Exploring Prince Edward Island on the Trans Canada Trail: Our Walk, Stories, and Resources

Prince Edward Island on the Trans Canada Trail

Walking the Confederation Trail Across Canada's Island Province

When we arrived at Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island, in September 2019, our #Hike4Birds across Canada had already taken us from Cape Spear, Newfoundland, along the T’Railway, through Cape Breton Island, and across mainland Nova Scotia. After months of negotiating everything from rugged coastal pathways and railway ballast to quiet forest trails and busy roadways, we were looking forward to exploring the Confederation Trail, one of the most celebrated rail trails in Canada.

Our third province on the Trans Canada Trail offered something quite different from what we had experienced so far. The Confederation Trail follows former railway corridors across Prince Edward Island, providing an extensive network of gently graded, well-maintained pathways linking rural communities, agricultural landscapes, forests, and historic settlements. With its excellent signage, interpretive plaques, rest areas, and welcoming communities, it seemed to demonstrate much of what the Trans Canada Trail could become.

Yet our arrival came immediately after post-tropical cyclone Dorian had swept across Atlantic Canada. Fallen trees, damaged infrastructure, and communities recovering from the storm meant that our first days on the island required considerable flexibility. Even here, on one of the country's best-developed trail systems, we discovered that conditions could change plans almost overnight.

Once beyond the storm's immediate impacts, Prince Edward Island offered some of the most relaxing and enjoyable walking of our early cross-Canada journey. Autumn colours were beginning to appear, farm fields stretched beyond the trees lining the trail, and communities across the province welcomed us as we made our way toward Charlottetown and eventually the Confederation Bridge.

Throughout our crossing, we documented these experiences in daily journals, sharing photographs, wildlife observations, local histories, and encounters with the people who made our time on the island memorable. Since completing our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds, we have expanded that collection with practical planning resources, walking itineraries, cycling assessments, and reflections on our experiences.

Whether you are considering walking or cycling the Confederation Trail, interested in the birds and wildlife of Prince Edward Island, or simply curious about following our journey across Canada, we invite you to explore these resources and Come Walk With Us.

Follow Our Walk Across Prince Edward Island

Our complete Prince Edward Island Trans Canada Trail journal brings together the daily entries, photographs, experiences, and observations from our journey across the island.  Beginning at Wood Islands, we initially travelled east toward Murray River, encountering the aftermath of Dorian almost immediately. Our account of Hurricane Challenges: Wood Islands to Murray River describes navigating fallen trees and storm debris before reconsidering how best to continue.

After making our way north to Montague, we resumed walking west along the Confederation Trail. The route carried us through tree-lined railway corridors, agricultural landscapes, and small communities toward Charlottetown, where we spent time exploring the province's history, culture, and natural environments.

Beyond the capital, we continued through Hunter River and Kinkora toward Borden-Carleton and the Confederation Bridge. Along the way, the generosity of local residents became one of our strongest impressions of the island. Our journals record not only the places we visited and the trail conditions we encountered, but also the everyday kindness that helped make this short provincial crossing so memorable.

Readers can begin with our arrival at Wood Islands, follow the complete journey chronologically, or explore the final stages of our walk toward the Confederation Bridge before continuing with us into New Brunswick.

Planning a Walk or Cycle Across Prince Edward Island

For those considering their own adventures on the Trans Canada Trail, we have assembled several resources examining the practicalities of walking and cycling across Prince Edward Island.

Our Prince Edward Island planning and research guide explores the Confederation Trail network, communities, available services, accommodation and camping considerations, and the logistical questions involved in preparing for a longer walk across the province. Complementing this, our walking itinerary for the Trans Canada Trail in Prince Edward Island documents our daily stages, distances, and the time required to travel from Wood Islands to Borden-Carleton.

We have also examined whether the Trans Canada Trail in Prince Edward Island can be cycled. Unlike many other sections of the national trail, the Confederation Trail offers a relatively consistent crushed-stone surface, manageable gradients, clear signage, and regular connections to communities. These features make it particularly appealing for recreational cyclists and those considering longer journeys across the island.

However, the Confederation Trail is a network rather than a single route that encompasses every corner of Prince Edward Island. Its branches extend toward different communities and coastal regions, meaning that anyone hoping to explore the entire system will need to consider additional distances, connections, and some backtracking.

For a broader introduction, our guide to understanding the Trans Canada Trail in Prince Edward Island examines the character of the route, its opportunities for walkers and cyclists, and the practical differences between travelling across the island and exploring the trail network more extensively.

