Sunday – Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Today, we arrived in Charlottetown, on Prince Edward Island, home to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s fictional heroine, Anne of Green Gables and the honeymoon destination of our own Kate and Wills.
It was another half-day, and once again, I was escorting an excursion; today’s was ‘Scenic Drive and Confederation Bridge’.
While we were waiting on the quayside for the passengers to come down to the coaches, we couldn’t work out why no-one had come down for the ‘Anne & Island Ceilidh’ tour. Eventually, we discovered, to everyone’s amusement, it was because the Customer Services Manager, who makes the announcements regarding the tours, didn’t know how to pronounce ‘Ceilidh’.
I’m not a huge fan of ‘Scenic’ Coach tours; but I ended up rather enjoying this one. The guide, was brilliant; she was entertaining and educational, but she also knew when not to speak and let the scenery do the talking.
Our first stop was a small fishing village called Victoria-by-the-Sea. There wasn’t a massive amount to see there, other than a wooden lighthouse, a few boats and a couple of dilapidated barns. Some paddle-boarders were attracting interesting, but not a lot else. Having said that, it was a pleasant enough stop; we had 20 minutes there before setting off again.
Our guide pointed out Kate and Wills’ honeymoon retreat, told us all about the island’s agriculture, and that Harness Racing is big in these parts. She also told us that there are 33 golf courses, that they have the best ice cream in the world and that it is probably the greenest place in the World (although Ireland might have something to say about that). One thing is for sure; it is very clean and tidy, largely due to the island’s WI, who help to keep the ditches by the roadsides clean.
Our second stop was what seemed like a motorway services, with lots of gift shops selling what can only be described as tourist tat, and an opportunity for anyone who wishes it (even the men, apparently) to dress up as Anne of Green Gables. We had to endure a whole 30 minutes here before driving the short distance down to view Confederation Bridge. At 8 miles in length, it is the longest bridge in the world, over ice-covered waters. The Northumberland Strait freezes over every year, and this year, they had the worst winter on record, with 19 feet of snow.
The bridge cost 840 million dollars to build, took four years to construct, and was opened in 1997. It’s not a particularly attractive bridge, but it is a great feat of engineering. Apparently many people suffer from Bridge phobia, and a good business has sprung up where people will pay to have someone drive them across.
One thing that was a little odd, that happened to day, was that we had 44 people on the coach, but only 43 tickets had been handed to the guide as they were getting on. When the issue was raised with Shorex, they said not to worry; once everyone was on the coach and the tour was underway, I would pass a sheet of paper around for everyone to put their name down. This is done every trip, to double-check who was on which coach, and to have some point of reference with regards to complains or incidents. Guess what… when the form came back to me, there were only 43 names on the list! This caused a certain amount of speculation over who hadn’t put theiir name down on the list (and who, apparently, didn’t have a valid excursion ticket). We never did find out… and I wasn’t about to call a register to tick names off and discover who the perpetrator was (but the guide and I had our suspicions…).
We arrived back at the quayside at 1:20pm, giving me only 40 minutes to get back on board ship and prepare for the classes starting at 2pm. Needless to say; I missed lunch.
Classes went well; today, we were doing skies. The second class was disrupted, however, and sort of disintegrated, when it was announced that we were about to pass under Condeferation Bridge. Several people wanted to get up on open deck to photograph it, and see it properly. Honestly! Trumped by an 8-mile lump of concrete!
