Beautiful stained glass windows in the Basilica of St Dunstan
On my journey from the eastern side of the island to the northwestern tip, I decided to take in Charlottetown, the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island.
As I left the eastern part of the island, I saw a couple of horse drawn coaches driving along the road. The first one was an open trap, the other was a proper black stagecoach; it looked like the sort of thing Dick Turpin would have held up! The people driving it were in period costume and gave me a polite wave when I slowed down as we passed so as not to frighten the horses. I couldn’t determine whether there was some sort of event or reenactment going on or whether there was an Amish community on the island and they were part of that. I subsequently discovered that there were Amish people on Prince Edward Island, a few had moved from Ontario to settle in a couple of communities on the eastern part of the island.
Basilica of St Dunstan on Great George Street
Despite Prince Edward Island being Canada’s smallest province, its capital is very important because Charlottetown was the birthplace of Canada. The Fathers of Confederation met at Province House National Historic Site in 1864 in Charlottetown to plot out the creation of Canada.
Today was Sunday and I hoped it would be quieter and easier to park than during the week. I parked down by the harbour and was able to leave my car there all afternoon as I explored the pocket size historic downtown area of Charlottetown. I spent a very pleasant afternoon following the recommended walking tour route and wandering around the shops.
John Hamilton Gray – both of them!
There were quite a few statues around the historic district. Opposite the cathedral were the interesting statues of two men who arrived in Charlottetown on a political conference in the 1860s. Both of them were Conservatives, one was from Prince Edward Island and one was from New Brunswick. And both had exactly the same name, John Hamilton Gray. This was a very odd coincidence for the rather unusual combination of names.
Story of the John Hamilton Grays
I went in the Basilica of St Dunstan, Charlottetown’s Catholic cathedral
to look inside. It was completed in 1919
after the previous cathedrals had been destroyed and is now a designated
National Historic Site. The spires are
the highest points in the city and the interior is famous for its stained glass
windows.
I continued my walk around Charlottetown and walked past the city’s Anglican cathedral, St Peter’s, which predates the Catholic cathedral. This striking red stone building was founded in 1869 and is opposite the Provincial Parliament building.
Anglican Cathedral of St Peter
I also wandered past an impressive hotel, the Historic Rodd Hotel dating from 1931. Originally called the Hotel Charlottetown and built by the Canadian National Railway, it was much more imposing than the understated, smaller hotels in the historic downtown area, such as the elegant Great George on a corner of Great George Street. Still referred to as the Hotel Charlottetown, this was a typical Canadian Railway hotel, large and opulent with a white pillared entrance. The Queen and Prince Philip stayed there in 1973 during the centennial confederation celebrations.
Built by the Canadian National Railway, the Historic Rodd Hotel is still referred to by its original name, the Hotel Charlottetown
Before heading up to Victoria Park, I stopped into a music shop to buy a cup of Japanese green tea. Two Irish lads were working in the shop. They were on Prince Edward Island as part of their studies. They were studying Irish music in Limerick, but had come to Prince Edward Island for 6 months to study the Irish music traditions on the island and they would also be performing. Sadly, I didn’t have time to take in any musical events in Charlottetown, so I headed up the hill towards Victoria Park.
Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, sits on a bench in the birthplace of Canada
On Kent Street next to Victoria Park is the Beaconsfield Historic House an original Victorian house built in 1877 for a wealthy shipbuilder. It has been preserved and is now a museum, open to the public, but not on weekends in June. It was getting quite late by now and I still had the drive to Tignish which was going to take almost 2 hours.
Beaconsfield Historic House is now a museum
I walked back down to the harbour and had a wander around the harbourside shops and then went to a burger van for my tea. I rarely eat fast food and it’s even rarer that I buy anything from a burger van. However, Prince Edward Island is famous for its potatoes and this was my chance to try chips made from potatoes grown on Prince Edward Island. I don’t eat chips very often either, but the lady running the burger van had nothing pre-cooked, she cooked it all on order. So she fried the chips in front of me when I ordered them and they were exceptionally good. They were the best chips I tasted during my whole time in Canada.
