial lakes.

Cape Breton was no stranger to excellent golf before Cowan Dewar arrived. In 1939, the National Park Service hired Stanley Thompson, the dean of the Canadian College of Golf Architecture, to design nine holes in the park. Thompson insists on building nine more golf courses, he carefully designed the Cape Breton Highland Links, which was once listed on the GOLF’s 100 best courses in the world and one of the most amazing and diverse 18-hole trails in the world.

Starting from the starting point of the park green space, the route goes uphill through the pine trees and then down to the coast. The third hole of the par 3 requires a small bay; the seventh hole on the par 5 drills into the woods and opens up a narrow passage in the forest canyon; the ninth hole is a short par 4 hole characterized by blind shooting, while the tenth hole is a par 3 hole that suddenly falls into the valley. On the 12th hole, the par-3 requires a fierce hit along the Clyburn River. It then goes into the high ground and returns to the Atlantic Ocean for the final hole. Eighty-five years have passed, Thompson’s Cape Breton Heights Links should be added to any Cape Breton golf agency, especially now, recent attention has improved the track’s former sloppy face.

Murphy and I were preparing for two days and played a less famous but slightly less challenging layout, the Lake District of Ben Eoin. Located on the east shore of Bras d’Or Lake, these 18 resorts winding down the hillsides and offer several beautiful views of the same name lake. Each fairway has forests on both sides. Brooks glided through his favorite landing area. Paper 3 17^th During the prime time, a beautiful picture without the ocean is presented by the lake.

This gives us a look at the Atlantic framing masterpiece of Cape Breton in Cabot. Aside from the front and back nines, sand base, fescue from tee to green, and other classic features, I believe Links’ best definition is surprise: blind hits, hidden greens, crazy outlines. Calling a course “being cheated” is an insult. But I think “boring” is the most defamatory description of a course, the nickname that is most likely to cancel future visits, and the suitcase is closed.

Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs will never feel ordinary. Granted, these courts stand above the ocean like infinity pools, with unfair aesthetic advantages, but the dual layout – siblings rather than twins – makes me dizzy.

Play Links first if possible, because Whitman’s design does not have cliff teeth. You still need to focus, like I failed to do it on the 6-hole of the 465 yard par 4^th When I was flooded by a jagged hole, I hit the ball into the fairway and entered the local juniper tree. On the 620 yard 11 field, trouble is also lurking in the obvious^thI have been unable to figure out the plateau and valley settings. This is the only hole on Links that allows caddies’ insights to play invaluable value.

Usually, I’m not too obsessed with the wind because my ball flight doesn’t completely itch the sky. But on the 14th hole, 108 yards, par 3, the high tee facing the Atlantic Ocean, almost made me curl up like a fetus. Murphy soared over the green during the gust of wind. I aimed at the left side of the green and watched my ball fly into the bunker on the right. Three bogeys. I adjusted my launch angle on the last four holes and the final stretch proved to be particularly bad for willful hits.

Like its opponents, the start of Cabert Cliff was smooth. The first hole is 581 yards long, par-5, and there are several well-positioned bunkers to keep you focused. Although Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are considered two of the friendlyest people in the industry, the good thing ends on the second hole, which requires a dexterous kick-off under the threat of a creek and then blindly hitting the high green lurking behind a bushy hill: it declares that the fun really begins.

The giggles continue. The 389-yard par-4 third requires the first of countless (well, nine) rushing, not including six par-3. (On the cliff, the par is par resolved to one-third.) Out of nine “Pray and swing” tee, 589 yards par 7 shots 589 strokes^thBelow is a water grave and to the right is a shrub-covered cemetery that will cause the most terrifying nightmare.

For architects, there may be no more difficult task than composition. For golfers, a lot of things can go wrong. After all, there is only a thread between fascinating features and frustrating gimmicks. Coole and Crenshaw played a master game on the 15th hole (560 yard par) and if someone hit a perfect second with a long iron or fairway wood, the ball would fly along the right side of the fairway towards the gathering green where the eagles or at least two pushes would fall.

The six par-3s also go on creative pace, with several blind greens and plenty of room for creativity. 186 yards No. 6 hole^thThe four of us watched each kickoff disappear behind the hills, reappear, cross the trailing edge, roll back into the abyss, and gathered together, and after a moment we found that we were less than three feet apart, about fifteen steps from the flag.

If 6^th 176 code 16 code rotation brings us invisible rotation^th It was confusing our quartet from the start, and the flag was so far to the left of the green that I questioned my yardage book. Facing the pure ocean crossing the spectacular spire of fire rock, I was sure my No. 5 iron would definitely be able to birdie if the green did not accidentally land towards the majestic Atlantic Ocean.

Coole and Crenshaw return to the court on the 17th hole of 331 yards^thIt is a cliff-bridge par-4 hole, and if you can avoid several dangerous bunkers, you can grab a speed slot and overflow to the entrance of the green when hitting the invisible fairway on the cliff.

If both courses are on the mainland side where I am, I will be playing as fast as possible at Burt Links Stadium, but if it means accumulating more rounds, I will be playing with my headlights on Burt Cliff Stadium.

We finished our trip at Cabot’s Whit’s Public House and drove an hour back to Baddeck, a harbour village by the lake on Bras d’Or where we started the day with a two-hour lobster boat cruise and planned to end the evening with fresh lobster at the new Main Street Restaurant.

The next morning, when I bought scones at the fabulous Herring Choker Deli store outside the city, I bought a hand-painted lighthouse magnet to take home, a symbol of the charm of Cape Breton.

The owner of Expedition Experience assured me that “Fiddle & Sticks” will reappear in 2026. I had my rosin ready, put on my anti-nausea fingertips, and then went through the continent of Africa to return to the Marina.

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