Walks around Green Gables are delightful. Visitors can wander down "Lovers Lane" and explore the haunted wood. It isn't just the wooded lanes, or the wild plants and flowers, or the little babbling brooks crossed by wooden bridges, it is the whole atmosphere of the place. Green gables and its surrounding fields and woods, in common with millions of other readers all over the world, has been in my mind and imagination for years.
I can only describe my walks around the house, across fields and woods, to be thoroughly delightful. It was not exactly "deja vue" but something very near to it. One thing which struck us forcibly was the way in which the landscape in the area could be part of England. I felt I could take a favourite country walk in Essex, where I live, and move into the landscape around Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, easily.
No wonder I was confused over the location of L M Montgomery's books, when I read them as a child. Our time there was all too short. Because we wandered around "Parks Canada" Green Gables Heritage Place, there was no time to browse round the shop, so it was just as well we had already visited the one in Charlottetown. The lanes and woods around this Canadian "Heritage Place" offer a few kilometers of attractive walking. Apart from the sheer enjoyment of being in a world renowned "literary landscape", this Heritage Place is a prime example of how to offer visitors an experience which will exceed their expectations and bring them back again and again. It is hard to believe it is the other side of the world!
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