Lucy Maud Montgomery Trail: 2 Days Through Anne of Green Gables Country - 1000 Towns of Canada

Story Routes

Lucy Maud Montgomery Trail: A Two-Day PEI Pilgrimage

The Prince Edward Island landscapes behind Anne of Green Gables — Cavendish, New London, French River, Park Corner and Bideford — walked and driven in two days, with the real dates, the real distances and the seasons that close around them.

Created by Sarah Finkle, Dalhousie University

Photo: Smudge 9000 from North Kent Coast, England – Anne of Green Gables Museum, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8664341

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was born in New London, raised in Cavendish by her maternal grandparents, taught at Bideford and Belmont, married at Park Corner, and wrote Anne of Green Gables — published in June 1908 — in the upstairs bedroom of her grandparents’ Cavendish farmhouse.

Almost every named landscape in that novel sits within an hour of Cavendish. The Haunted Wood is real. Lover’s Lane is real, and Parks Canada still mows it. The Lake of Shining Waters is a pond behind her cousins’ house at Park Corner.

This is two days through the corner of Prince Edward Island that Anne Shirley made famous, and the whole of it fits inside about 160 km.

Day 1 never leaves Cavendish — four kilometres of driving all told. It opens at Green Gables Heritage Place, the farmhouse Montgomery pictured as Anne’s home, walks the Haunted Wood and Lover’s Lane, visits the foundation of the house she actually lived in, and ends at Avonlea Village, where the schoolhouse she taught in and the 1872 Long River Church have been moved and restored.

Day 2 fans west along the north shore: New London for the birthplace, French River for the harbour she lent to Four Winds, Park Corner for the parlour she was married in, and Bideford for the parsonage she boarded in at nineteen. Dinner at Tyne Valley, then the hour back east.

Three things to settle before you book. The season is set by the Bideford Parsonage Museum, which opens June 1 and closes September 25 — earlier than most of the trail and earlier than the guidebooks say. Parks Canada is warning of very high visitation at Green Gables this year, so a 9 a.m. arrival is not just advice. And the Willow Bakery, which the trail is usually routed through for Day 2 breakfast, has moved out of Stanley Bridge to Kensington, which is 23 km the wrong way — the Good to know rows below tell you how to handle it.

Day 1 — Cavendish

→ 4 km of driving in total · Green Gables, the Haunted Wood, the home site, Avonlea Village, and a bed three minutes from where you started

🚗 Start at Green Gables Heritage Place — park there; the café is on the site and the gate opens at 9 a.m.

1☕ Breakfast

Breakfast at The Cordial Café — Cavendish

★ 5.0·The Cordial Café, Green Gables Heritage Place, 8619 Cavendish Rd (Route 6), Cavendish, PE

Start where Day 1 is anyway: the Cordial Café sits on the Green Gables Heritage Place site, opens with the gate at 9 a.m., and sells coffee, baked goods and the raspberry cordial it is named for. Worth getting the story straight while you drink it, because almost everyone garbles it: in the novel Anne sets out to serve Diana raspberry cordial and pours currant wine by mistake. Diana drinks three tumblers of it, goes home unsteady, and it is Mrs. Barry who is scandalised — she forbids the friendship, and the whole thing is the first real grief of Anne's life. Cavendish is where Montgomery grew up, wrote most of the book, and drew nearly every landscape in it from farms and lanes within walking distance of her own front door.

2Literature · National Historic Site · Anchor

Green Gables Heritage Place

★ 5.0·Green Gables Heritage Place, 8619 Route 6, Cavendish, PE C0A 1M0

The anchor of the trail, and not quite the house you think. This was the farm of Montgomery's elderly cousins David and Margaret Macneill — she never lived here, she visited — but it is the house she saw when she wrote Anne's. Parks Canada runs it: tour the restored farmhouse, then take the two trails that make the visit. The Haunted Wood Trail runs through the spruce she walked home through in the dark, and Lover's Lane is the start of what Parks Canada now calls the Balsam Hollow Trail, dropping to the brook. Open 1 May to 31 October, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission is $10 an adult in high summer and $8.25 from the day after Labour Day, with youth 17 and under free. Parks Canada is warning of very high visitation this year and asking people to adjust their schedules — so be at the gate at nine. Allow two to three hours.

3🥪 Lunch

Lunch at The Lost Anchor

★ 5.0·The Lost Anchor, 8572 Cavendish Rd (Route 6), Cavendish, PE

On 22 July 1883 the Marco Polo — once advertised as the fastest ship in the world — ran aground off Cavendish in a gale, carrying timber from Quebec. She broke up in a storm that August, and her captain and crew boarded with Cavendish families for weeks. Eight-year-old Lucy Maud watched it from the shore, and eight years later wrote it up as 'The Wreck of the Marco Polo', which won a prize and ran in the Montreal Witness in 1891. It is often called her first publication; it was not. That was a poem, 'On Cape LeForce', in the Charlottetown Daily Patriot in 1890. The ship's anchor is displayed at this restaurant, which is a good enough reason to have lunch here. Reservations in summer.

