Gullivers Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada

The sky was a congested pileup of heavy grey clouds obviously rammed together by high wind but I wasn’t going to let a storm stop me from going to Gulliver’s Cove. I had read somewhere it has a shady pirate legend, and a stunning coastal walking trail to a look off out over the Bay of Fundy.

It is just 15 km from my last stop at the Maud Lewis Memorial Park in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia on the 217 highway known as Digby Neck Island Drive. At Roseway, I turned right onto Gullivers Cove Road, a lonely little strip of pavement I had all to myself.

The truck started shuddering followed by a steady whistling noise in around the old truck door seams. A gale was blowing by the time I reached the end of the pavement and lurched with a drop onto the gravel access road out towards the beach. I found a small parking area just barely big enough to do a three point turn so I wouldn’t have to drive out backwards. Sitting in my cab I watched the waves all frothy and white coming ashore thrusting white bones of driftwood into stacks. The announcement on the radio said the ferry crossing from Digby to Saint John was cancelled. I was going to have to stay another night in the area so to heck with it, might as well see the cove in a raging storm.

I flipped the hood of my coat up, took both the draw strings in hand and yanked them tight, closing my hood in around my face. Then I hauled on the door handle and gave it a shove outward with my shoulder to exit. I will tell you getting that truck door open and closed without injury was no easy feat. Neither was walking out towards the plaque to read the Gulliver story. The spray of the waves reached me far up on the shore. I staggered along the rocks. I didn’t dare use my camera in case I fell or got it drenched. Here is a video taken on my phone.

According to the legend it wasn’t just Oak Island that was a favourite place of plunder by Blackbeard, Black Bart, Captain Kidd and Captain Henry Morgan, This very site was desirable too. It is named after Cut Throat Gulliver. The lower section of the plaque reads;

“Cut Throat Gulliver for whom Gullivers Cove was given its name, originally named “Gullivers hole” is said to have hidden in waiting here for unsuspecting ships to sail by. Legend has “Cut Throat” seizing great amounts of plunder and burying it along the steep clifftops. It is said he took his crew into Conway, Now Digby, through the woods of the Culloden via the north mountain. Gulliver had a demanding and hungry crew. Rumoured to have threatened local farmers and taken their livestock. Legend says that Gulliver lost his life in a brutal stabbing by his own wife. A tall West Indian women, apparently she was a formidable weapon-wielding pirate herself, who was not all that happy with the Bay of Fundy climate. After killing her husband, she is said to have sailed home to the West Indies , where she turned Gulliver’s ship back over to his terrified crew. It s believed they never returned to the West Indies or to Gullivers Hole.“

Please join me again at I look around Digby Neck outer Islands. Happy travels from Maritimemac.