(Image credit: Carolyn B Heller) A Canadian’s quest to design a pilgrimage-inspired trail around Prince Edward Island is now the Island Walk, a 700km walking and cycling route. Pi Pink and purple lupins swayed along Highway 101 in Prince Edward Island, where I had just left the town of Kensington. It was 09:00 and the road was full of cars whose drivers seemed to want to find coffee or get to work. The smell of the cow rose on the wind before I spotted the animals grazing on the ridge. They were standing next to a sign that said, “Get off our milk. Our cows are on grass.” It was day four of walking the Island Walk, a new 700km route that circles Canada’s smallest province. Starting at the rural western tip of PEI, I had passed vinyl-clad farmhouses overlooking the ocean, along a boardwalk below whirring wind turbines and over red clay cliffs that plunged steeply into the sea. I had stopped for a lunch hour of country music at the Stompin’ Tom Centre, honoring Canadian singer-songwriter Tom Connors. I had trudged through the rain along a secluded, wooded path where swarms of clever mosquitoes tried to take refuge under my umbrella. And after learning about PEI’s significant crop at the Canadian Potato Museum, I had fueled my day’s walk with a very large cheesy baked potato served with fresh chips. You know a place is serious about their spatulas when your potato comes with a side of fries. Now, walking near the center of the island, with the breeze blowing and the wildflowers blooming, I realized I was noticing things I never would have noticed if I was behind the wheel of a car. A shingle barn, its green paint fading, that looked almost abandoned except for its meticulously trimmed lawn. Two pale yellow butterflies pass by a basket of marigolds mounted on a fence post. A strip of ocean just visible through a clearing in the trees. Bryson Guptill, the PEI resident who conceived the Island Walk, wanted to encourage both islanders and visitors to explore the area at this slower pace. After he and his partner Sue Norton walked parts of the Camino de Santiago in Spain and France and the Rota Vicentina in Portugal, Guptill began to wonder why there wasn’t a similar walking route through the towns and landscapes of their countryside . He set out to map out a trail around PEI, which officially became the Island Walk in 2020. The walking and biking trail is divided into 32 sections that travelers can tackle individually, as I did, or as an extended circuit around the island. past the Beaches on the Atlantic coast, through its national park and the villages where the Anne of Green Gables novels were set – perhaps PEI’s best-known export. Walkers can watch lobster fishermen haul in their traps along the trail (Courtesy: Carolyn B Heller) But it was not a straight road from the conception of the idea to the launch of the Island Walk. And, as more and more people discover this route, its creators face some ongoing challenges. A retired government policy analyst, Guptill had volunteered with Island Trails, a non-profit organization whose mandate is to develop and maintain PEI’s hiking trails. He and Norton regularly hiked many of the island’s forest trails, as well as the 273km Confederation Trail which follows a former railway line through the center of the island. Unlike the Camino de Santiago, the Island Walk was not based on an ancient pilgrimage route. Guptill wanted to connect PEI’s existing trail network, rural roads and major roads into a new route around the island, divided into 20-25km walkable sections. In October 2019, after mapping out a proposed route, he decided to give it a go, recruiting Nora Wotton and two other PEI friends to follow him. An experienced hiker, Wotton took up long-distance walking in earnest when she retired from her teaching career. She had boarded a plane at 5pm after her last day of work to start a solo walk on the Camino de Santiago. The Island Walk encourages people to explore PEI at a slower pace (Credit: Carolyn B Heller) When Wotton heard about Guptill’s Camino-style walk in PEI, she was intrigued to try this route close to home. During their one-day journey, Wotton said, many islanders opened their homes, offering lodging, food and drink, even a place to get out of the rain to eat sandwiches they had prepared. Walkers watched lobster fishermen pull in their traps, passed vibrant blueberry fields and saw the island’s trees change color day by day. “I need to see how beautiful my part of this beautiful Earth is. I’ve traveled all over the world. And this is just as beautiful as anywhere else I’ve been. After this initial test walk, Guptill began working with the Island Trails organization and the provincial government to develop the Island Walk into a more sustainable product. PEI’s hiking and biking trail is divided into 32 sections (Credit: Carolyn B Heller) Linda