At the Purple Thistle dining room in Nova Scotia's Keltic Lodge, just as I was about to tuck into my lobster, 30 other patrons rose as one and surged towards me.

Now Canadians are not usually ravenously hungry nor rude, but I was mildly troubled until the crowd passed me by and glued itself to the window behind. A pilot whale was threading across North Bay Ingonish below the lodge, making a black stitch on the still waters when it surfaced, then a blank, then another stitch when it rose again to draw breath. Apart from my lobster at just Can$13 a pop and the whale, the third memorable note in this scene was music. In one corner of the room, a fiddler was sawing out a lively reel accompanied by a bearded man on a squeezebox. It's Gaelic with a twist, which is this part of the world in a nutshell.

Canada's Nova Scotia - literally, "New Scotland" - lives up to its name. It feels like a slice of Scotland hived off and heaved across an ocean. There's a glorious, sea-fretted coastline with rocky shores, glacial valleys, fishing villages, scalped hills and the Gaelic greeting - Céad Mile Filte ("a hundred thousand welcomes") - on signs along the roadsides, and a cultural calendar that centres around step dancers and fiddlers.

I was driving the Cabot Trail, a 300km loop around Cape Breton Island, the north-eastern quarter of Nova Scotia. Whenever I told anyone in Canada I was off to do the Cabot Trail, the reaction would be much the same as if you'd said the words "Garden Route" at home. There was the engineer I'd sat next to on the plane from Toronto to Halifax who'd done it on a bike in his youth, who'd grown misty-eyed at the memory. There was Doug and Mary, a couple I'd met in the Yukon, who'd recalled wonderful oysters, and debated whether it was better to do it clockwise or anti. "Oh you'll love it all right," they'd said.

The Cabot Trail begins at Baddeck, which lies at about the centre of Cape Breton Island. It was foggy when I pulled out of the parking lot of the Inverary Inn and a scenic drive in mist wasn't what I had in mind but here's luck - on a hillside on the town's outskirts is the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. Born in Edinburgh, Bell emigrated to Canada in 1870, at the age of 23.

After a visit to Baddeck in 1885, the great inventor purchased a large tract of land at the tip of Red Head, a peninsula across the bay from the village, and built a house which he called "Beinn Bhreagh".

It was an exciting time for Bell. The great inventor had patented a telephone in 1876 and it had taken off like the cellphone would in our own times. By the time Bell arrived in Baddeck, there were more than 150 000 telephones in the US alone.

Although Bell had built "Beinn Bhreagh" as his family's summer retreat, it became the focus for the circle of fellow inventors whom Bell gathered around him, who built and tested a number of wonderful contraptions here. Nothing was beyond his agile mind. His interests included helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft, sheep breeding, air conditioning, the hydrofoil, a bicycle for travel over water and a device for weighing letters. Yet, for me, the most remarkable of all Bell's accomplishments was this; he got a dog to speak. A speech therapist by training, Bell taught the dog to warble "ow-ah-oo-garama" ("How are you, grandma?"), and people came from kilometres around to see this wondrous feat. And you would, wouldn't you? I've travelled to distant countries to see marvels that pale in comparison with a talking dog.

I came outside to brightness and birdsong. The fog had lifted to reveal Bras d'Or Lake - Arms of Gold - and down at the marina off Water Street men in overalls were backing boats with trailers into the water, ready for the summer holidays.

From Baddeck the Cabot Trail winds along the edge of the lake. It's gaspingly pretty. Shimmering water winked at me through the vertical blinds of the birch trees. There were shingled barns sunken in green fields. I drove in a happy trance.

It was just about midday when I coasted down the driveway of my home for the night, Keltic Lodge, set on Middle Head, the peninsula that separates the two bays of Ingonish.

In the afternoon I took a hike out to the end of the peninsula along a forest trail. I was all alone but ahead of me four reddish-brown cubs paused from their tumbling play and regarded me for a moment with an untroubled gaze before bounding off into the thick undergrowth.

