Biking PEI’s Confederation Trail

At 170 miles (273km) in length, Prince Edward Island’s “tip-to-tip” Confederation Trail was long enough to be a challenge, yet short enough to be doable within our limited timeframe. It’s a rail-trail - an abandoned railway that has been converted into a multi-use trail. Since it uses the old railway bed, none of the grades are more than 2%, which is perfect for us old farts. And, to our delight, it turned out to be one of the best, if not the very best, maintained trail of any length we’ve ridden.

Marcie talked about the trail in some detail in her last couple of blogs, so I thought I’d just add some impressions of my own and then do my nerd thing and present you with some statistics. Be still my beating heart!

The Route

The entire trail is smooth, packed gravel. There are picnic tables and benches every mile or two, often shaded, and restrooms every 5-10 miles. And you don’t have to ride too far before seeing a sign pointing to a nearby ice cream shop, bakery, restaurant or pub.

Lots of Nearby Amenities

If you are up to riding 30-40 miles (50km-65km) a day, the entire route can be done in 5 days. Rough camping, i.e. pitching a tent alongside the trail for the night, is prohibited throughout PEI, so you must either find established campgrounds or lodging at the end of each day.

Even an occasional bike repair station along the route

Transportation

Once you get away from Charlottetown, transportation can be a problem. There are no ride-share companies and very few areas served by taxis. To compound the problem, lodging and campgrounds aren’t always located near the trail. The island bus service does run throughout the island, but not always close to the trail, and not all that frequently in the remote areas. For example, there are only two buses a day servicing Tignish, one very early and one very late, and no bus comes within miles of Elmira.

There are companies that will transport riders and their bikes to and from the trail, but they are pricey. One company we contacted offered to drop us at the Tignish end and pick us up at the Elmira terminus for $740 CAD. Another company provides a complete package, including baggage transfers and hotels, starting at $3080 pp. And some hotels will provide transportation for their guests for a fee.

Distance

Two years ago, we rode roughly 1400 miles of the various rail-trails between Washington D.C. and Chicago. By the end, we were in pretty good shape… an easy day was 40 miles and a tough day was 60+ miles. Since then, we haven’t done nearly as much distance riding, and knowing that we weren’t in as good shape this year, I started us out with ‘easy’ 40 mile days. After our first day, I decided to rethink the plan. Our legs were only moderately tired, but apparently our backsides had gotten really tender over those two years, and 40 miles was too much. After that first painful day, we cut back to a more reasonable 30 miles a day, mostly biking with a few extra miles of hiking added in.

Friendly People

I can’t say enough about the friendliness and courtesy of the PEI folks. Case in point: the trail has innumerable road crossings - everything from major highways, to rural country roads to busy city streets. We’re used to riding in Las Vegas where drivers seem to think that the objective when approaching a biker in a crosswalk is to swerve in an attempt to see how close you can come to the bike without scratching your car’s paint. Extra points awarded if you do it while texting. In PEI, the drivers invariably stopped at the slightest hint that we were planning to cross a road, and gave us a friendly smile and wave as we crossed. People we met along the way always seemed happy to stop and chat and offer information on the local sights, best restaurants or to give directions. And then there were our new friends Isabel and Brian, who, as Marcie mentioned, went to a lot of trouble to help us work out our logistical problems on our last trail segments.

Here are our statistics:

Total trail distance: 288 miles (463km)

Total distance by bike: 270 miles (435km)

Total distance walking: 18 miles (28km)

Longest day: 40.2 miles (65km)

Total days: 9.5

Average distance per day: 30.3 miles (48.8km)

Total number of falls/crashes: 0 (by far our personal best!)

Injuries: 3 (2 very sore bums and 1 bee sting)

An Alternative - The Island Walk

When we were in the planning stages for our Maritime Provinces roadtrip, we discovered the PEI Island Walk, a 435 mile (700km) loop around the island that was inspired by the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It looked interesting, especially since it could be ridden by bike or walked. It follows part of the Confederation Trail, but also uses rural roads to follow more of the coast of PEI. The walk is divided into sections which can be completed in 32 days if you can walk 12-15 miles (20km-25km) a day, or 10-15 days by bike.

We were contemplating this until I started planning an itinerary and discovered that there are very few trail sections that have lodging or campgrounds close by, nor can you pitch a tent and wild camp along the route. You’d need either a very good friend who was willing to drop you off and pick you up every day or two or more hikers/bikers with two vehicles. Neither option was practicable for us. Another alternative we thought about was for one of us to drop the other off at one end of a trail section, then drive to the other end and walk or bike in the opposite direction, passing the car keys off when we passed in the middle - not much fun in our estimation. In the end, we decided to ride the Confederation Trail instead. We didn’t regret our decision… we later discovered in our travels around the island, that many of the rural roads used by the Island Walk are quite busy, narrow, two lane roads with no shoulders - not our cup of tea at all.

Stay tuned for Marcie’s next blog when we visit Anne of Green Gables…