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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I travelled around Atlantic Canada in June 2018.
Details of the Points East Coastal Trail can be found on the Prince Edward Island tourism website.
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.
Read about my other adventures in Canada.
Canada: North Cape Coastal Trail Part 1
Canada: North Cape Coastal Trail Part 2
Canada: Cavendish and the Rotating House of North Rustico
Charlottetown – Prince Edward Island’s Pocket Capital
Regina – Canada’s Medieval Castle
Canada: Saint John River Valley
Canada: Magnetic Hill and Fundy National Park
Canada: Quebec – Waterfalls, Via Ferrata and A Religious Theme Park