4Literature · Heritage · National Historic Site · Pilgrimage

Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish Home Site

★ 5.0·Site of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish Home, 8555 Route 6, Cavendish, PE

The house is gone; the foundation, the garden and the fields are not, and neither is the small museum and bookshop that John and Jennie Macneill — descendants of the family — built around them. This is the one that matters. Montgomery lived here with her grandparents Alexander and Lucy Macneill from 1876, when she was twenty-one months old and her mother had just died of tuberculosis, until 1911, when her grandmother died and she married. She wrote Anne of Green Gables in the upstairs bedroom. After Alexander died in 1898 she ran the Cavendish post office out of the front parlour — which meant she could post manuscripts to publishers, and receive the rejections, without anyone in the village knowing. Walk the grounds. Sit in the garden for ten minutes. This is the quietest stop on the trail and the one people remember.

5Heritage · Family · Anchor

Avonlea Village

★ 5.0·Avonlea Village, 8779 Route 6, Cavendish, PE C0A 1N0

A heritage-village complex gathered around three genuine Montgomery-era buildings: the one-room schoolhouse she taught in, the minister's residence, and the 1872 Long River Church she attended visiting her Park Corner cousins. Around them are eight eateries and six shops, and it can lean touristy in July — but the buildings are real and there is no entrance fee, which the village is at pains to say. Thirty to sixty minutes for the historic buildings; longer if you are eating or shopping. Note that the schoolhouse is usually described as the Belmont school where Montgomery taught in 1896–97; the village itself says only that it is the schoolhouse she taught in.

6🍷 Dinner

Dinner at Turkey Tavern (Avonlea Village)

★ 5.0·Avonlea Village, 8779 Route 6, Cavendish, PE C0A 1N0

The easy way to close Day 1 without moving the car: the Turkey Tavern is inside Avonlea Village, and the PEI roast turkey dinner is the point — full plate, gravy, stuffing, mash. If that is not the mood, Dave's Lobster, Piatto Pizzeria + Enoteca and Samuel's Coffee House are all a two-minute walk across the village. One thing to watch: Avonlea's eateries keep their own seasonal hours and most of the village winds down after Labour Day, so in September ring ahead or have Chez Yvonne's on Route 6 as the fallback — it has been feeding Cavendish for 58 years.

7🛏️ Overnight

Overnight at Kindred Spirits Inn & Cottages

★ 5.0·Kindred Spirits Inn & Cottages, 46 Memory Ln, Cavendish, PE C0A 1N0

Named for Anne's phrase for the friends she knows on sight, the inn sits on six acres on Memory Lane, next door to Green Gables — walking distance to the farmhouse, the Haunted Wood, Lover's Lane and, a kilometre further, Cavendish Beach. Inn rooms, a gatehouse, a luxury loft and two- and three-bedroom cottages. It is the destination stay on this trail and it fills for summer weekends; book a month out, and note that reservations for the following summer open on 1 October. Cavendish Motel, Anne Shirley Motel and the Bayview and Fairways cottages are the fallbacks, all within a couple of kilometres.

Day 2 — New London → French River → Park Corner → Bideford → Tyne Valley

→ about 155 km and four hours of driving · the birthplace, Silver Bush, the Lake of Shining Waters, the first parsonage, and the long way home

🚗 Either 11 km · 11 min straight west to New London, or a 23 km · 22 min run southwest to Kensington for the Willow Bakery and 12 km back north. The bakery moved; see the stop.

8☕ Breakfast

Breakfast — and the Willow Bakery question

★ 5.0·The Willow Bakery & Café, 13 Commercial St, Kensington, PE

Here is a correction worth having before you set out. The Willow Bakery & Café — the repurposed-church bakery that every version of this trail sends you to for Day 2 breakfast — is no longer in Stanley Bridge. It now trades at 13 Commercial Street in Kensington, which Tourism PEI, the café's own Facebook page and the phone book all agree on, and which is 23 km southwest of Cavendish — the wrong way. Two honest options. Skip it: eat at the Cordial Café where you are already staying and drive 11 km straight to the birthplace; that is the 160 km version of this trip. Or take it: the detour adds 23 km and about 25 minutes, the bakery is open year-round when almost nothing else on this trail is, and Kensington's stone railway station is a national historic site worth ten minutes. Either way, fill the tank before New London — fuel thins out badly between here and Bideford.