Charlottetown City Hall
Charlottetown is like a lot of other historic towns in North America. The historic downtown district was similar to a lot of others I’d seen. However, its size makes it a very manageable place to walk around and you don’t have to park miles away from the historic centre. This pocket sized provincial capital had been a lovely way to spend an afternoon and I was pleased I hadn’t missed out on seeing the city.
St James Presbyterian Church
Now it really was time for me to head to the northwestern tip of the island in readiness for doing my next epic provincial coastal drive, the North Cape Coastal Drive, around the wet and windy western third of Prince Edward Island.
Lounging in the first of the red chairs I found in Prince Edward Island National Park
This June was my latest trip to Canada. On this adventure, I was seeing parts of Canada I hadn’t seen before and as I’d visited Canada on numerous occasions in the past, the bits that I had left were places that most tourists who visit Canada don’t get to see.
The day before I had driven from Halifax in Nova Scotia into New Brunswick and then across the Confederation Bridge across the water to Prince Edward Island. It was my first visit to this Canadian province and after overnighting near Souris and sampling legally produced Canadian moonshine yesterday, today I was up bright and early to explore the eastern third of the island.
Today
I was, rather ambitiously, going to drive the entire Points East Coastal
Trail. This is one of the trails the
Provincial Tourism Board has put together for visitors to drive. At 475km, the
Points East Coastal Trail was also the longest.
Boardwalk to the beach in Prince Edward Island National Park
You may wonder why I decided to do this and certainly it’s an entirely fair question. The reason was, because I had the time, at least I thought I had, and by the time I was questioning the wisdom behind my reasoning, I was determined to see it through to the end. I was driving anticlockwise on this route and I started out at the lighthouse at the northern tip, the East Point Lighthouse, but this was closed until 10am, so I decided not to hang around for half an hour to wait for it to open and press on.
View from Cape Bear lighthouse
Today
was the Prince Edward Island lighthouse run and I passed a few runners on the
road as I drove north. I didn’t know
there was going to be a run prior to today, had I known, it wouldn’t have made
a blind bit of difference, I would not have been taking part. I don’t run.
Parabolic sand dunes at Greenwich
In fact, instead I simply drove all the way to the Greenwich Dunes area of Prince Edward Island National Park. The Greenwich Dunes Interpretive Centre was closed. It wasn’t due to open until Monday. That meant it was also free entry to the National Park, but luckily the hiking trails were open. Some visitors from Canada’s West Coast were asking about the presence of ticks on the hiking trails. Apparently they were currently a problem in Nova Scotia and responsible for spreading lime disease. However, they weren’t a problem on Prince Edward Island yet.
Boardwalk forms most of the Greenwich Dunes Trail to protect the delicate ecosystem
There
were 3 trails in the Greenwich Dunes part of the National Park. I began with the Dunes trail which was the
longest, most popular and most famous.
This trail takes you on boardwalks over water to the nearby beach and
you see huge parabolic sand dunes on this hike.
I had never heard of parabolic sand dunes before today, they are quite
rare, so I had to look up what they were. In fact, they’re dunes gradually
moving inland. Migrating sand blows into
the surrounding forest and kills the trees and then the sand dunes will move further
inland and leave behind dead tree trunks to reveal a skeleton forest.
Bad selfie taken on the boardwalk
The
boardwalk started out as wood, but turned into plastic, presumably recycled
plastic. It was getting warm now, so I
took off my fleece and hiked to the beach and then along the beach until I got
to the sign pointing to the viewpoint. I
could just see two red chairs in the distance which was where I could sit and
admire the view. I’d read about the red
chairs on the Parks Canada website. Red
chairs had been placed at various points throughout Canada’s National Parks for
you to sit on and take in the view. I
wondered if they were in all the National Parks as their locations were undisclosed. I could imagine the more popular National
Parks in the Rockies, like Banff would have a queue of tourists waiting to have
their photos taken there, while somewhere like Ellesmere Island National Park
in the High Arctic that had very few visitors possibly wouldn’t be worth the
expense of flying any red chairs out there.
