Thursday October 19th
It was another partly cloudy day, and we kept going with our tour of the north coast of the island. We drove about an hour, into Charlottetown, then back out next to the airport to Brackley Beach, a popular beach in the summertime, probably not least because it wasn’t too far from Charlottetown. There was a large parking lot, but few people in it that day. It was so nice to be able to visit some of these beautiful places without crowds of people finally. The facilities were again closed for the winter.
To the west of the parking lot was Robinsons Island, a small piece of land connected via a causeway, but the road to this was closed, apparently after damage from hurricane Fiona the year before, and hadn’t been reopened. So we went to the nearby beach, which had a large wooden platform and walkway.
We were blessed with a sunny patch, and the colours were lovely, with the sea, rather orange sand, the green tops on the dunes. Not far under the sand on the sandhills was red clay by the looks of it, which perhaps helped give the sand its orange look. In the distance were houses along a far coast, possibly Rustico.
We walked for nearly an hour along the beach. Part of the beach showed as being sea on Google Maps, and we joked about walking in the middle of the sea. We made it to an area on the near part of the coast of Robinsons Island that was covered with red rocks. A little further along it turned into beach again. The island was quite narrow there, and we had a look inland a little way, but there was no track going that way.
We made our way back, and around 1pm we moved on. We found a little snack bar about a kilometre back from the beach, near what looked like an ornamental lighthouse, and had fish and chips, which was pretty nice.
On we went to Rustico, which had another pretty harbour. We found a road that went along near the coast to get some photos of the colourful town across the water. There were only a few houses on large allotments, with grassy areas in between them.
The road rose up to a dead end, and we got some good shots there. From there it was a short distance to one of our main destinations, the Anne of Green Gables museum in Cavedish. It turns out that there were not one, but two competing museums. We went to Green Gables Heritage Place.
There was an inside area with a Lego model of the place, and some information. Outside was a kind of farm area with a carriage, some barns, and of course the house made up to look like the Anne of Green Gables house. It was a fair sized place, with two storeys, and each room made up to look like what a house of that vintage would have been like, and no doubt based on the description of where Anne had lived.
It was white, with green trimmings, and had a lovely garden surrounding it. Some of the wallpaper was quite bold and striking, and the place was well appointed. There were a couple of rooms that were just alcoves where people would store things.
Outside there was a golf course, and some walking trails through forest that was starting to change colour, including two called Lover’s Lane and the Haunted Forest, from the books. We went along one, which may have been Lover’s Lane. We could see more damage from the hurricane, but it was a pretty area.
I was keen to see some really red beaches, which I’d remembered seeing on photos or websites about the island. On the south coast, the Argyle Shore Provincial Park looked promising, pretty much straight down from where we were on the north coast. We started down inland, through Granville, then a little way further south we came on a lovely vista of very green farmland with rows of trees scattered through it.
We stopped for a while taking photos, getting some good shots when the sun came out. Near us was a harvester, with a large funnel pouring grain into a container in the back as it went along. I’m not exactly sure what the crop was.
Towards sunset we got to the pretty port town of Victoria, and it was clear that although Argyle Shore wasn’t too far away, we wouldn’t get there before sunset, so we found a little beach, which was indeed quite red, a short way further along the coast to watch the sunset. We drove back through Charlottetown again, and ate at a place called BOOMburger, where the burgers were definitely tasty.
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