Sketches of Prince Edward County

Storyline: Advantures in our back yard

There is a lot going on for the County. If you are art, food and wine fanatic, the County is a place to visit.

However, there is something for everyone there. Birdwatching, cycling, boating, surfing, shallow water beaches, fishing, jazz festivals, art exhibits, you name it.

Was it happenstance that we chose Prince Edward County for our first RV experience? And a campsite very close to where we spent our first long weekend together, coming up on 20 years ago. Back then, we rented a trailer at an ostrich farm a stone’s throw away from the Smugglers Cove RV campsite.

The trailer may be still there, but the ostriches are long time gone (the bird flu effect). Alex had 2 bikes in his Pathfinder, neither to my size, but I did try riding along the empty County roads.

This brought back memories of my childhood, when my father bought one big old bike with a horizontal frame (men’s version) for the entire family. It was a challenge to mount and learn to ride on something far above my size. Somehow, I did, but never really felt comfortable jumping over the frame. This was long before foldable city bikes appeared in my world. My father rode this same bike even into his late 90s.

Prince Edward County (familiarly known as “the County”), an island just south of Bay of Quinte, a short driving distance from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, hosts Sandbanks Provincial Park with one of the most spectacular beaches in Canada (or so we are told). It is the largest bay-mouth freshwater sand dune system in North America. But this is not why we go there.

The County has literally evolved before of our eyes.

We fell in love with it during our first visit. Its empty roads, the calm of its greenery, the often-moody skies, the vastness of its mostly flat land with small rolling hills,

the semi-collapsed barns and other old (for Canada, that is) wooden structures, the wind gusting through the farmland…

It is still our favorite “escape from the big city” spot, although not all roads are empty now, and the two then sleepy towns of Picton and Wellington are buzzing these days, even in the Covid lockdown.

We were too new to each other then. (We’d move together just a few weeks later). We loved our rented trailer, the little beach, and not to forget – the ostriches.

During subsequent visits we’d discover the art and food trails, the few newly-developed wineries that kept multiplying each year, the antique shops, the arts and crafts galleries in the middle of nowhere, the cheese factory,

the pick your own produce and leave the money in the shoe box markets, the restaurants that kept changing and adjusting to their new patrons.

At a certain point of time a strong “farm to table” movement made the restaurants unique. Years ago, we ran into a charity event organized by Jamie Kennedy, a renowned Canadian chef at his farm at Hillier. This too has evolved since then to Saturday night dinners that apparently are sold out weeks in advance.

Half the art in our house is from the County. Once we discovered the Red Roof Gallery of watercolour artist Rod Pickering. A few of his works decorate our rooms now. We also went twice to see and negotiate the price of a diptych of sunflowers from Joan Mackay for which we had a perfect spot in our house.

At the time, and for a few years later we dreamt of buying a property with a barn to convert to a Jazz club and a house to run as B&B. During the last 10 years though, the County has attracted the attention of many wealthy retirees from Toronto and Ottawa and prices have jumped significantly. We also found that we’d need medical care not readily available in the area. And we shelved the idea of relocating there.

But we still visit every two or three years for a few days, stay in B&Bs, cottages or anything we find in a shoulder season, do the art and winery tour, visit some favorite restaurants and come back with a full trunk of County wines.

The last time we rented a cottage on the water in Wellington was with our Bulgarian friend Milan, in 2018. We’ll never forget his excitement after finding a dusty boxed set of Mario Lanza records in an antique store. We negotiated a $2 price for it. Milan was on the top of the world.

As we drove around Quebec and Northern Ontario, we’d periodically hear a happy exclamation from the back seat: “Mario Lanza! Two dollars?!” followed by the humming of an opera tune. One can find all sorts of hidden gems in a County antique store.

We don’t know how busy it is these days during the summer. But we were surprised that it was hard to find two camping sites even after mid-September. Our campervan orientation and delivery was scheduled for the afternoon.

Prince Edward County is about half way between the dealership in Gananoque and our home, so It was a natural stop for our first ever RVing experience. There are not many campgrounds that we are aware of with full service in the County, and not geared to families with kids. As a first we were happy with our campsite.

According to our friends Jane & Stuart, who joined us with their trailer (caravan), the sites were well-spaced with tons of room between them.

Aside from me learning to drive the van on relatively quiet roads, which was a main factor in selecting the County as our first stop, we of course wanted to visit a few wineries. Timing didn’t allow for touring them all, as we used to in the past. There are now many more than before, but not all were open this time anyway.

Not sure if they had survived the lock down. Some for sure didn’t have enough seasonal workers. Half Moon Bay, one of our favorite wineries, and close to the RV site, was closed at the time of our stay. We actually knew about Smugglers Cove only because of our regular drive to the winery.

So we decided to head out to Greer Road and visit a couple of our favourites. Casa Dea being the first. We like their wines and their La Pergola restaurant with a patio facing the vineyard.

The tasting room was well-set up, with tasting tables spaced much more than 2 metres apart, and safety protocols in place. Ended up with a box of their wines.

The live music at the restaurant was so uplifting, and although the menu was limited due to the pandemic,

the pizza on our first restaurant meal since the lockdown, was simply delicious. Before we left, we danced to a few tunes between the empty tables…with our masks on, of course.

We drove through Wellington on our way back from Casa Dea, and boy was it busy there! We didn’t try going even close to Picton, where I have a favourite café. Next time.

This time we missed visiting the chatty eclectic artist Tammy Love, who we met quite some time ago. She was working as a server in one of our favorite restaurants. We asked the name of the artist of a painting that we liked, which was displayed for sale on the wall near us. It was hers! Since then we’ve been to a few art exhibits and liked her work.

Alas, by that time our walls were full of art and we didn’t have room for more. (And now facing downsizing sooner or later, my heart cries). Tammy has a house that is one of the most clutter-fun stores in the little village of Bloomfield, full of antiques and her own art. It became a habit of ours to visit her and chat for a while. A tiny plastic hen, that she gave us once for good luck, is still somewhere in the car.

There is something to be said about the County wineries. They are not for the faint of heart. Most of them started as a hobby of wealthy retirees to be. Not sure now, but in the beginning they were not necessarily profitable. The winter there is harsh and the vines have to be buried in the fall to survive. It is a lot more work than in a well-established wine region in warmer climates. Yet the County winemakers produce fantastic wines. The porous limestone gives the grapes a distinctive minerality and acidity.