UNESCO Sites of Atlantic Canada - CanaDream

Twenty-four nights and 4,400 kilometres in a loop from Halifax in a motorhome, taking in twelve of the thirteen sites on the Atlantic Canada UNESCO corridor.

Lunenburg comes first down the Nova Scotia shore, a planned British colonial town of 1753 whose wooden buildings and street grid survive intact, then Kejimkujik, Wolfville and Parrsboro, and the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, where the Bay of Fundy tides expose a coal forest 300 million years old and new fossils appear with every storm.

Hopewell Rocks and Fundy National Park follow in New Brunswick, where the tidal range is the largest in the world and the sea floor is walked at low water, then St Martins and Saint John. Baddeck comes next on Cape Breton, then the ferry to Port aux Basques and Gros Morne in Newfoundland, where the Tablelands expose the earth’s mantle at the surface. L’Anse aux Meadows is the Norse settlement of around the year 1000, the only confirmed one in North America, with Bonavista beyond it.

The motorhome and the day-by-day plan come from CanaDream, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with insurance options priced at booking. Twenty-five days for 4,400 kilometres is a fair pace for a route that includes a long ferry crossing to Newfoundland, which takes most of a day and needs booking well ahead for a motorhome. The later stages back from Bonavista to Halifax are set out on the CanaDream site. The season here is short, roughly June to September, with many campsites closed outside it. Icebergs pass the Newfoundland coast in early summer and the whales follow them.