9Literature · Heritage · Anchor · Pilgrimage

Lucy Maud Montgomery Birthplace Museum — New London

★ 5.0·L.M. Montgomery Birthplace, 6461 Route 20, New London, PE C0B 1M0

Montgomery was born in this small white house on 30 November 1874. Her mother Clara died of tuberculosis twenty-one months later and Lucy Maud was sent up the road to her grandparents at Cavendish, which is the hinge the whole life turns on. The house is a modest volunteer-run museum — personal effects, her wedding dress, a reconstruction of the room she was born in. It sits at the corner of Route 6 and Route 20 and opens 19 May to 12 October. Modest, and the place the story actually starts.

10🥪 Lunch

Lunch at Sou'West Bar & Grill

★ 5.0·Sou'West Bar & Grill, New London Wharf, Route 20, New London, PE

A two-minute walk north from the birthplace, on the New London wharf looking out over New London Bay — Island seafood, oysters, local draft, and one of the better waterfront lunches on this coast. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and to midnight Friday and Saturday, with apps and drinks only after nine. Give it an hour. This is the harbour Montgomery looked at all her life, and the one she is generally held to have borrowed for Four Winds in Anne's House of Dreams.

11Scenic Drive · Free · Photo Spot

French River — the scenic lookout

★ 5.0·French River Lookout Road, off Route 20, French River, PE

The deep harbour and the white farmhouses scattered over the hills above it make what is probably the most-photographed view on Prince Edward Island, and the lookout road off Route 20 is where everybody stands. Montgomery drew on this stretch for Glen St. Mary and Four Winds. There is a quieter story here too: in 1897, teaching at Lower Bedeque and newly fatherless, she accepted a proposal from Edwin Simpson, a French River divinity student, and spent a miserable year before breaking it off in 1898. Cape Tryon Lighthouse stands on the headland 2.5 km north for the wider panorama.

12Literature · Heritage · Anchor

Anne of Green Gables Museum — Park Corner

★ 5.0·Anne of Green Gables Museum, 4542 Route 20, Park Corner, PE C0B 1M0

Silver Bush — the farmhouse of her cousins the Campbells, and the place the child Montgomery called her 'wonder castle'. She was married in this parlour on 5 July 1911. The museum still holds the family things: her wedding dress, letters, first editions, the crazy quilt she stitched, the blue chest from The Story Girl, and the organ her wedding march was played on. Behind the house lies the pond she renamed the Lake of Shining Waters, and Matthew's Carriage Rides run around it from next door. Admission is $9 an adult and $3 for children 6 to 16. Allow two hours — and telephone before you drive: the museum's own website still carries an opening notice from the Atlantic Bubble era, five years out of date.

13Literature · Heritage · Pilgrimage

Bideford Parsonage Museum

★ 5.0·Bideford Parsonage Museum, 784 Bideford Rd (Route 166), Bideford, PE C0B 1J0

Bideford is where it started for her professionally. She arrived in the summer of 1894, nineteen years old and holding a one-year condensed teaching licence from Prince of Wales College, taught the Bideford school for the 1894–95 year, and boarded next door at the Methodist parsonage in a large room over the water. She wrote there every evening and finished several of her early published stories in it. The parsonage is now a restored museum and the single best-preserved room on this trail. The season is 1 June to 25 September and the door shuts at 5 p.m. — this is the constraint the whole of Day 2 should be planned backwards from. Aim to arrive by three. While you are out here, the Green Park Shipbuilding Museum and Yeo House is ten minutes away and tells the other half of this coast's story.

14🍷 Dinner

Dinner at Backwoods Burger — Tyne Valley

★ 5.0·Backwoods Burger, 1327 Port Hill Station Rd, Tyne Valley, PE

Backwoods Burger anchors Tyne Valley — locally sourced burgers, rotating specials, no ceremony, and you can book online. Open 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, which works neatly with a parsonage that closes at five. If you want something more considered, The Table Culinary Studio in New London does a set-menu chef's table and wants weeks of notice; Evermoore Brewing is in the village with a taproom kitchen; and Jolly Rogers Seafood on the water is the shack option.

Drive back to Cavendish

★ 5.0·Tyne Valley → Cavendish, PE

About an hour east on Route 2 and Route 6. If there is light left, come back through Kensington instead — it costs no extra time at all, the stone railway station is a national historic site, and the Willow Bakery is there if you skipped it this morning. The trail you have just driven is roughly 160 km. The one Montgomery actually lived spanned about 55 km of this north shore, and she was over forty before she left it for good. Everything Anne Shirley ever did happened inside that.

Good to know

⚠️ The Willow Bakery has moved — and it changes Day 2

Every version of this trail, this one included, sends you to The Willow Bakery & Café in Stanley Bridge for Day 2 breakfast, on the way west to New London. It is not there any more. Tourism PEI, the café's Facebook page and its directory listings all give 13 Commercial Street, Kensington, which is 23 km southwest of Cavendish — the wrong way. Measured properly, Cavendish → Kensington → New London is 34 km against 11 km direct, so the detour turns a 160 km trip into a 183 km one. It is still a good bakery and it is open year-round, which nothing else on this trail is, so the sensible move is to catch it on the way home instead: Tyne Valley → Kensington → Cavendish is 68 km and Tyne Valley → Cavendish direct is 67 km. The Kensington return is free.

