Trip 45 — Prince Edward Island Walk

Day 8: Pleasant View to Tignish via North Cape
Tuesday, 5 August 2025

Yesterday: 60676 steps/38.42 km/23.87 mi/7h 47m
Total: 388917 steps/270.86 km/168.30 mi/51h 56m

Todd and Heather's dining room in Pleasant View welcomed me with the sweet aroma of butter and seafood. Todd had just started sauteing the scallops, bought that day from a friend who gathers them. And he was just about to throw the samphire into a pot — a thin, stalky vegetable, also known as sea asparagus, which grows wild nearby and which Todd had picked by hand.

The dining table was set for three; I was happy that we would all eat together. Todd had grown up in Pleasant View; his grandparents' 250-year-old house still stood firm, having weathered countless snowfalls and annual hurricanes. When Todd was a child, what is now Route 14 was unpaved; the snow sometimes went up to the top of the utility poles, and people would dig out their driveways as reference points, since the road signs were covered.

The primary industry in this area used to be Irish moss, because it contains carrageenan, an emulsifier for foods, cosmetics, and other products. The moss was harvested in sustainable quantities by hand and carried by horse to be dried and processed. Then the trawlers came and quickly depleted the supply, wiping out the industry, which had been centered in Miminegash. Other seaweed now thrives, and the moss is unlikely to return in its previous abundance.

Meanwhile, the forests got leveled for farming and shipbuilding. Those of today were a modern renewal scheme.

"Did you notice that all the trees are the same height?" Todd asked.

He and Heather had lived in Ontario, where they had worked in the school system and also managed a farm with chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs. "But no sheep," he said. "I tried sheep for a little while. Too much work, too hard to gather."

Along with their other various talents, Heather teaches yoga and Todd is a fantastic chef. The scallops were perfectly tender ("You've got a fifteen-second window before they're overdone," he said); the samphire, crunchy and salty, was a new experience for me; and the cold pasta salad was a refreshingly light accompaniment, with artichoke hearts and green beans — the latter grown in their garden.

They came back to Pleasant View two years ago and just started operating the B&B this year. I wasn't their first guest, but I was their first booking. They'll run it just into September, when they'll resume their teaching jobs.

Breakfast was just as impressive, and it was practically two meals. Todd left a thermos of tea and a freshly made raisin scone on my porch, for when I rose. An hour later I sat with him for breakfast while Heather taught yoga at the shore. He prepared fish cakes and a giant cylinder of apple-cinnamon French toast that was more like a bread pudding — two of the five breakfast options. He made a tartar sauce with Greek yogurt, since I told him I didn't like mayonnaise. And there were jams made from rhubarb and from the lilacs that grew outside my window.

Before I left, Todd said, "Every single experience you have prepares you for every single experience you will have."

My route for the day was concurrent with the Island Walk, starting up Route 14 and passing the Stompin' Tom Centre, a museum-theatre-restaurant devoted to the famous singer-songwriter. When Route 14 curled back down toward Tignish, I continued north along Norway Road. The farms were sparse here, with wide patches of grass in between. Eventually I started to see the group of wind turbines that are clustered around North Cape.

Norway Road went on and on. It looked like a small connector on the map, but it was seven kilometers long in all its forms, first a speedy asphalt road and then a dirt extension, which became even meagerer as it curved toward the coast and by the wind turbines. This was such a weird place, the domain of those enormous, white creatures with the spinning arms, totally in control and impervious to nature. The cliffs, in contrast, have been eroding steadily, and the forest succumbed to a fire in 1971 — a violent episode but part of a healthy natural cycle.

The road finally fizzled out at the southern head of the Black Marsh Trail, near a rock protruding from the sea that supported a colony of great cormorants. Most were basking in the sun individually, but a pair seemed fixated on each other — understandable in such a romantic setting.

The trail, a sturdy boardwalk that continued as a grassy path, took me to the point at North Cape. Here was the confluence of the St. Lawrence River and the Northumberland Strait and, consequently, some rough waters. One of Canada's oldest lighthouses is here — shipwrecks used to be common, due to the shallow rock reef, a crescent of which can be walked at low tide.

I took a long rest and opened the bag lunch Todd had provided: rolls with cheese and pepper jam, molasses cookies, and an orange. Then I proceeded south, passing a colony of black guillemots on my left before joining Route 12. The break had restored some energy, and I managed to hurry ahead with 11-minute kilometers.

At six o'clock, the mosquitoes arrived. Except for the stretch near Roseville, they hadn't been too bad on this trip. But it was as if someone had fired a starting gun, opened a gate, and unleashed a swarm of millions over Prince Edward Island. If this had been biblical Egypt, they would have been one of Pharaoh's plagues.

I had been making good progress and didn't want to stop and dig out the can of repellent, which hadn't been very helpful anyway. So I pressed ahead quickly. I spent the next half-hour hitting my face, slapping my back, and swatting at my legs, sometimes leaving trails of blood. I often caught them in my fist. One flew in my mouth and I swallowed it. Why didn't those watching take a lesson and bugger off?

A half-hour outside of Tignish I couldn't stand it anymore. I whipped out the can and sprayed heavily in all directions, laying it on thick, with defiant abandon, like a graffiti artist tagging a bridge. I kept the can in my hand, giving a quick spritz to any bugs I saw directly. They were all still there. It was as bad as Liz and I had experienced in Colombia, where we'd spent our evenings mapping the night sky on each other's legs.

I was eager to rush into the Tignish Heritage Inn and check in, but a glimpse of the sign at Shirley's Cafe revealed that the kitchen would close in 15 minutes, and that would be the last of the sit-down food options in Tignish. It was a convenience store with a kitchen, much like the place in Miminegash.

It took a while to peruse the chalked menu; there were no salad options here, either. "Just wave when you're ready," the cashier said, because I was the only one in the store.

I ordered a chopped-chicken sandwich with gravy and fries and then used the restroom. When I came out, there were 26 people placing meal and ice-cream orders, including a group of teens and an entire kids' sports team with their chaperones, buzzing around like the mosquitoes, but much more happily and pleasantly. My plate of fries would have been enough to feed them all.

Tignish's first residents, in 1799, were Acadians fleeing harassment from the central part of the island. Irish arrivals came starting in 1811, and the two groups lived in harmony. The brick building housing the inn — next to the island's largest church — was a convent from its construction in 1868 until 1991 and still operates by the use-whatever-you-need attitude. To do laundry, I merely had to wait until all the towels were finished and then I could use whatever machines were available, at no charge. It had a kitchen, a parlor, and an upright piano — marked "Out of order," alas.

It also had a two-night minimum, which is the only reason I took another day off today after having one on Saturday. But maybe this was the island's providing in ways I didn't know I needed. My feet are still recuperating, and a day when my longest excursion was to the Our Family Traditions restaurant — a kilometer away along the Confederation Trail, which has a terminus in Tignish — may help speed up that recovery.

Go on to day 9