Gear and guidance for the long way round.

The first thing that goes when you travel with an animal that is slowing down is the schedule. We had planned the loop in two days and drove it in four, and the difference was not the distance — it was that every headland became a twenty-minute stop instead of a photograph taken through a windscreen. Bramble is fourteen. She needed the stops. It turned out we did too.

Two things earned their space. A collapsible water carrier, because the taps between Chéticamp and Neils Harbour are further apart than the map suggests and a dog drinks more than you plan for. And a pet first-aid kit, which we opened once, for a cut pad on the rocks at Green Cove — not an emergency, but the difference between a calm ten minutes and a frightening drive to find a clinic.

The pull-off north of Neils Harbour has no services and no light, which is the entire point of it. We slept badly and woke up early and watched the fog come in off the water at five in the morning with a dog asleep across both our feet. If you take one thing from this: the version of the trip where you arrive somewhere every night is not the better version.