The sun was elusive again this morning, but on our fifth day of vacation I had run out of patience waiting for the rain to clear off enough for me to go exploring for the landlocked lighthouse I knew was not too far away from our cottage. Tristan is always up for an adventure that includes a walk and I am woefully short on my FitBit goals this week, so off we went into the dull grey morning in search of the lighthouse.
We hadn’t been walking long when we were surrounded by a good old fashioned Scotch mist. The first discovery we made was a little hollow with these two gravestones huddled off to one side. The one marked a death that occurred in 1835, and the other was too worn to read.
We followed a rutted old red dirt road between two fields of potatoes (you knew you were in PEI, at least!) through vegetation dense enough that it grew up into a canopy at one point. A few turns in the road later and it opened on to a bit of a marsh and there on the far side of the pond was the old abandoned St Peter’s Harbour lighthouse.
The lighthouse was built in 1865 or 1876, depending on which source you read, and it was decommissioned in 2008. It sits on a big pond, the last remains of the former St Peter’s Harbour. A few wooden pilings mark the old wharf, but the pond and the lighthouse are now landlocked. Decades of drifting sand have accumulated in dunes around the lighthouse, so it’s considerably landward and almost entirely lost in the sandy dunes. This is an interesting account of the lighthouse history.
As we poked around the lighthouse, the mist gave way definitively to rain, but Tristan and I were in explorer mode and the rain bothered neither of us. We could hear and smell the sea crashing nearby, and found it over the crest of the dunes behind the lighthouse.
The rain continued but the sun nearly burned through the clouds as we walked along the Gulf beach toward St Peter’s Bay. The light was amazing, the sea smelled amazing and the waves provided a symphony of background music.
We made our way back past the pilings of the old wharf we found on our earlier explorations of the beach, but the tide was flooding across the pilings in sprays with each crashing wave. It was seriously awesome!
We finished our loop on the bay side of the peninsula, a much shorter walk back than our loop out following the road. The rain gave way to mist, and by the time we made it back to the cottage, we’d walked about four kilometers. I asked Tristan if he’d do the same loop again with me once or twice again before we left for home, and to my delight he said, “I’d do it again right now!”
It’s good to have a buddy when you like to explore. 🙂
I love this!!! brilliant spot 🙂
and way to go making the most of the weather but I do have my fingers crossed for you to see some sunshine for the next part of your holiday!
I enjoyed your pics of today’s walk. In my experience pics taken in crummy weather, especially mist, often turn out to be the best ones I have taken on trips.