The swell at Peggy's Cove comes in under granite slabs, and you feel it in your feet before you see the spray. The lighthouse stands alone at the point against the open Atlantic. Below it the village piles around the cove, houses on the rock and boats in the water. You pick your way from slab to slab toward that light.
Warnings are posted at the visitor lot and at the viewing deck by the lighthouse. Rogue waves can come in even on calm, sunny days. Keep to the dry granite, not the wet rock below the line.
Route 333, the Lighthouse Route out of the Armdale Roundabout, is the road to the lighthouse. Mahone Bay, Lunenburg, and Chester continue the South Shore after it. Graves Island Provincial Park at Chester, a saltwater beach on Mahone Bay, is the South Shore campground.
As of September 2026 the campground is closed for causeway reconstruction, with no access until Nova Scotia Parks opens the 2027 season. Halifax itself has no public campground.
Porters Lake Provincial Park on the Eastern Shore, a Dartmouth trip, is one close public night. Laurie Provincial Park on Grand Lake, a Bedford trip, is the other. If you need more sleeping space than a campervan, look at Halifax RV rentals.
Halifax waterfront and the Citadel
The van goes in a lot on Lower Water Street, and the harbour is the walk. The boardwalk follows the water, ferries and tall ships passing. That walk can take a morning, water on one side and the city on the other.
Up the hill, Halifax Citadel National Historic Site looks over the same harbour, a star of ramparts above downtown. The grounds stay open year-round. The upper walls close in winter for visitor safety, so the ramparts are a warm-season walk.
As of September 2026, Build Nova Scotia runs paid lots on Lower Water Street with no monthly parking. There is no camping in those lots.
Crystal Crescent Beach
Three white-sand crescents meet a rocky headland at the mouth of Halifax Harbour. Boardwalks run down to the first two beaches. The Pennant Point walk leaves from the same trailhead and follows the headland out for 10 km.
The park is day use only, with no camping on site.
For Cape Breton and Kejimkujik, start with campervans in Nova Scotia. Moncton is the road into New Brunswick.