Canada
Cape Breton Highlands
From the Skyline Trail's cliff decks you watch for whales; moose live on the plateau behind.
The road climbs from surf to plateau in a single sweep of switchbacks. From the lookoffs, pilot whales stitch the swell far below.
The Highlands section of the Cabot Trail concentrates the drama: French Mountain's climbs, the Skyline ridge walk and coves where Gaelic and Acadian communities still play their music. Trailheads leave the road for waterfalls and headlands at every second bend. The east side answers with oyster beds and lobster wharves.
Couple
Drive the trail in two unhurried days, walking Skyline together for the evening light.
Solo
Lookoffs, trailheads and community halls make a solo loop sociable exactly when wanted.
Friends
Share the driving and split hikes by appetite, meeting where the oysters are shucked.
- The Cabot Trail's highland section stacks lookoffs, switchbacks and the Skyline ridge walk.
- Gaelic and Acadian communities keep music in the coves along the route.
- Aspy Bay oysters and Pleasant Bay lobster rolls feed the loop.
The Dunphy family has shucked its trademarked Aspy Bay oysters at South Harbour since the 1980s.
The Rusty Anchor at Pleasant Bay piles its lobster roll with pure lump meat and a little butter; National Geographic praised it in a 2010 Cape Breton road-trip feature.
Kamikochi
Japan
A river the colour of glacial flour through an alpine valley closed to private cars.
Malham Cove
England
A curved limestone cliff worn into alien pavement by three hundred million years.
Mam Tor
England
The Shivering Mountain — a ridge that crumbles in slow motion above a broken road.
Borrowdale
England
England's wettest valley, where waterfalls thread through oak canopy into black pools.
Wells Gray Provincial Park
Canada
Waterfalls on a volcanic scale pour through a park most itineraries still miss.
Dempster Highway
Canada
Canada's only all-season Arctic road runs 740 unpaved kilometres to the Mackenzie Delta.
Clearwater River
Canada
A wilderness river of glass-clear water runs the old voyageur road through roadless boreal forest.
Churchill River
Canada
A voyageur highway of lakes and granite still runs its canoe routes through the boreal north.