Dateline August 20, 2017, Golf in Nova Scotia
Amherst. The morning was beautiful as we crossed into Nova Scotia and made for the Amherst Golf Club.
We were lucky enough to be paired with a couple from Truro, Spud and Patty. Spud grew up on Prince Edward Island, where the main crop is potatoes, which is how he came by the name, and he had spent thirty-one years in the Royal Navy. He was out playing a practice round for the Amherst Open, due to be held a few days later. Patty was a family lawyer, still hard at work. The course was hilly and put us in mind of golf in Scotland, and we had a great time of it.
Truro. Spud suggested we come play his home club, the Truro Country Club, so on we went. There we were joined by two gentlemen who did not play a great deal, which made for an interesting round, and the course, like Amherst, had the feel of Scotland, with long fescues to fight your way out of. As we came up the seventeenth, Spud spotted us from a parallel hole and came running over to give Janice a hug. It was good to see him again. A fun course, and a fine day.
The next morning, packing up, we ran into trouble with the RV. We tracked down a service shop about an hour off, right on our route to Cape Breton, and they were good as gold: open at eight, we rolled in just after, they had us fixed and billed for eighty-five dollars, and we were on the road again by a quarter to nine.
Ben Eoin. We were due to play The Lakes Golf Club at Ben Eoin at a quarter past two, and we had booked ahead at the Ben Eoin Beach Resort and Campground, a place that rates well online and sits right on the lake. The grounds were lovely. But when we pulled in to check in, the spot they had set aside for us was outside the gate, up by the highway, hard beside two Porta Potties, and they wanted better than fifty dollars a night for the privilege. A word to fellow RVers: park your guests next to the toilets and you should not be surprised when they hand the key right back. We cancelled, went off to our golf, and found somewhere else to lay our heads.
The Lakes. We had pushed the tee time to half past two and got there with time for some lunch. It was overcast with a twenty-mile-an-hour wind, and the course was as beautiful and as challenging as any we have had the pleasure to play.
If you ever get the chance to play it, take it; you will not forget the views of the lake and the holes that run along it. From there we set our sights on Louisbourg, which more than one person had told us was something we should not miss.
