Even though I had been avoiding the Confederation Trail, as I had heard the views from the roads were nicer, the guy at the bike shop told me that one section of the Confederation Trail was actually really pretty, so I decided to head there. From Stanhope Beach I went further along the Gulf Shore Parkway, the path that goes along the north shore, which was lovely. When that ended I started along a road that followed the Hillsborough River, the longest river on the island.
I hadn’t really had a proper breakfast or coffee in the morning, so by the time I got to Mount Stewart I was starving, and ducked into a little cafe there. Though I was only planning on having a quick stop, the woman kept offering to refill my coffee and I was feeling lazy, so I ended up lingering for quite a while. An older couple came in while I was there from Surrey, BC and we started chatting. They had driven here from BC in an RV, and were just doing little day trips on their bikes. I mentioned to them that I had family in Surrey, and they said they were from Cloverdale, which is where my uncle has a restaurant. Then it turned out that she volunteered at the church next to his restaurant, and he had donated some vouchers or something for a fundraiser! Having one of those small world moments in a tiny town in PEI was pretty funny.
From there, I got onto the Confederation Trail. The nice part wasn’t supposed to start until the next town, but I wasn’t feeling opposed to a nice flat ride for a bit (since the Confederation Trail is old railway tracks, it’s all flat; whereas the roads are quite hilly). The trail was nice enough to Morell, but I was just surrounded by trees—nothing too exciting. Once I got to Morell though, the trail started going next to Saint Peters Bay. The light was hitting the water in a really pretty way, so the stretch from Morell to the town of Saint Peters Bay was beautiful. I got an ice cream in Saint Peters Bay and sat by the water for a bit, which was great.
From there, my plan was to get to Brudenell, on the east coast of the island. A friend of Nathan’s had a boat moored there, and he had said that if I could sweet talk someone into letting me into the docks, I was free to sleep on his boat for the night. Even though I had already sworn off googlemaps for navigation after the New Brunswick debacle, I have still been using it to find specific addresses and search for coffee shops, etc. And today is when I learned that it can’t even be trusted for that. I googled Brudenell Marina to get the address, and the only result that was coming up was a marina in Montague, one town over. When I just searched marina in that whole region, one in Cardigan also popped up. I’d have to pass through Cardigan to get to Brudenell or Montague either way, so I figured I’d just stop in there first to check. Once I got to Cardigan, there were only about 6 boats moored there, only one of which was a sailboat, so it was pretty easy to determine that the boat I was looking for was not there. There were a couple guys having some beers on their boat though, and once I started talking to them, they invited me to join them for a beer. At this point the responsible thing would’ve been to decline the offer and find the boat I was planning on sleeping on, but how can you say no to a beer on a boat with the later afternoon sun?
After hanging out with them for a bit, I figured I better get going and find this boat. I asked them if they knew of the Brudenell Marina, and they told me that they thought it was part of the Montague Marina. So I figured I’d just go straight to Montague (Brudenell is between Cardigan and Montague, but I could take the Confederation Trail straight to Montague, bypassing Brudenell).
Once I got to the Montague Marina, I asked a woman, Alanna, if she had a boat there to see if she’d let me into the docks/if she knew of the boat I was looking for. She said she didn’t, but took me to the office, which had just closed. It was 8:35, and they had closed at 8:30. She asked her husband Jim, and he said that there is a little marina in Brudenell that’s technically operated by the Montague one. I’m not really sure why it didn’t show up on google, but he said he’d take me there and see if his key worked on the docks over there. Once we got there, we found out that the two locations have different keys, so he couldn’t let me in. There was no one else at the marina, as it was quite small, and getting late.
There was a campground just next to the marina there, so I figured I could just go there and camp out for the night, but then Jim and Alanna invited me to come stay at their place. I was pretty hungry and tired at this point, and the thought of not having to setup camp sounded great, so I accepted their offer, and off we went to Gaspereaux. They have a son who lives in Charlottetown, and a daughter in Cape Breton, so they put me up in their daughter’s old room. Jim and Alanna were so kind, it seems like I just keep stumbling into these lucky situations and meeting the best people on this trip!
Total distance: 89 km
Total elevation: 373 m
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