Beach forms part of the trail to get to the red chairs
These
two red chairs with a view of the parabolic sand dunes had German occupants in
them when I arrived, but they left a short time later, giving me the
opportunity to set up my gorilla grip to capture a photo of me lounging in one
of the chairs with the beach in the background.
I also took a photo of what I was looking at – the Greenwich Sand
Dunes.
Boardwalk across the wetlands with a view of the Greenwich Sand Dunes
After
a brief rest, it was off again to hike the other trails. The second trail wasn’t as well used as the dunes
trail. When I left the dunes trail it
had started to get busy, but it seemed a lot of people didn’t bother with the
other trail, which was a shame. You got
lovely views across the bay to the lighthouses at St Peter’s Harbour.
View across to St Peter’s Harbour
For the sake of completeness, I did the very short trail near the car park and then went to look at Greenwich Beach. It was much like the other beaches I’d seen, but I did climb the steps of the viewing platform to look out over the coast. Then it was time to press on if I was to manage to drive the whole Points East Trail today.
At the top of the viewing platform overlooking Greenwich Beach
I drove to the end of Point Prim, a narrow peninsula surrounded by the sea and home to the oldest lighthouse on the island, but the lighthouse was closed until July and this was only 9 June. There was an artist’s workshop open though, so I called in there and bought a pair of earrings. Earrings are a weakness on my travels, I have hundreds of pairs and some I’ve only worn once or twice, but there are others that are favourites that I end up wearing a lot.
The oldest lighthouse on Prince Edward Island at Point Prim
I did call in two wineries on my way along the southeast coastline. The first was the Rossignol Estate Winery that produced red and white wines as well as an assortment of fruit wines and a rose liqueur. The rose liqueur was made from rosehips and wasn’t to my taste, so I bought a bottle of the red Marechal Foch wine instead to drink in the evenings.
Lighthouse on the distant headland from Greenwich Dunes Trail
Then
I made my way to Murray River to the Newman Winery. This was a rather more informal affair than
Rossignol as I was in the winemaker’s house and tasting wine in his
kitchen! He told me he was from New
Brunswick, although his mother was an islander, and he had moved to Prince
Edward Island 7 years ago to start winemaking.
He admitted to having a 9 to 5 job at present in order to live until his
winemaking business became more profitable.
He had 2 varieties of white wine and 2 vintages of red. He said the frosts could be a problem on the
island, he wanted to produce chardonnay, but that could prove very challenging. He said that late frosts had affected his red
grape production this year. He said the
southeastern part of the island did have the best climate for vines that weren’t
as fussy as potato crops and would grow in much worse soil. When I commented there seemed to be nothing
on the western part of the island, he said the weather there was horrible, it
was just cold and windy! Something for
me to look forward to in the next few days then!
Light beam guides ships from Cape Bear Lighthouse, but it was too far away to help the Titanic whose SOS signal was first heard from here
I was off again and just made it to the Cape Bear Lighthouse in time to have a very quick look round. I climbed the tower and read some information about the lighthouse. There was a radio transmitting station next to the lighthouse at Cape Bear. This station is no longer there, but was famous for being the first place to hear the SOS signal from the Titanic in 1912. The Cape Bear Lighthouse website has a recording of this.
It was getting late now, I was getting tired, so I decided to take one last quick detour onto Panmure Island and then I was going to head back to my hotel. I’d do the final part of the route the next day. Panmure Island is a provincial park and has one of the most popular white sand beaches on Prince Edward Island. However, as it was now well after 6 o’clock, I decided to give the beach a miss and head back to Souris to my hotel.
Basin Head Beach sands are more squeaky than singing
I
was staying at the Singing Sands Inn near Basin Head Beach tonight. Basin Head Beach was voted the best beach in
Canada and is famous for its singing sands.
I enquired about the singing sands and was told it would squeak when you
walked on it, so it was a bit of a leap to call it singing. The beach is 3km long and I asked if I’d have
to do a 6km round trip walk to hear the squeaking/singing? Apparently I didn’t.
