“Smell that salt air,” says Basil.

“We’re lucky today,” I reply. “Very often all you get to smell in Pictou is the pulp mill on the other side of the harbour”.

Basil asks what there is to see in Pictou. I tell him it’s a pretty small town and he tells me he figured that out already. As we drove into town I had pointed out the Grohmann’s Knife factory, but Basil declined the chance to stop and take a tour.

The ship Hector did grab his attention, so we took a trip around the Hector Heritage Quay where Basil learnt about the voyage of the Hector from Loch Broom in 1773, carrying 200 Scottish settlers. While we toured the replica of the ship, Basil wondered how they managed to cram that many people into such a small space.

Next we stopped at Carvers, a coffee house, bar and carving studio all rolled into one. As soon as Basil had finished his capuccino he was off again, this time to the Northumberland Fisheries Museum to learn all about lobsters. When he had finished there we decided it was time to head home, since Basil had heard that Liz Strauss was going to be talking about him on her open-mic event tonight, and he wanted to try and join in the chat.

Tags: nova scotia, pictou, travel, tourism, basil, where is basil