Cavendish - Part 1
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2007
1
8
10
Trip End
Sep 11, 2008
Cavendish,
Prince Edward Island,
Canada
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sorry...
Where was I? Ok - Prince Edward Island. So, today I went to Cavendish. Which is more widely known by it's alter ego name of Avonlea, the little place where Anne of Green Gables lived.
First I had breakfast though, in the charming country kitchen of the Greatest Hostel in the World TM. Libby the Australian wielded a spatula and produced home-made croissants. Well, they probably weren't totally homemade but she heated them up in the oven herself, which is good enough in my book if they're free.
14 croissants and a great deal of exotic fruit later (check ME out - vitamin C and evryfink), I jumped on the handy shuttle which drew up by the front door. Also on board was a sleeping Japanese girl and an elderly Indian lady with a fold-up bike. I'm not sure if the fold-up bike was hers, especially as she was in full traditional garb which would probably cause much spoke tanglement and over handlebar excitement if she tried to ride it. She was resting her hand on it in a very 'this is mine, hands off' kind of way though.
We barrelled along the road for quite some time, pausing to pick an elderly gentleman up who appeared to be dressed as an Edwardian, and also the driver's sandwiches which he'd left at home. I should have purchased them off him but at the time I was still foolishly under the impression that where there are tourists, there is food.
I was intrigued by the elderly gentleman - he was allowed to sit in the front for a start, but also, him and the driver were chatting away like old friends.
Hostel Kitchen
Eventually I forgot them as I stared at the weird landscape that makes up the island. It's not weird I suppose, just different. All the houses seemed to have just been plonked down randomly and none of the gardens had boundaries. In fact, they weren't really gardens - just fields, with a bit round the house that was laid out as a lawn. I imagine it's because there's so much space that one's neighbour's land doesn't necessarily start where yours finishes. There weren't really any trees or bushes around the houses either. It all seemed a bit stark and exposed. Maybe it's my English reserve at wanting to hide behind fences or something.Eventually we pulled into a carpark in the middle of nowhere with a nice new building in it and the driver said he'd be back later to pick us up - actually extracting a time from him proved difficult but he got there in the end. For want of nowhere else to go and feeling slightly concerned about amusing myself for SIX hours there I wandered in and was pleasantly surprised by the air conditioning and free internet. What is it with tourist information having free internet on Prince Edward Island? It is the way forward I feel. The nice man behind the desk furnished me a with a map of Cavendish (which had every building marked - and there were about 5 of them..) and directed me to Green Gables, allegedly round the corner.
Not without trepidation I crunched across the gravel car-park, already wilting in the heat and up to the crossroads which in reality was next to the car-park.
Green Gables
I quite liked the sidewalk - a boardwalk kind of affair which made a nice holiday-ish kind of noise as I tramped along it down (hurray!) the hill alongside a HUGE road that was plainly built for more traffic than me and the tractor chugging along it. I amused myself taking pictures of it and tried not to think about how AWFUL it must be in summer if they need that kind of infrastructure in such an apparently lonely place.700 miles and about 5 minutes later I dragged into a leafy driveway that led to a HUGE car-park and waded across the tarmac. Did I mention it was fairly warm? Good grief. I had come with no intention of actually going into the house - I just wanted a quick look and a photo before going to the Avonlea theme park next door (which I could see no sign of currently but I was crossing that bridge when I came to it).
Helpfully, you could see the house from the perimeter fence (white picket naturally), Clearly English Heritage had not penetrated this far in to the Empire (everyone go to Stonehenge quick before they move the road). I wandered over to the ticket office ready to laugh in their faces but it was only $5 to get in due to being off season. The signs shouted about the GIN-YOU-INE old house and that you could go in to Lovers' Lane and the Haunted Wood (if you haven't read the book you won't know what I'm talking about much today) so, marketing man's dream that I am, I paid up.
Hmmm - hate to say it but was kind of disappointed. The barn was BRAND new - you could still smell the varnish so I scarpered through to the house.
Lovers Lane
Which was like the American Museum in Bath. Everything was just too new and shiny and clean. I found out from the guide woman that the house had been built way back in 1940 and filled with faithful reproductions of items that would have been in the original Green Gables when Lucy Maud wrote the book. It was only 18 hundred and something! Not exactly stone age. I kind of like my old stuff to be old really. I had a quick look in all the rooms, wondering why Matthew's bedroom was next to the kitchen when there were four perfectly good bedrooms upstairs. Surely Marilla's sewing room could have been downstairs? The spare room was appropriately imposing and beautiful though - you could see why Anne and Diana would have treated it with respect.Outside I waited patiently to take pictures of the house without Americans getting in the way and then wandered down to the Haunted Wood. Which got dull after 5 seconds, although I was able to impart my newly acquired knowledge as to why some of the trees were dead (remember the cormorants in Toronto) to a couple of Americans. Lovers' Lane was appropriately dappled in the sunlight and I thought to myself it was a shame only the natural elements of the story's setting were any good. I escaped to find Avonlea Village, a theme park built around the story.
Another 700 miles later I trekked along a windy (that's meant to say it was curvy, not breezy but can't work out how to spell it...) country lane circa 1998 and a little Edwardian settlement came into view.
