Trip 45 — Prince Edward Island Walk

Day 24: Eldon to Charlottetown
Sunday, 24 August 2025

Yesterday: 52495 steps/37.50 km/23.30 mi/6h 20m
Total: 1105165 steps/803.68 km/499.38 mi/145h 46m

The Trans-Canada Highway network contains about 12,800 kilometers of roads, counting the main route from British Columbia to Newfoundland and all of the alternate roads and offshoots.

And I was going to start the day by walking a sixth of a percent of it.

There wasn't a better way to Charlottetown from the motel in Eldon. Detouring to the Confederation Trail would have taken too long, and the highway kept me near the island's perimeter, in adherence with AWKWARD guidelines.

I had Saturday in my favor; maybe there wouldn't be much traffic. I retraced my path back to Cooper's, past a defunct masonic lodge, and then I was in new territory. More corn and potato fields, but no hay — the only bales were a truck's cargo. The Trans-Canada Highway would soon veer west and cross the Vernon River, and I could barely make out the vehicles in the distance, where I would be in an hour.

The CBC has different programming on Saturdays. I tuned in to an hour of francophone music, including a song in the Chaic dialect spoken in New Brunswick, which combines Acadian French with a smattering of English words and phrases. When that ended, it was songs from a New Brunswick music festival in which songwriters were given assignments to compose on the spot. Contrasting with the theme of joy was an anthem of hate to the creator of the mobile phone — the trio had initially written a reggae song, but it was inadvertently deleted, so they came up with a bluegrass tune venting their frustration.

The traffic wasn't bad for the first hour, but it picked up around the turnoff to Route 3 — I could have headed back to Montague and Georgetown and done the whole past week over again. When I crossed over rivers and streams, the air was once again alive with grasshoppers. They blended into the dirt shoulder, and it was on my approach that they suddenly revealed themselves.

I've had various encounters with cows on the island. Sometimes they lie on the grass, paying me no attention, or they continue eating with no more than a glance. Sometimes they turn toward me and stare me down, dozens of eyes inspecting my passage, until they deem it safe enough to resume their activity.

But the ones after the Seal River, a herd of maybe 30 of different colors, must have felt threatened, even though they were some distance away in a field. One by one, they stood up and focused their eyes on me. As I passed them, they started in the same direction, parallel to the road, increasing their pace until they were running. Two bulls were apparently aroused by my presence and started mounting the females in front. When they reached a fence, they ran even faster, perpendicularly away from me, until they decided they were no longer in danger.

I turned onto the Pownal Road toward Stratford; instead of following the highway north and then west, I went west and then north, along a smaller road passing by Woods Bay. I'd gone more than 21 kilometers and I needed a break. And a bathroom.

The latter I found at the Pownal Sports Centre, where kids' hockey teams were warming up before a game. I could have joined the spectating parents and grandparents at one of the round tables looking into the rink, but I would have felt conspicuous busting out my Hungry Man sandwich from Cooper's and the rest of the cucumbers. I could have offered them the end of the pepperoni stick I'd bought in Summerside almost a month before; I still carried it around as security protein.

A kilometer farther, I spotted a tiny bench at the back of a cemetery. I unwrapped my goods, crossed my legs, and contemplated the names: Weatherbie, Lazenby, and a couple whose forenames happened to be Gerrit and Gerritdina. It sounded like a fairy tale.

My right foot didn't want to go another 16 kilometers. It had mostly healed overnight, and I'd bandaged it before heading out, but the fourth toe was tender again and the back of the heel was throbbing. Had the bandages come off in the heat?

Resuming was painful. I bent my toes up as I walked, concentrating the weight on the balls of my right foot and walking normally with my left. This put a strain on the upper part of the right foot and both calves, but I could walk quickly. If I relaxed and walked more normally, it was less painful but slower. Which was better? I decided to endure the pain with the reward of finishing sooner.

On my left was Alexandra Bay. On the right were fields and, on a hill above them, large houses. The driveways leading to them must have been half a kilometer long.

Eventually the road forked. To the left was the community of Tea Hill. A sign pointed to Stratford Road on the right, but it was wrong: It was really Georgetown Road, going up through the Charlottetown suburb of Stratford ("Imagine that!" it said on the welcome signs). As I started up the hill, a sidewalk appeared, a testament to the fact that I was now close enough to the capital for my safety to be considered.

I was about to rejoin the highway, and the area to my left was getting more built-up. Clearly Georgetown Road once branched off the highway, heading sputheast, but it had become popular enough to require a roundabout for safer access. The sidewalk followed the new, lengthier path to the junction, but I saved a few steps by climbing over the guardrail and rejoining the highway when it was just a few meters from Georgetown Road. As if to reward my intuition, the sidewalk along the highway started almost instantly.

I paused for a jolt of sugar at a What's the Scoop? ice-cream outlet and, once again, had trouble getting going again. I couldn't just resume at a normal speed. I had to take a deliberate, tiny step, and then another, slightly longer, and then incrementally build up the momentum that came with repetition, like putting a freight train in motion. During my snack, my right heel had throbbed with the regular pulse of a ticking clock, teased with the possibility that it was done for the day. It took a few minutes' convincing to move it along.

I was technically back on the Murray Harbour branch of the Confederation Trail, with the familiar purple kilometer markers, as well as the hexagonal markers of the Island Walk. At last I reached the bridge over the Hillsborough River. Before 1962, the only crossing here was by rail, with other travelers requiring a 30-kilometer detour north.

I tramped across, bouncing grasshoppers off my knees and shins as if they were Hacky Sacks. Colonies of double-crested cormorants, clustered on the piers of the old railway bridge, welcomed me down the Charlottetown side. The Trans-Canada Highway turned to the right, and I continued straight to follow Grafton Street into the center of the capital.

I hobbled into the reception area of the Arts Hotel. It was about the size of an elevator. The receptionist tried to hype up the minimalist design by acknowledging that there was no television in the room but that one (two, actually) could be found in the guest lounge and I could attend one of the screenings of movies in their cinema.

"You're on the fourth floor," she said. "I hope it won't be too noisy, but we have earplugs."

I didn't know what that meant, because I didn't know anything about the neighborhood or how many floors the hotel had.

"OK," I said.

"We have three cafes. Two of them are closed. The third is open starting at nine every morning. Tomorrow it opens at noon."

I didn't know what that meant, either, and I didn't care. I just wanted to get upstairs and be supine.

"OK," I said, as if what she had just told me had made any sense. The operating cafe was named after Salvador Dalí, so in a way it had.

The fourth floor turned out to be the top floor, and I'd have had the best view in Charlottetown if I'd been turned on by parking structures. I took my bag off — my back had been hurting, too. I lay down for a while and almost fell asleep.

Then I was jolted awake by the notion that it was almost 6:30 and all the dinner places were about to close. But I came back to reality and remembered that I was now in a city. I'd be able to eat, even after dark.

Go on to day 25