Farewell to Charlottetown

We took our final walking tour of Charlottetown today starting with the boardwalk at the harbour. We stopped at the Irish Settlers' Memorial. This consists of a granite Celtic Cross surrounded by a circular terrace with 32 flagstones, each one representing a county in Ireland.

Sorry - don't know how to rotate this - could you rotate instead!

As you can see, the mouth of Charlottetown Harbour is very narrow:

Bonded warehouse Charlottetown

This Irish pub seems a bit confused as to where it's from.

Jim had a pint that was brewed here - he says it was very good!

Communing with John A. Mc Donald  at the corner of Queen and Richmond Streets, Charlottetown. He was explaining to me that he was the first Prime Minister of Canada. He also told me that he had a near miss with a runaway bus and had taken to wearing protective head gear for a while - see below.

A Friendly Harvest of Absurd News
from Prince Edward Island, for Prince Edward Island

MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2012

Sir John A. Statue Speaks Out Against Bully Buses

"a deliberate, pugnacious conspiracy"

The Turnip

Charlottetown
January 23, 2012

Shortly after a near-miss with a runaway bus, Charlottetown's statue of Sir John A. MacDonald spoke out at a rare press conference today, decrying a 'campaign of tyranny' by sentient city buses against urban art.

Donning head protection, the bronze sculpture of "The Old Chieftain" used a savvy mix of political opportunism and the shrewd debating style that helped shape the nation's history. The effigy put forth a compelling argument that two runaway bus incidents, mere days apart, could hardly be coincidence:

"I'm a lure for tourism, not bullies."

"Using Occam's razor, we must conclude that those treasonous, mercenary vehicles have entered, of their own volition, a deliberate conspiracy, by force, by fraud, or by both, to force urban art into the Confederation Centre."

Across the street, Bluefin Bullet, a life-size sculpture of a Bluefin tuna, covered in scales made from stainless-steel spoons,  applauded Sir John A. statue's stance.

"We've lived in fear for some time now, but that last accident was truly terrifying. Urban art exhibits are people, too, and someone has to put the brakes on this movement."

"This is the last spike."

In a display of solidarity, Hydrant, a pop-art, oversized fireplug on St. Peters Road, also sported emergency head-gear.  Though unable to attend the media event, the fiesty installation piece announced the support of the city's fire engines, in the event that the situation escalates, claiming via 2-way radio, "We nearly lost Sir John A. This is the last spike."

Points East Coastal Drive Part 2

About two thirds of the Points East Coastal Drive remained to be done so off we went in a clockwise direction. I have to admit that in Prince Edward Island the scenery is much the same throughout - lots of coves and harbours and rivers and lakes and trees and farmland and of course more churches than I've ever seen in my life! It is all very nice but sometimes you'd like something out of the ordinary like in British Columbia or in Nova Scotia or even in Ontario.

See what I mean! Another big Church. It's red brick so it is Catholic. Not all Catholic Churches are red brick but, if they are red brick, they are Catholic! Catholic Churches are mostly big and quite ostentatious. There are also lots of Presbyterian Churches which tend to be big too. Then there are Anglican, United Church, Baptist, Methodist and varying others whose names escape me. I did notice, however, that some churches have been given over to other purposes e.g. the"Bizarre" one I noted before. What would Jesus say - "Stop making my Father's house a market place!"?

The fishermen's huts here in Crowbush Cove reminded Jim of the French song by Francis Cabrel - Les Cabanes des Pecheurs.


















At St. Peters we popped into the ? to see if they had any more information than we had. This involved a short walk over a nice pedestrian bridge which crossed the bay.

The grass at the water side looked to have the quality of velvet.
























The woman at the ?? suggested we go to the National Park at Greenwich and do one of the nature trails. She recommended the Greenwich Dunes trail which was a 5km round trip. This sounded good, so off we went. The trail travelled through old homestead fields with views of St. Peter's Bay, then through a lovely shady forest and then out onto a floating boardwalk over L'Etang Bowley (Bowley Pond). From there you could see the dunes (described as "majestic" in the literature). It was very pretty despite being less than secure underfoot.

