A Taste of the Maritimes

Twelve nights by hire car around all three Maritime provinces, using two ferry crossings to make a proper circle rather than doubling back.

Halifax opens it with two nights. The Citadel sits above the town in a star-shaped fort, and Pier 21 was the arrival point for a million immigrants between 1928 and 1971, which makes the museum there genuinely affecting. A harbour ferry runs out to Georges Island with its tunnels.

The Lighthouse Route then follows the South Shore to Peggy’s Cove, where the lighthouse stands on wave-scoured granite above a working fishing village and is among the most photographed in the world. Mahone Bay and a string of clapboard coastal villages follow.

The Bay Ferries crossing from Digby to Saint John then takes the route into New Brunswick, and a second crossing from Wood Island to Caribou brings it to Prince Edward Island and Charlottetown, where Canadian confederation was agreed in 1864. Cape Breton closes the trip with the Cabot Trail, which loops over the headlands of the highlands national park with the sea below and is routinely rated one of the finest drives in North America, with the Skyline Trail among more than twenty-five walks off it. Canadian Affair include the flights, the hire car, the hotels, both ferry crossings and the listed attractions, with fuel, insurance and meals separate. The price is per person. Autumn is the season worth aiming for, when the hardwood on the Cape Breton slopes turns and the summer traffic has gone.