The weather forecast was a little “iffy” for today, but we decided to head out and start looking around the island. Lyn had one trip planned out on the map, but when we looked a little closer it would cover 400kms! Didn’t realise the place was that big. We trimmed the route down some and off we went.
First stop was a heritage village at Orwell, about 30km east of where we are staying. Right on cue the rain started as we got closer, but it wasn’t too heavy and there was plenty of shelter in the village. The oldest building in the village was the Church which was built in 1861.
Orwell Church
Orwell Church
We moved onto the stables where we got “stuck” with a local yokel farmer who really loved to talk and talk and talk……. although despite his yokelness he pinpointed my accent pretty well! The only other gem he imparted, that I can remember, is that miniature horses are less than 36″ high to the shoulder, 38-58″ are ponies and above 58 was a “real horse”
There was a one room schoolhouse as well; it was interesting to see that kids in the 1800’s liked to carve things on their wooden desks…. where was the discipline? Actually it was on the teachers desk in the form of a leather strap, but I guess it didn’t work too well.
Orwell School House
After touring the rest of the village we headed out to the lighthouse at Point Prim, it’s claim to fame is that it is the largest brick built lighthouse on the island. When we got there, there wan’t a brick in sight it was all cedar shingles. Maybe the bricks were underneath the shingles?
Point Prim Lighthouse
Next stop lunch. We had made up rolls, which turned out to be a good idea as there weren’t too many restaurants about. We headed down to Beach Point beach and sat in the car munching away as it was still damp outside. After that we headed down to Beach Point harbour, the largest fishing harbour on the island. We were hoping to find some seals in the harbour, but it wasn’t our lucky day.
Beach Point Harbour
We continued around the East Coast to Murray River in search of the Old General Store which according to it’s advertising people was THE place on the island for crafts and crafting supplies. The advertising people have very vivid imaginations!
General Store – Murray River
We started to head back to home via the town of Montague, which was the largest town in the county with 2000 people. Amazingly this town hosted a Burger King, MacDonalds, Wendy’s, Tim Hortons, 2 large supermarkets and a whole lot more. In reality it was the first populated area we had seen on the trip today. Despite the big name stores we managed to find a small coffee shop at the old railway station, which by the way sold the best carrot cake I have ever tasted, rumour (my rumour) has it that the cake contained zero calories!
From here we headed out across country to the coast road which we followed home.