"They're coyotes," said Sheila, my waitress in the Purple Thistle. "They take cats, and even small dogs. My cat disappeared a while back and you can bet it was a coyote."

Beyond Ingonish is the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, the section of the Cabot Trail that most visitors recall with sighs and extravagant adjectives.

The coastline is a succession of sculpted coves, each a more comely arrangement of pink granite, surf and coastal vegetation than the last.

At Lakies Head, small lobster boats were bobbing in the waves just a few metres off the rocks, darting in and circling while the crewmen hauled in the pots. It's dangerous work but close inshore is the best place for lobsters.

Near Sugarloaf, Cabot Landing Provincial Park, is the likely landfall of John Cabot, aka Giovanni Cabato, a Venetian sailing under the British flag.

It was Cabot who is generally credited with the discovery of North America in 1497, since Christopher Columbus managed to miss it and landed in the Bahamas. "But that's garbage," said Ray Fraser of Oshan Whale Watch. "The Portuguese were fishing along this coast for a century before Cabot, but there was so much fish here that they didn't want anyone to know. And the Vikings were here long before that."

And he's absolutely right. Archaeological evidence suggests that a Viking settlement existed in Newfoundland at around 1 000 AD, which makes Cabot something of a Giovanni-come-lately.

I was aboard the Oshan, a 13m fishing boat piloted by Ray's dad, Cyril, heading out from Bay St Lawrence Wharf to try and spot some whales. "Catholics fish one side of the harbour, Protestants the other," said Ray as we came out of the protective arms of Dingwall Harbour into the Atlantic swell. "Don't ask me why, but it's always been that way."

We headed north toward Cape St Lawrence, on the Protestant side, but it was too early in the season for the humpback, minke and pilot whales that appear virtually on cue between July and October, although there were plenty of seals and dolphins, and a bald eagle watching from the cliffs as we made our way back towards the keyhole that leads to the harbour. The government keeps a tight rein on the lobster season these days and, like many fishermen, Ray and Cyril have turned to other pursuits to earn an income.

SS Canada Cabot Trail 4 Keltic Lodge, along the Cabot Trail.

The next morning the Cabot Trail took me high into the forests of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and across the island's mountainous spine for a walk along the Skyline Trail. It was a lovely stroll, although the forest has been almost stripped bare by grazing moose. After about 90 minutes of walking the plateau tapered to a tongue and the trail ended on a high promontory, leaving me with an eagle-eye perch above the Gulf of St Lawrence.

On its north-western flank, Cape Breton Island takes a sudden French turn. French-speaking, Roman Catholic Acadians were among the first European settlers to colonise Nova Scotia, and the province had changed hands several times in a tug-of-war between the French and British. The Acadians were finally expelled by the British in 1755". The names along this seaboard - Grands Falaise, Cap Rouge, Petit Etang - bear witness to its French heritage, and French is still the lingua franca in many of these coastal villages.

The sky was grey and leaching rain so I drove on to my overnight stop at the Glenora Distillery, North America's only single malt whisky producer. After the tour of the distillery with a bracing sample, I headed into Mabou, home of the Red Shoe Pub, famous for its Gaelic music. It was a quiet night, with no music and only a few patrons inside, but I pushed in anyway.

"Will ye nae hackle me girdle?" said a man sitting at the bar when I sat down.

"Pardon?"

"Dan frummock na goblins!" said he a little louder, as if speaking to a simple person.

"He asked 'Did you have a great day?'" said the girl behind the bar.

Had he just perhaps come from Scotland I asked him? Hell no. His family had been here for the past 200 years. He hadn't strayed beyond Cape Breton Island for more than seven years now. For the next hour, as we sipped our ales, I barely understood a full sentence that Donald said. But as is so often the case in Gaelic company, we laughed like whales, consumed more than was wise, had an astonishingly good time and parted the very best of friends, sworn to fight injustice, iniquity and oppression wherever we found it. Which - on a Tuesday night in Mabou - was something of a tall order.