Dead trees in the forest - it often amazes me how beautiful dead trees look.

The Greenwich Dunes area is a natural treasure internationally recognised for the dune system, its wide variety of bird species and rare marsh and woodland plants plus nationally important Aboriginal and Arcadian archaeological sites.

Bulrushes - they call them cat's tails here.

At the ?, the woman said that a beaver had a lodge on Bowley Pond and was out recently when she was there. She said it was huge. So we were hoping to see a huge beaver. Unfortunately, the beaver was not to be seen.

Beaver's lodge.

The boardwalk

Isn't that lovely!

 From the boardwalk we reached the beach using a sand ladder and staircase. 400 metres along the beach there was a lookout (they call them a lookoff) with views of the dunes.

A parabolic dune

Greenwich Peninsula's most significant and sensitive feature is the rare and relatively undisturbed parabolic dunes which lie at the western end of the peninsuls. Parabolic dunes are U-shaped mounds of fine to medium sand that form near coasts where sand is abundant and there are strong, undirectional onshore winds. These dunes have elongated arms that extend upwind behind the central part of the dune. They move inland into areas with denser vegetation where the sand then piles up as its advance is halted or slowed.

At last we know where we are!

We had to retrace our steps from the beach, across the boardwalk, through the forest, along the fields and back to the car. We thoroughly enjoyed the walk and the scenery.


For lunch Naufrage (shipwreck) point had been recommended. There we found our 3rd little cafe at a harbour where good seafood is served. It was really nice but one server had the monopoly on smiling and friendliness. The two younger ones, who cleared tables, were the most morose I have ever seen. They are obviously not very happy teenagers!

Shipwreck Cafe.

The wrecks themselves!

Shipwreck Cove.

Then we headed for the most easterly point - East Point and its lighthouse.

Another sand sculpture at a lighthouse.

We had read that there were singing sands at Basin Head so we did not want to miss that.

View just before we reached Basin Head.

When we got to Basin Head, we had to park in a field, along with lots of others. I was thinking these singing sands must be some great attraction.

This is what we found!

A very clear  notice!

But did it make any difference?

We walked along the sand - did it sing or even squeak? Either we were in the wrong place or any singing or squeaking was camouflaged by the screaming and squealing of young people diving into the water and being carried down by the current.


We had now completed the Points East Coastal Drive so off we went, knowing that we had seen all that was to be seen in PEI.


Today we begin the sorting out for our return home. We have time to do it leisurely as we don't leave Bonnie's until about 2.30 p.m. Tonight we will have our last supper in Charlottetown.

Old Rustico and Cows.

Our holiday is drawing to a close and we are getting to the end of our to do list. The main thing was to complete the Points East Coastal Drive which we started about a week ago. So we finished it yesterday. On Saturday we decided to take it easy after the hectic few days in Nova Scotia. I took some time on the blog and then, because it was such a beautiful day, we decided to go to Old Rustico where there is a boardwalk along the waterfront going from the village to the harbour - a nice little walk.

Along the boardwalk there are carvings to represent the natives of the area, as well as the Acadian settlers, the flora and fauna and the ways of making a living.

The Great Blue Heron - there are many to be seen around here.

Shipbuilding.

The Mi'kmaq - First Nation.

The Acadians.

OLd Rustico

Fishing vessel prepared to take tourists deep sea fishing. During the Lobster season they fish for lobster.

We had a lovely walk, lunched in The Blue Mussel in Rustico Harbour and spent a while in Old Rustico looking round the town. Then we decided to go back to the National Park and look again at the scenery there. En route we met the same fox as the last day - it must have been because he was waving at us obviously recognising us as friends. Maybe he realised he was unlikely to see us again!

On our return journey we stopped off for Jim to get a new hat:

I got one too!

The most famous ice-cream in Canada is COWS CREAMERY which is based in the outskirts of Charlottetown. They do tours so we stopped off on a whim and did a tour. It wasn't that exciting but we got samples of cheese and ice-cream (not at the same time - is cheese nice with ice-cream?). Anyway, Cows is a thriving company which makes humorous tee-shirts, ice-cream, butter and cheese.