Friendships Forged Over Storms & Moonshine
Waking up every morning to the view of the Annapolis basin and the town beyond brought a peace with it that seeped through to the very marrow of our travel weary bones, life at the Lilly Pad had quickly fallen into a sedate rhythm of dog walking, waving across the fence to our next-door neighbours who had three lovely puppers and house hunting which was now priority number one.
House hunting was proving to be far more difficult than we had anticipated, naturally Covid had impacted the property market here with prices doubling over the past 18 months and whilst there were far more houses available on the market in Nova Scotia than there were in Ottawa according to the Canadian Realtor website Real Estate Listings in Canada: houses, condos, land, property | REALTOR.ca every property that we tried to book a viewing for was either pending offer, under offer or had already sold.
We were missing the boat every single time and soon concluded that we were either too slow with our search or the website was not up to date, we discovered that it was the latter of the two. A chance encounter with some locals collecting beach glass (beach glass collecting is a huge thing in the Maritimes) on the beautiful beach of Smith’s Cove soon put us in the right direction when they recommended that we use the Viewpoint property website instead.
Viewpoint Nova Scotia Real Estate and MLS Listings – ViewPoint.ca was the website to be on if you were looking to buy a property in NS, not only was this website up to date but if you saw a property that you were interested in you could contact the Realtor directly and make an appointment for a viewing. So, we very quickly set about booking viewings for properties in the surrounding area that either met or got as close to meeting our criteria, this was going to be the exciting part, I mean who doesn’t like an opportunity to Bimble around someone’s house!
In the meantime, we were going to use this opportunity to explore, the short 30-minute walk across the causeway into the town of Annapolis Royal was a feast for the eyes, it would be hard to get bored of the sight of this place and we were eager to uncover its history and why it was known as the cradle of the Canadian nation.
With hundreds of years of heritage from the inhabiting Mi’kmaq the beautiful waterfront community nestled in the Annapolis Valley soon became home in the 1600’s to North Americas earliest European settlers. Through the annals of time Annapolis Royal (originally Port Royal) has witnessed pivotal events in the history of European settlement in Canada, the settlement has been ceded from the Scottish settlers to the French, and finally to the English with Mi’kmaq skirmishes in-between.
Known as the birthplace of Canadian Parliament and the first Police Service Annapolis Royal also has strong military ties which are still evident in the battlements rising out of the ground providing a backdrop for the stunning Fort Anne one of Canadas oldest national historic sites standing like a sentinel guarding the basin and town.
Steeped in history with over 135 registered heritage properties and with its quaint streetscapes, pubs, and restaurants and even a Moonshine Distillery it would be rude not to make the most of our stay in Annapolis Royal and spend our days wandering (or stumbling depending on how much moonshine was involved) around the town and discovering all its hidden gems.
The NS weather was proving to be as unpredictable as the property market, the couple of days of sun and blue skies quickly disappeared leaving a sky full of imposing clouds which delivered a light coating of snow, casting the landscape in varying shades of grey and white.
Lola’s first snow experience was an absolute joy to behold, and we relished our surprise snow day with a long walk because before we knew it the snow disappeared, a storm blew in and the rain arrived along with intense winds and much to our dismay a power outage!
It is only when you have a power outage that you realise how woefully under prepared you are, we lost power in the late afternoon leaving us in the Lilly Pad with only a few candles to light up the cottage, no means to keep ourselves warm, heat up any food, wash or even flush the toilet, everything in the cottage was run on electric.
True friendship is like a good bra, there to support you even when the going gets tough!
As if sensing our predicament our next-door neighbours who we had only chatted to in passing at this point invited us over to their home to share a meal a ’la indoor BBQ style and a chance to warm up around their gas camping fire, we leapt at the chance and boy are we glad we did because we were about to meet our soul people.
Our neighbours Jason and Tania Rock were amazing, I mean they lived up to their name, they rocked! Never have we felt so welcome, accepted, and cared for. They took in two strays out of the goodness of their heart and made us feel like family and we will always be grateful for their kindness.
Now camp style meals for us bring forth memories of canned stew or soup with a slice of bread or even worse eating cold Heinz Baked Beans straight out of the can but the camp meal provided by the Rock’s blew our frickin minds, it was superb and worthy of any restaurant! I mean a meal of bacon wrapped chicken breast stuffed with cream cheese and jalapeno pepper and beans is next level camp cooking.
Fully satiated the evening was spent in comfortable conversation over copious cups of tea and coffee until Jason and Tania introduced us to Night Owl and Winter Wanderer Moonshine courtesy of the Still Fired Distillery in the local settlement of Lequille. Still Fired Distilleries Inc.
The conversation after that went downhill quickly often interspersed by bouts of full-on belly laughing caused by our inability to string a sentence together. It was way after midnight and many hours since the power had returned that we staggered the one minute it took to get back to the Lilly Pad with the feeling in our hearts that we had just forged the friendship of a lifetime.