Then came the curve. As I fell into Toronto for my connecting flight to Nova Scotia, I received a text from my friend and travel companion, Breton Murphy based in Halifax, warning me that the cruise had been removed due to a logistical issue: Our captain had suddenly left for Central Europe. Undecided, and so close to play Cabbit AND Cabot’s rocks I could enjoy the salty air, we exchanged a keel for a car and left in Cape Breton.
As a Northwest of the Pacific, I can’t approach Cape Cape Breton without drawing comparisons with Gang dunes. The similarities are not casual. When the founder of Cabot Ben Cowan-Dewar showed the heads between the inverness and the Atlantic Ocean, he reached the founder of the bandon Dunes, Mike Keizer.
Completely occupied by his quick resort in Oregon, Keizer went on to invest while, that is, he visited the Nova Scotia parcel or, more specifically, the 40 Cowan-Dewar parcels had broken together. The duo formed a partnership, with Keizer in the role of mentor rather than the manager. Canadian architect Rod Whitman was hired to design Cabot links. like David McLay Kiddwho was immersed in the dark to design the bandon Dunes, Whitman had never previously been ordered a project of this size. Cowan-Dewar and Whitman were destroyed in 2009, an unbearable year to start a bold project on the eastern edge of North America. The course opened three years later.
It would be a crime to focus solely on the drives and not to drive here, given that Cape Breton is one of the most beautiful pieces of terrain in North America, best viewed by Cabot Trail, an 186 -mile road around the island. When the autumn colors come in, it is as beautiful as any place on the planet. My first visit to Cape Breton focused on walking, driving and following moose at Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Gaelic, Acadian and Mi’kmaq crops add even more models to Tartan.
Celtic international festival, probably the best celebration of Celtic music and culture in the world, begins in early October when Sugar Maples, Birch and Beech are transformed into an Arberian kaleidoscope. The artistic spectrum is also blinded, with more than 200 events and 50 music performances that include nine days.
Celtic colors correspond to the end -of -year rates in Cabot Cape Breton. Although the October weather may be soft, walking these traces in cloud -filtered sunlight and fresh autumn temperatures is a pleasure, and everything better with a discount. Kepi’s geography will not disappoint any other time of the year, with a wide number of alpine forests embracing glacial lakes.
Cape Breton was not a stranger for the excellent golf before Cowan-Dewar’s arrival. In 1939, the National Park service hired Stanley ThompsonThe dean of Canada’s Golf Architecture to design nine holes inside the park. Thompson, insisting on an extra nine, made of Cape Breton Highland Links, a former golf list with 100 best courses in the world and among the most stunning and diverse walks of 18 holes everywhere.
From the starting point in the park, the course operates up across the pines, then down to the coast. The 3rd and 3rd hole requires a carrier over a young child; the 7th par-5 ducks in the forest, cutting a narrow passage through a sylvan orifice; Of the 9th, a par 4, contains a blind approach, while the par-3 10 falls quickly to a sun; 12th and 12th calls for a beast carried along the Clyburn River. Then he is in the Highlands and returns to the Atlantic for the closing holes. Eighty -five years following, Thompson’s Highland Cape Breton’s links should be added to any Golf Cape Breton junket, especially now that the latest attention has improved the dirty complexes.
Murphy and I had prepared for two days playing a less familiar, but only a little less challenging, lakes in Ben Eoin. Situated on the east coast of Bras D’Or Lake, these 18 traverse the hill and represent some wonderful spaces of Lake Epony. Forest forests every free road. Brooks slips through favored landing areas. Par-3 17Th In the golden clock, fitted from the lake, it presents a beautiful look that it can be painted without an ocean in the background.
Which brings us to Cabot Cape Breton’s Atlantic Framework. More than nine and nine back, a sandy base, green fescue and other classic features, I believe a connection is best determined by surprise: blind shots, hidden greens, crazy contours. Next to an insult to call a “deceived” course. But I consider it “boring” as the most slanderous descriptor for a course, a moniker who is most forced to cancel future visits, closed suitcases.
