This interactive map is a companion to my book The Island Walk: A Guide to Walking the 700 km Camino de la Isla in Prince Edward Island, Canada.
In 2016, my partner, Sue, and I spent five weeks walking the 800 km Camino Frances from France to Spain. It was our first experience in long distance walking, but it was not our last.
In April 2019, we returned to Europe and walked the Rota Vicentina in Portugal. We were especially taken with the 230 km Historical Way (Camino Historico) which passes through many small towns and villages not unlike the small towns where we live in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. It occurred to us that we could develop a similar path in PEI which would pass through the Island’s beautiful rural landscape, while adding many spectacular vistas of the sea.
We returned to Canada in May, and I set to work mapping a route for a Walk Around the Island. The route wouldn’t include every harbour and bay – that would have stretched to more than 1,200 km. Instead, we focused on an abbreviated path using secondary roads, red dirt roads and the Island’s Confederation Trail. The route would cover 700 km and would take at least a month to complete. That seemed like an achievable goal but setting out and doing it was more challenging than we thought.
Our route along the The Island Walk is highlighted in red; each day's stop is marked with a green marker with the number day of the walk inside. Click or tap on the marker to see the name of the town or village, the distance traveled that day, and in total to that point.
If you're actually walking the The Island Walk and using this map as you go, you can tap on the "locate me" icon in the top-left corner of the map, give you device permission to provide its location, and the map will zoom right to your current location.
The route of The Island Walk is available for download as a GPX, GeoJSON file, suitable for import into a GIS application or wayfinding device.