Wednesday October 18th

Crystal had taken Wednesday to Friday off, and so we started exploring more of the island, taking her car again. Our plan was to work our way anticlockwise around the coast and see how far we got. We started further north from Panmure Island where we’d ended up on Sunday, at Basin Head Provincial Park, toward the easternmost point of the island.

This was clearly a popular spot in the warmer weather, with changing rooms and a museum. Everything seemed to be closed and locked at this season though. From what I saw, toilets at nearly all the parks were locked. Apparently they winterised them – taking all the water out of them and shutting them up for the winter, so they wouldn’t freeze and break pipes. I thought they could have had at least a chemical toilet somewhere. It made finding facilities tricky.

The park was along the beach, where a river ran into the sea, between two jetty-like structures built either side of it, making a rather narrow channel where the water was flowing very strongly. It looked to be actually flowing away from the sea, so perhaps the tide was doing that. I could see that it would be difficult not to get swept away a bit if you ended up there. Apparently people did swim through there sometimes. The river had sandy banks, except for one area with PEI-red soil, which was always striking when I saw it.

We walked along the beach, which had quite white sand, an unusual sight on the island. It was meant to squeak when you walked along it, but at least that day it didn't sound very squeaky. There were very dark clouds over towards Nova Scotia, which was known for being rainy apparently. It had certainly lived up to its reputation when I was there!

The dark clouds provided some great dramatic photos as we walked for an hour or so. About 1km further on was the locality of Bothwell, sporting a general store, and we bought some lunch there, and ate it in the car while looking at some green fields with round hay bales scattered around, and red ploughed soil.

It was about 2pm when we got to East Point, with a well maintained lighthouse in the standard colour scheme, and red clay cliffs that looked as though they were regularly eroded.

The sea around the cliffs was also fairly red, making for a nice colour scheme with the green grass growing on top. The sun came out briefly, adding to the colour. There were what looked like wires or cables going down the cliff, and some rather undermined concrete, and I wondered if something had been built there at some stage, and washed away or had to be dismantled.

A short distance along the north coast we came on a pretty harbor, North Lake. The sheds here were especially colourful, many in red and blue. There were a few people around, but it was fairly quiet. The road went over the inlet into the harbour, and we watched a boat come in from the bridge.

About half an hour further along the north coast, we took a little road off the highway to Naufrage Harbour, at the mouth of Naufrage Pond, which was actually a decent sized inlet with lovely views across it from the bridge.

There was a lighthouse nearby, and a road went towards it, but you couldn’t actually get to the lighthouse itself. Next to it was a curious looking octagonal three storey house, the top storey being much smaller, probably just one room, but no doubt with great views.

We drove back to the highway, which headed inland a little way after a while, to go around a fair sized inlet, and at the end of that inlet was the picturesque little town of Saint Peters Bay.

It was partly cloudy, and there were some colourfully painted houses across a small stretch of water, which we thought would be nice to photograph with the sun on them. It looked as though the sun might eventually hit them - the clouds seemed to be moving in the right direction, so we waited around for a while, and after fifteen or twenty minutes we got our wish.

Out towards the coast, on a small arm going into the sea next to the inlet, was Greenwich, part of Prince Edward Island National Park, which we got to about quarter past five, as the sun was starting to get low, casting beautiful warm colours. The clouds had largely cleared as we made our way past the (closed!) facilities, to Greenwich Beach. Crystal had remembered a walk in the area that went through a kind of lake or marsh, on a boardwalk, and we saw that there was another section of the park with a trailhead.

We drove over there, getting a bit of a surprise when the paved road suddenly ended and gave way to a dirt road that was not in good condition. We found the trailhead, and the walk she was thinking of. It started out near the side of the little peninsula, away from the ocean, and we walked along for a while not very near the coast, but with views across the stretch of water in the distance, then we got to the lake around six, which was still, with beautiful reflections of the sky that was starting to colour up.

We got to the boardwalk, which was actually floating on the lake, and it was pretty long, probably nearly a kilometre. It was interesting to walk across the water like that. There were one or two viewing platforms, and when it curved around, the walkway going along the water with its reflection was a lovely sight. The trail went across to the ocean side of the peninsula, and after climbing a sandhill we got to the beach again, further along from where we had been before, just in time to see the sun set, with beautiful pink and salmon skies reflecting on the sand.

There was a sliver of moon as we made our way back, figuring that we could use our phone torches if it was dark before we returned, and the track was pretty straightforward. The reflections of the lit-up sky on the lake were lovely on the way back, and the lights, probably of Saint Peters Bay, as we did the last stretch of the walk, with just enough light to see by.

We drove back to Charlottetown to get dinner, which was a bit of a detour, but it seemed there wasn’t much to be had anywhere else nearby in the area at that time on a weekday. We went to a place called Blaze Pizza, and had a nice repast after our exercise.

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