Fun you can really dig
It’s my first ever time in a sea kayak, so I’m struggling to keep up with Paul Sheridan, owner of By-the-Sea-Kayaking in Victoria-by-the-Sea , PEI (a dollhouse of a village and the perfect seaside family getaway).
Struggling, but not as much as the 10 teenagers on Paul’s rented paddle boards. They’re all looking wobbly, some standing so far forward, their rudders lift clear of the water.
“Stand a little further back. You’ll find the board is more stable,” Paul calls out like a kindly uncle to one precariously balanced teen. She shuffles backwards and dips her long paddle into the water, propelling herself toward the bay much more effectively than before. She shouts a “thank you” back.
Leaving the paddle boarders in our wake, Paul leads the way toward our destination, the clam flats. The tide is dropping. Skirting the shoreline, we cut through underwater fields of eelgrass, much of it now lying on the water’s surface so I can reach over the side and run my fingers through it. We head out past a small lighthouse on a point towards what looks like open ocean. The high arches of the 13-kilometre Confederation Bridge to our right lean across the warm waters of the Northumberland Strait toward the mainland just beyond the horizon.
After 15 minutes of paddling, the water ahead takes on a reddish hue. Suddenly, we can step out. Several kilometres long and almost as wide, the sandbar is teeming with life. An osprey hovers overhead, terns tear past. A flock of small Bonaparte’s gulls light on the water.
With instructions from Paul, I search for the dimples in the sand that betray the hiding place of the coveted bar clams. At first, I see nothing but a few blue starfish and fist-sized moon snails travelling some mysterious trail across the sand.
Finally, I spot a dimple and sink the tines of my long-handled clam hoe into the sand. Clink. It hits something solid. I dig and with one aggressive flick, up comes a jet black clam the size of my hand.
The daily bag limit is 50. We dig four dozen in no time. Paul says “I don’t think I ever filled a bag so fast. It’s almost embarrassing.” But we only need a dozen for chowder, so we toss the smallest ones back and watch as they right themselves, then dig into the sand and disappear.
We head to shore with our harvest. When we round the wharf, a couple of gift shops and two family restaurants perched on the end— Beachcombers and the Lobster Barn —we see fishing boats tied up and the beach busy with more young kayakers and paddle boarders.
On the picnic table next to his rental shack, Paul prepares the chowder. He teaches me how to steam, clean and chop the clams. To his creamy base with potato, carrot, red pepper and, from his own garden, fresh tarragon, all thickened with béchamel sauce, he adds the clams and some Island cream.
When it’s ready, he hands me a steaming bowlful—delicious, all the more so for having worked up an appetite with the wild harvest.
Bidding Paul adieu, I walk straight up Main Street into the quiet village, a compact four blocks, for dessert at Island Chocolates , a real kid-pleaser. After poking around their chocolate museum, I order a couple of truffles and a hot chocolate. Owner Linda Gilbert serves them to me in the sunshine on her garden patio, a view of the wharf in one direction and a couple of rustic barns in the other.
Next to the chocolate shop is another kid-favourite, the Ewe & Dye Weavery where Christine Stanley and her donkey Malachi (he guards her sheep) offer a warm welcome. Also in town, the Victoria Playhouse presents live family-friendly performances—local music and theatre—sure to make the stay unforgettable for a generation raised on digital entertainment.
Kids can walk into a working lighthouse—the second oldest on the Island—at the Victoria Seaport Museum. A small display on Victoria’s history as a busy seaport feeds an imaginative young mind…
As do the period-furnished Victorian dining and sitting rooms, and the nautically-themed bedrooms back at the Orient Hotel where I settle in for a guaranteed night’s rest in this quiet, fairytale-village-by-the-sea, surrounded on two sides by the sea and on the other two by fields of wildflowers.
Precious!