Lowther, a PEI tourism consultant who became the Island Walk’s first manager, led a team whose job, she explained, “was to make the Island Walk a reality.” They built a website, designed a logo and brochure, and designed signs marking the route. Lowther began contacting motels, inns and B&Bs to recruit them as partners who would house, feed and possibly transport the Island Walkers. “I personally called every property within a kilometer of the Walk,” he said. But in early 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, PEI closed its borders, putting the project on hold. The following year, however, the first walkers began planning their trips, using information from the new website and the Island Walk Facebook page. Lowther said she joined many of those walkers as they passed through the town of Cavendish where she lives. He wanted to know what it was and what it wasn’t. “Ninety-nine percent of them loved everything,” he noted. “They just wish we had more bathrooms.” Sections of the Island Walk that follow the Confederation Trail have bathroom facilities, as do more developed areas, where walkers can pop into cafes or museums when nature calls. But other more rural sections have far fewer services. The Island Walk connects PEI’s existing trail network, rural roads and major roads (Credit: Carolyn B Heller) With Island Walk organizers estimating that between 250 and 400 walkers and cyclists will tackle the route in 2022, three companies have started offering trip planning services. Experience PEI coordinates walking and biking trips, Outer Limit Sports offers short-term packages for walkers or bikers, and MacQueen’s Bike Shop & Island Tours helps bikers with rentals and tour plans. PEI also has a rural bus service, which started in April, that can take travelers to different parts of the island. While service on this T3 Transit network is still rare, one-way adult fares are only CAD$2 (around £1.30). Laura MacGregor recently spent 31 days completing the entire Island Walk, after driving from her home in Ontario in a small RV. She partnered with Experience PEI to organize her ride. Company owner Bill Kendrick suggested an itinerary that combines camping with occasional overnight stays at inns or B&Bs. She contracted bus or taxi drivers to take her to and from the trails each day. The Island Walk doesn’t always have accommodations or campsites where each section ends, MacGregor noted. “It’s not like the Appalachian Trail where when you’re done, you set up your tent. It took a lot more planning because you’re not sleeping on the trail. You have to have accommodations elsewhere.” PEI’s red clay cliffs plunge into the sea (Credit: Carolyn B Heller) PEI’s Island Walk “isn’t the Camino yet,” he added. “I’d like to think the infrastructure will evolve, but it’s still early days.” Nova Scotia resident Gene Oickle chose to plan his own trip when he walked the first 16 sections of the Island Walk in June. After recent travel restrictions prevented him from walking long distances abroad, where he had previously hiked from Hungary to Italy, walked in Sweden and Norway, and completed the Camino Frances, he chose the relatively flat terrain of PEI to regain his physical condition. On his Island Walk, Oickle stayed several days at a few different accommodations, including the Tignish Heritage Inn on the west end of the island and the Warm House Retreat in Summerside, and paid innkeepers to drive him to and from the trail. While these arrangements have worked smoothly, he acknowledges that transport costs, which vary according to distance or time travelled, could be a deterrent, especially for lone walkers. But for Oickle, the benefits of this slower mode of travel outweigh its negatives. “When you’re driving,” he said, “you’re so concerned with getting to your destination that you don’t really look out the window to see what’s out there.” Pink and purple lupins sway along Prince Edward Island’s Highway 101 (Credit: Carolyn B Heller) On foot, in some ways, you see less, covering far less ground than you could by car. But in other ways, you see more. You notice five red wooden chairs lined up in a field, set against the sunset over the ocean. You tune in to the cackles of crows and croaks of frogs as you pass a pond full of reeds. You rest your feet as a singer croons a Stompin’ Tom classic about island potatoes: It’s Bud the spud from bright red slime rolling down the highway smiling…. During my five days on PEI’s Island Walk, I rolled – no, do that walk – on country highways, back roads, and country forest trails. And like Bud the Spud, I was definitely smiling. Slowcomotion is a BBC travel series that celebrates slow, self-propelled travel and invites readers to get outside and reconnect with the world in a safe and sustainable way. — Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter and Instagram. If…