The season, and which stop sets it

Four opening calendars, and the shortest one governs. Bideford Parsonage Museum: June 1 to September 25 — the narrowest window on the trail, and Day 2’s emotional anchor, so if Bideford matters to you the trip has to sit inside those dates. L.M. Montgomery Birthplace: May 19 to October 12. Green Gables Heritage Place: May 1 to October 31, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and open by appointment for two weeks either side. Avonlea Village and the Cavendish restaurants run summer-season hours and most wind down after Labour Day. Late June and early September are the sweet spot: everything open, and neither the crowds of July nor the shutters of October.

Green Gables in 2026 — arrive at nine

Parks Canada is carrying an explicit warning this year: “Expect very high visitation in 2026. Guests are strongly encouraged to plan ahead and adjust travel schedules to avoid delays and long wait times.” The gate opens at 9 a.m. and that is when to be at it. Admission is $10 an adult from 1 July to Labour Day, $8.25 the day after Labour Day to 31 October, $5 off-season, and free for youth 17 and under; the Parks Canada Discovery Pass is $83.50 an adult or $167.50 a family and pays for itself quickly on a Maritime trip. Note that admission was free under the Canada Strong Pass from 19 June to 7 September 2026 and regular fees resumed on 8 September.

What it costs at the door

Nothing on this trail is expensive and none of it is bundled. Green Gables $8.25 to $10 an adult, youth free. Anne of Green Gables Museum, Park Corner $9 an adult, $3 for children 6 to 16, under 5 free. Bideford Parsonage Museum and the L.M. Montgomery Birthplace are small volunteer-run museums with modest admissions. Avonlea Village is free to walk into — you pay only for what you eat and buy. The Cavendish home site, the French River lookout and Cape Tryon cost nothing. Telephone the Park Corner museum before you drive out: its own website still shows an opening notice from the Atlantic Bubble years.

Where to stay

Kindred Spirits Inn & Cottages is the destination choice and the reason Day 1 works as a walking day — six acres on Memory Lane, next door to Green Gables, a kilometre from Cavendish Beach, with inn rooms, a gatehouse, a loft and cottages. Book both nights at once and book a month out for July and August; reservations for the following summer open on 1 October. Cavendish Motel, the Anne Shirley Motel & Cottages, Bayview Chalets and Fairways Cottages are all within a couple of kilometres if it is full. Staying in Cavendish both nights is the whole design: Day 2 is a loop, and you come back to the same bed.

Total driving

About 160 km over the two days, measured leg by leg, and lopsided. Day 1 is 4 km — Green Gables to the home site to Avonlea Village to the inn, and you could walk most of it. Day 2 is about 155 km and four hours, nearly all of it in two long legs: Park Corner to Bideford is 63 km and 70 minutes, not the 55 minutes usually quoted, and Tyne Valley back to Cavendish is 67 km and just over an hour. Everything between New London and Park Corner is a few kilometres at a time. If you add the Kensington bakery detour, make it 183 km.

Fuel & food

Fuel in Cavendish, Kensington, Summerside and Tyne Valley. The thin stretch is New London to Bideford — fill up before you leave the Cavendish–New London end.

On the trail: the Cordial Café at Green Gables or Chez Yvonne’s for breakfast — though note Chez Yvonne’s serves breakfast at weekends only, 8 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, and does not open until 11:30 on weekdays. The Lost Anchor for Day 1 lunch, the Turkey Tavern or Dave’s Lobster in Avonlea Village for dinner, Sou’West on the New London wharf for Day 2 lunch, and Backwoods Burger at Tyne Valley for the last meal. Carr’s Oyster Bar at Stanley Bridge is the one on-route stop the moved bakery left behind.

People worth knowing

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) — born New London, raised at Cavendish from twenty-one months old, licensed to teach at Prince of Wales College in 1894, a year at Dalhousie, taught at Bideford, Belmont and Lower Bedeque, published her first piece — the poem 'On Cape LeForce' — in the Charlottetown Daily Patriot in 1890, and Anne of Green Gables in June 1908. Alexander and Lucy Macneill — the grandparents who raised her; Alexander was Cavendish's postmaster, and after he died in 1898 she ran the post office out of the front parlour, which let her send manuscripts and receive rejections unobserved. Annie and John Campbell — the Park Corner aunt and uncle whose Silver Bush she was married in. Edwin Simpson — the French River divinity student she was unhappily engaged to in 1897–98.