These resources are intended to help future visitors understand the possibilities and challenges of the route rather than prescribe a particular adventure. Our crossing took place in 2019, and current trail conditions, services, access arrangements, and accommodation options should always be confirmed before setting out.

Discovering Prince Edward Island's Birds and Wildlife

Birding and encouraging people to reconnect with nature remained central to our #Hike4Birds throughout Prince Edward Island. Although the province is often associated with rolling farmland, red sandy beaches, and peaceful rural landscapes, its forests, wetlands, coastal habitats, and migratory bird corridors offered a wonderful diversity of opportunities for observing wildlife.

Our birding account from the Trans Canada Trail in Prince Edward Island records 45 bird species observed during our time on the island, from Northern Gannets and Great Blue Herons around Wood Islands to the warblers, woodpeckers, chickadees, and other songbirds encountered along the Confederation Trail.

The railway corridors often passed through wooded landscapes bordered by fields, hedgerows, wetlands, and small waterways. These changing habitats provided opportunities to observe migrating songbirds, raptors, waterfowl, and shorebirds, sometimes without travelling far from the pathway itself.

Particularly memorable were our encounters around the Mount Stewart Wildlife Management Area and the coastal wetlands near Borden-Carleton. At Bedeque Bay, we watched shorebirds feeding along the red sandy shoreline, waterfowl gathering in sheltered waters, and birds moving through the salt marshes beneath the distant span of the Confederation Bridge.

We also appreciated the many interpretive signs along the Confederation Trail, which introduced visitors to the island's natural history, habitats, and wildlife. For a journey intended to encourage people to reconnect with nature through birding and citizen science, these were wonderful examples of how even a relatively gentle recreational trail could become a place of discovery and learning.

Together with our daily journals, our birding observations offer a record of the species and natural environments we encountered while walking across Prince Edward Island during the early autumn of 2019.

Reflections from Our Third Province on the Trans Canada Trail

Prince Edward Island provided an important contrast to our experiences in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. In Newfoundland, the surface of the T’Railway had often shaped the physical demands of our journey. Across Nova Scotia, beautiful individual pathways were frequently separated by long road connections. On Prince Edward Island, the Confederation Trail offered a remarkable sense of continuity, with a maintained surface, clear signage, and infrastructure that supported the experience of travelling on foot.

Yet the aftermath of Dorian also reminded us that no route, however well developed, could be considered entirely predictable. Weather, changing circumstances, and the realities of the communities through which we travelled continued to shape our journey.

Our reflections on hiking the Trans Canada Trail across Prince Edward Island revisit these experiences and consider what the island taught us about the possibilities of a connected national pathway. The original journals preserve the immediate impressions of those days, from the difficulties of walking through storm-damaged sections to the kindness of strangers and the pleasures of moving through peaceful autumn landscapes.

There was also something important about the ordinary nature of much of our time on the island. Not every memorable day involved a difficult climb, spectacular wilderness, or extraordinary achievement. Sometimes the pleasure was simply in walking beneath changing leaves, watching birds among the hedgerows, visiting a small community, or enjoying a conversation with someone we met along the way.

Looking back after completing our journey across Canada, Prince Edward Island remains an example of how accessible, well-maintained pathways can connect people not only with distant destinations, but with the ordinary landscapes, histories, and natural environments of the communities around them.

Come Walk With Us Across Prince Edward Island

Today, with our coast-to-coast-to-coast #Hike4Birds complete, we hope these collections offer something for anyone interested in exploring Prince Edward Island and the Trans Canada Trail. Some readers may be researching a cycling holiday along the Confederation Trail, others may be planning a walk across the province, while still others may be interested in the island's birds, natural history, cultural landscapes, or the everyday experiences of travelling at walking speed.

Our complete Prince Edward Island archive remains the best place to discover the full collection of daily journals, photographs, itineraries, resources, birding observations, and reflections. We invite you to begin wherever your interests lead you, whether at the Wood Islands Lighthouse, along a quiet stretch of the Confederation Trail, in historic Charlottetown, or beside the red sandy shoreline near Borden-Carleton.

For us, Prince Edward Island was the third chapter of a journey that would eventually carry us across Canada and north to the Arctic Ocean. From the Confederation Bridge, our next destination would be New Brunswick, where the Trans Canada Trail would once again change character, introducing us to river corridors, rural communities, wilderness footpaths, and the remarkable Bay of Fundy.

Thank you for joining us, whether you followed our journey through Prince Edward Island in 2019 or are discovering #Hike4Birds for the first time.

See you on the trail!