HEALTHY AT HOME
History, Beauty and a Scottish Bothy Exploring Six Mile Brook Trail BY TRISH JOUDREY
Great walks of the
North Shore
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t is not often you find a trail in Nova Scotia peppered with history, stories of love and death, and a comfortable place to rest your tired body in the middle of the woods. The Six Mile Brook Trail has all that…and more. It is just after 10:00 a.m. when our footsteps start to ascend the centuries-old path the early settlers to Pictou County had once used. “As early as 1767, they would have used this route to pick up supplies in Truro and bring them back to Pictou,” says Pat MacDonnell, the historian in our group. Stepping carefully over the roots of the tall hemlocks lining the mountain path, I imagine the difficulty the early
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ah! Winter 2021–22
Scottish and British settlers must have had traveling across and farming this terrain. Luckily, the brook, and many bubbling springs around, provided plenty of clean drinking water. The Six Mile Brook Trail, a short twentyminute drive from Pictou along the 376-S, is a wonderful forested looped trail that follows a flowing brook on the south side of Dalhousie Mountain to a newly constructed bothy. It then climbs up to a picturesque panorama on the crest of the mountain, returning via the forest again to the trailhead. “A bothy is an open shelter in the Scottish Highlands,” explains Pat. “Gordon Young, an avid hiker of this
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trail, thought it a perfect name to use for this cabin where hikers can get warm, have a snack, or sleep overnight. It’s always open, free to anyone using the trail, and has a guest book for visitors to sign. Most of the construction of the bothy was done by students at North Nova Education Centre. “Our MacLaughlin Bothy is so well-used, especially now during COVID-19, that we are thinking of constructing another one on the Cape-to-Cape Trail, of which the Six Mile Brook is a part.” I expect to see a rustic log cabin. Instead, an inviting post-and-beam lodge with a sleeping loft, large wooden table and chairs, and an open-air loo, greets
At Home on the North Shore