Relaxing on the way to the beach
I
headed to the beach which was completely empty by this time and I was extremely
disappointed not to hear sounds of singing sand as I walked along. I suppose you could say the sand made a noise
as you walked on it which you could just about hear with the competing sound of
the waves. And if you were to compare it
to when you normally walk on sand and it’s virtually silent, I suppose, if you
used your imagination, you could call the sound of your footsteps on the sand
as a kind of squeaking. But it was a bit
of a stretch.
I
even drove to the other end of the beach, accessing it from the opposite end by
driving down an appalling red dirt narrow road, praying I wouldn’t meet another
vehicle because there was nowhere to pass, that there would be somewhere to
turn around at the end of the road so I didn’t have to reverse all the way back
and that my car didn’t get stuck! Fortunately
none of these scenarios became a reality.
Unfortunately walking along this stretch of the beach I got exactly the
same result with a kind of squeaking underfoot as you walked along. It was rather disappointing. Never mind, it had been a long day, time to
head back to my hotel.
Smallest library in Canada in the village of Cardigan couldn’t get in the Guinness Book of World Records because there was no appropriate category
The following day I was determined to complete the entire Eastern Coastal Trail, so before driving over to the western side of Prince Edward Island I started out driving to Georgetown.
The library was closed so I had to make do with this shot of the interior through the window
On my way there I passed through Cardigan and there, at the side of the road just after the bridge, I noticed a small building. It was the smallest library in Canada. It did try and get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest library in the world, but apparently there wasn’t a category for that in the world records. I did take some photos of the library and of its interior through the window, unfortunately it was closed today as it was Sunday. This turned out to be a theme for this part of Prince Edward Island.
Soon afterwards I arrived in Georgetown. It was a beautiful community, but as it was the first half of June and also a Sunday it was still closed for winter.
The oldest theatre on Prince Edward Island in Georgetown was also closed on Sunday
Georgetown
has a gorgeous theatre and playhouse, it’s the oldest on Prince Edward Island
and it doubled as the Tourist Information Centre. Neither was yet open for the summer season,
so I suffered another disappointment by not being able to get a look
inside.
The park adjacent to the playhouse is a pleasant place for a stroll
Additionally
just about everything else in Georgetown was closed, apart from an art gallery
where everything was made on the premises by the owner, a very enthusiastic
gentleman who told me that Prince Edward Island was the length of 16
Confederation Bridges. The Confederation
Bridge is just under 13km in length, so the island is around 207km long. The artist had spent some years living on
Newfoundland which was one of my destinations later on my trip. He said Newfoundland was very big and had
lots of moose that could be a real hazard on the road.
The
artist showed me all around his studio, he was very proud of his studio and it
had a wonderful setting as it backed onto the beach.
Entrance to Georgetown’s AA Macdonald Memorial Gardens
I had a walk around the lovely AA Macdonald Memorial Gardens next to the playhouse and then, as I had to get all the way over to the western side of the island and had decided to go via Charlottetown to get a look at the capital of Prince Edward Island, thought it was best to move on. This town was unlikely to get any more lively today. Time to see what the provincial city of Charlottetown had to offer on this June day.
The Greenwich Dunes can be seen on trails in the eastern section of Prince Edward Island National Park. The entrance fee is applicable from mid June to mid September if you visit the Greenwich Dunes section of the National Park. However, if you wish to visit the western section of the National Park, fees are payable all year round. List of fees.
I stayed in the Singing Sands Inn in Souris. You can book accommodation through the Prince Edward Island tourism website.
Cape Bear Lighthouse is located at Murray River. It is open from 10am to 6pm and entrance fee is $5.
Newman Estate Winery is open during the summer for tastings and sales. Wine is produced from grapes grown on Prince Edward Island.
To taste legally produced moonshine and other spirits, Myriad Distillery at Rollo Bay is open in the summer for tastings and sales.
I drove from Halifax International Airport to Prince Edward Island. It is approximately 180 miles to the Confederation Bridge and a 4 hour drive. Confederation Bridge to Souris is approximately 80 miles and a 1 hour 45 minute drive.
