A short, hilly day

A slightly later start at 10 am, and we are off and back on the Confederation trail. Cloudy and slightly cooler, I decide to take Ted up on his offer for bug repellant. Happily, he is using a skin-so-soft based spray rather than DEET. Hopefully, when we stop the bugs will not bother me as much. The clouds are welcome as I thought that yesterday I was dangerously close to getting sunburned badly.

We pass a field to our right of vibrant yellow flowers, which appears to be canola, blanketing the view.  A different crop than we are used to. The side weeds are a little different here. One is a long stringy weed that grows over our fence at home having a large puffy seed head, the other looks very similar to a dandelion but has multiple flowering heads at its apex.

We bisect a potato field that has rows of rotting manure hundreds of feet long and probably 6 feet wide and tall on our side. By the farm there are no lupines but lots of raspberry bushes and flowering wild geraniums in whites, pinks and blues.

As we are on an old railroad bed, it is no surprise that industries will be located along side. We pass a small factory billowing smoke. There is no signage as to what is is making, though the smell of manure is thick in the air and leaves us as we pass. We pass Cavendish Ag Services soon after.

We decide to make an early stop for a trail donut and coffee at Bakin Donuts in Kensington as we have fewer miles to traverse today and a donut and coffee always is welcome.  The town has a beautiful old railroad station as well as locomotive engine on display that we admire on our way though the town.

Leaving Kensington, the trail takes us through a rolling countryside showing us some hills that hopefully will not become too frequent or arduous. We shall see.

Peddling through the farmland, the area seems unchanged for the last 100 years. With the exception of fresh telephone poles, there is little indication that time has moved on. 

This stretch is very quiet. There is no sound of cars, only that of the tires rolling over the crushed gravel and the wind blowing around my helmet. We pass another dairy operation that has many manure rows covered with white plastic. The flies in this area are intense so we do not linger to investigate. 

There are lots of bugs. Even though our movement keeps them from landing on purpose, your body becomes like a car windshield catching many unwanted creatures. One black fly grabs my leg as I pedal and I swat it before it takes too big a chunk. My glasses need wiping as a few gnats have hit them and I have swallowed two bugs so far.

We are off the Confederation Trail and head for the beaches up route 254. The rolling countryside continues to roll and we hit our first hill. It taxes us but like “The Little Engine That Could,” we get to the top slowly and steadily before stopping at the top for a well-needed rest.

The sun emerges, it warms up and we are ready to continue down hill.

But it is not just down hill. It is up hill and down. Up hill again and down. And up hill and . . .

Rolling hills are lovely in a car but a little different when you bike. Some of the hills we cannot make and dismount our bikes to ascend the hill. 

We finally drop back down to sea level and come to a lovely inlet with Alpine style houses on the shore and marked mussel beds on the water. I hope soon that we will reach Stanley Bridge for a well-deserved rest and lunch. 

We stop at Carr’s Oyster House, which is on the water. The sun is bright and boats are moored at the docks on the other side. Kids are jumping off the bridge into the river that is adjacent to the restaurant. We are greeted by Ben, the waiter who served us at the restaurant we ate at in Charlottetown, who is lunching with his son. He gives us a great tip for dinner this evening in North Rustico. 

We both go with exclusively seafood meals and after we enjoy the meal and view, we push off for the final stages of today’s ride toward Green Gables of Anne Shirley fame.

On the last leg of our ride on route 6, I can see that things have changed a bit since I was last on the island 15 years ago with my family. Tourism has taken a hold of this stretch and populated it with shops and amusement parks (many of which have an Anne of Green Gables theme) that do not reflect the PEI we have been touring for the past few days. And in this stretch we start to encounter more cars.

Oysters seem to be as big a crop as potatoes as every inlet we spy seems stocked with floating oyster farms. Soon we reach the ocean and PEI National Park. We hit the beach.

The stone and sand are red and makes me think of Mars. Wind-blown lines etch the stone carving out smooth layers. There is a beach so I can search for sea glass. But as I suspected, this section of beach is pretty picked over so I will need to explore a more isolated section. But I did find a nice rock. 

Stopping near a cliff at the park, a pair of foxes emerge from the side of the road and stare us down. We move on.

The last bit of today’s pedal is idyllic. Clusters of lupines fall into the grassy cliffs that drop into the sea. The crowds of route 6 are gone and the park is empty of cars. A bit of wind is pushing against us but we are happy with the ride and even happier that our B&B will soon be upon us.