Avonlea Village
Well - it was GREAT. More picket fences separated it from the road but I really liked how it wasn't surrounded by massive fencing more akin to Pilton Festival than a tourist attraction. You could have just hopped over the fence if you were that way inclined. Being a well brought up sort of girl I prefer to pay though...Off Season - $10! That's only a fiver!! It's normally $22 to get in. I'm so loving travelling in September. The woman relieved me of my cash and handed me a piece of paper with the day's activities outlined. She told me to hurry up as I was missing the traditional folk songs in the fisherman's shanty (?) but that all sounded a bit too twee for me so I didn't rush. I came out of the ticket office and arrived in 1839. I'm not sure why I loved Avonlea village and hated Green Gables - maybe it was because Avonlea didn't pretend to be old when it wasn't. It did call itself a theme park after all. It didn't look like one though. Basically it was a small town consisting of three streets and about 20 buildings. It had dirt roads and wooden boardwalks raised above them. All the staff were dressed in period costume and best of all - there wasn't a soul about! The souvenir tat was hidden behind closed doors so it didn't interfere with the look of the place.
I could hear a ye olde sort of singing going on so I followed the sound of the accordian to a low building with a strapping young man dressed as a fisherman sitting on a stage surrounded by about 25 tourists. He was chirruping folk songs from the old days.
Anne Hats
He interspersed the songs with stories from his childhood, but as he was the same age as me, frankly I wasn't that charmed. Presently he went off to get oysters for everyone to try (presumably the fishing part of the spectacle) but I'm not a fan so I vanished in search of lunch.'The Picnic Basket' appeared to be the only eatery on site but it looked worryingly dark and shuttered as I approached. A sign confirmed it was closed for the season which seemed odd to me - surely, the park still had a couple of weeks left and the punters need food? Across the street, the Raspberry Cordial emporium was open so I tinkled in and enquired of Marilla Cuthbert who was manning the joint (didn't realise she had a job?), who said that there wasn't anything else but there was a sandwich shop 10 minutes drive down the road. On learning I had no car, which gave her and her colleague an amusing few minutes (fancy a tourist having no car?!), she kindly offered to give me a lift to Subway if I hung on til her lunch break. Subway? Here? In the woods? A quick conference with her colleague (who turned out to be Rachel Lynde), over who was doing the weaving demonstration gave us a time so I wandered off to amuse myself - taking a bottle of raspberry cordial with me. Which was LUSH. But probably full of E numbers and not quite as natural as in Anne Shirley's day.
The elderly gentleman from the shuttle was sitting in the window so I went over to chat to him - turns out that he wrote a book about a Home Child called Ellen and the theory is that Anne of Green Gables may be based loosely around Ellen's story.
Home children were orphans and disadvantaged children from England who were sent to Canada for a 'better life' up to the mid 1900s.
April of Green Gables...
It's completely fascinating - google it now (Middlemore Home in Birmingham was one of the places the children came from). My friend Megan in Halifax is descended from a Home Child, as are an estimated 10% of Canadians, but it's virtually non-existant in school curriculum due to the mis-treatment and abuse a lot of the children suffered. Many children had happy stories but the whole thing holds a lot of negative publicity which hinders the work of an organisation campaigning for awareness. Anyway... After Marilla and Rachel had a big debate about whether she should wear her hat as she was going out in public, we drove off to Subway in a very un-Marilla appropriate people carrier. I.e not a pony and trap... Subway turned out to be shut for the season so we went next door for a burger. Marilla Cuthbert in a burger bar. That's an image that won't leave me for a while... Marilla's real name was June which caused much hilarity when she learnt my moniker...
Back at Avonlea I sat in the sun by the church eating fabulous chips (oh, but they know how to make chips on Prince Edward Island...they leave the skins on too...mmm...) and reflected that life was gooood. I had no job, granted, but the sun was out, the day was warm and the beach was only down the road.
After lunch I went of in search of the photo place. Apparently you could have your picture taken in full Anne getup. This was obviously high on my agenda... I found it - big room FULL of costumes for ages 1 - 100 in all shapes and sizes. Quite amazing. The room had lots of scenes and props set up and the idea was that you dressed and got someone to take a pic of you. All very good in high season when there's lots of people about but I had to hang around in a dodgy fetishist kind of way until someone came in... Quite impressed though - they didn't seem to be charging extra for anything. Again - no sign of English Heritage clearly...
Next stop - chocolate factory. perhaps not quite so faithfully reproduced... Lots of free samples though and it was AMAZING. So I obliged and bought some... The woman at the till greeted me with 'ah - you must be the girl from England?'.
Eh?
Obviously not many tourists about today...
Next door was the schoolhouse, which was actually a relic - it was the genuine article that Lucy Maud herself taught in. I was quite pleased to see it - a real life old building after a morning of pretenders! The church was also the genuine article and had been moved from somewhere else on the island - and sliced up first in manner of top telly programme 'Monster Moves'.
I'll put some pics on of the day so far in the next few days - but I'm hungry now so will write about the rest of the day another time...
Comments
matthew
his bedroom could be downstairs for a number of reasons:
1. He was pretty old, perhaps had stiff knees or something that made stairs hard?
2. He would have to get up really early to milk or whatever so it was probably better his room wasnt where he would wake everyone else up.
Were the roads red?
By the way, you owe me a letter...
xxxxx
PEI
Love the entry!!! I feel like a celebrity getting mentioned!!!!