Cabot and Cabot Cliffs links never feel everyday. True, these courses, prepared over the ocean like an infinity pool, have an unfair aesthetic advantage, but are double appearances – sisters and not Gemini – that make me think.
Play the links first, if possible, as the Whitman design does not hold the rock teeth. You will still need to focus, as I failed to do in 465-year-old par-4 6 6Th When, consumed with the indented bay waiting to drown the faded left, I brought my ball across the street and the local juniper. The problem also stands out simple in 620-Oborrin 11ThA plateau and configuration of the valley that I could never understand. It was the only hole in the connections where the knowledge of a caddy would be invaluable.
Usually, I do not fix much for the wind, as my ball flight does not tickle the heavens. But 108-Oborri, par-3 14, with a top raised in front of the Atlantic, almost leaving me bent in a fetal position. Murphy grew green during a break in gusts; I targeted the left of the green and saw my ball sail on a bunker on the right. Triple-Bogey. I arranged my starting angles for the last four holes, a final extension that proved particularly punitive for strange shots.
Like her counterpart, Cabot Cliffs begins intentionally. The opening hole is a 581-Oborr par 5 with some well-set bunkers to maintain your focus. Although Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw are known as two of the most beautiful people in the industry, the beauties end in the second hole, which requires a skilful blow threatened by a stream, followed by a blind shot in a raised green that falls behind a bushy hill: an imposition that entertainment has really begun.
The author’s game partner in the Cabot Cliff closing hole.
Crai S. Bower
Giggles continue. 389-Oborr par-4 3 requires countless first (okay, nine) bears, not including six par 3s. (On the rocks, pars are analyzed in the third.) Of the nine shootings “say your prayers and shakes”, 589-year-old PAR 5 7ThWith a diluted grave with water down and a tomb filled with shrubs to the right, it causes the most frightening nightmares.
Maybe there is no more sought after task for an architect than to compose a blind blow. As for golf players, so much can go wrong. After all, it’s a good line, between a stunning feature and a disappointing trick. Coore and Crenshaw provide a master class in the 15th hole, a 560-yard, where, should hit a perfect second stroke with a long iron or road wood, the ball will grow down the right side of the lower road to collect the green, where the eagle, or at least two birds, Alight.
Six par-3 also play in a creative cadence with some blind greens and a lot of room for creativity. In 186-Oborrin 6ThOur fourth watched every stroke disappeared after Knoll, reappeared to overcome the back edge, then tread back into the abyss before gathering, we discovered moments later, within three legs about fifteen steps from the flag.
If 6Th entertained us with invisible gyms, 176-Oborr 16Th It has gripped our quartet from the beginning, the flag a show so far left from the green that I questioned my backyard book. Faced with a clean ocean holding on the spiral spirals lit, I was sure that my five iron was a first bird, if it was not for the unforeseen origin of the imposing Atlantic.
Coore and Crenshaw are back to it at 331-Oborr 17ThA par 4 embraced on the rock, where a car well hit on the bluffs on an invisible road can catch a speed slot and pour into the green mouth, assuming it avoids some dangerous bunkers.
There were both courses located on my side of the continent, I would hit Cabot’s links when I could, but I would play Cabot rocks with a beacon if it meant the gathering of more rounds.
We wrapped in the public house of Cabot’s Whit before we made an hour by car again in Baddeck, a Bras D’Or Harbor village, where we would start our day with a two-hour vessel by boat and where we planned to close the evening on the new Main Street restaurant.
The next morning, while gathering a scone in the fabulous Deli of Hering Choker outside the city, I bought a hand -painted seed magnet to keep at home, a symbol of the Cabot Cape Breton charm.
The owner of the expedition experience assures me that “Fiddle & Sticks” will return to books in 2026. I am ready to roast my clubs, grab my wings of anti-Nausea acupressure and return my way to the continent in maritime.
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