Breakfast at Owen House is a single sitting at 8:30am with a wake-up call at 8:00am in case any guest might oversleep and inconvenience the staff....it is an odd sort of place! The staff are friendly and the rooms comfortable (if way over chintzed!) but the manager doesn't quite have the social skills to make it a truly comfortable place and we suspect that she's not too easy to work for! However breakfast was hearty as ever and well-sustained we set off in drizzle to the Information Office to pick up some trail guides: a bit of drizzle wasn't going to put us off walking.

We planned a 12km route linking up trails around the Southern end of the island, all in the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. The Park preserves the house and surrounding landscape of the Roosevelt family summer retreat: the tourist officer thought we were mad declining a visit to the Roosevelt Cottage and Visitor Centre in favour of a hike. Not caring what she thought, we set off wearing full waterproof gear as the drizzle was getting more like heavy rain.

The walking was easy enough, on gravel roads to begin with and then on clear tracks through woodland, some boggy patches but with excellent boardwalks with gripper strips so no risk of slipping and falling over today. We had great views out over coves and the place virtually to ourselves. We didn't see any other walkers all day but did meet a couple from Maine who were driving around Campobello for the day who we chatted to for a while. The friendliness of Canadians clearly extends to Down-east Americans as Rick and Jane left us saying if we visit Stonington (which is near where we'll be staying) we should look up Rick's boat building yard and he'd give us a tour!

By mid-afternoon the weather started to improve and we were able to shed waterproofs. The path took us out onto a shingle beach edge and we enjoyed the open walking after being in woodland for most of the morning. However our enjoyment of the new terrain begun to wane when there wasn't any clear path over a rocky outcrop at the end of the beach and round into the next cove. We scrambled through following an arrow chalked on a rock and made it onto the next beach without too much trouble.

We were now though beginning to doubt that our path was really on the beach, especially as at high-tide this would be virtually impossible: fortunately for us the tide was on the way out. We trudged on for a while, Jill put one foot in an innocent looking pile of seaweed only to discover that it was a deep, fermenting, soggy, smelly, quagmire, but we managed to find a path where the map suggested it should be. Our doubts though about the exact location of the path were heightened when we come to a wide marshy edge to the beach. We explored, read crashed a path, through the woodland for about fifty metres thinking that if there was a track that we should be on rather than the beach then we should be able to find it quite close by: there wasn't one so rather than ploughing deeper into the forest we made our way back to the marsh. To retrace our steps to where we knew there was a track back would be a huge distance and as we already had damp feet we decided to find a way round/through the damp ground as best we could: we could see there wasn't really very far to go before we'd reach a gravel road. This wasn't such a bad decision, the odd challenge of streams to cross but not so hard: Dave said OMM training! Back at Owen House later in the evening we asked about this part of the trail and learnt that the path does run along the beach edge so we had been right in our path choice but surprised that this stretch was so unclear when all of the other paths had been so clear and well-signed.

We had a short drive to see the views at Mulholland Point: Mulholland Lighthouse; the FDR International Bridge that links Campobello Island to Maine, USA; seals feeding and bobbing about in the water seemingly oblivious to the rushing tide; and the amazing rushing departing waters. The Bay of Fundy has the highest vertical tidal range in the world and at certain points in the tides the flow of water is very dramatic. There is a famous tidal whirlpool off Deer Island that can be seen three hours before high tide, we had been disappointed to miss this when we'd crossed from Deer Island yesterday so it was a bonus to catch the surging tidal outflow at Mulholland Point where the tide flows out through a narrow channel. Not quite a whirlpool but spectacular nonetheless.

The late afternoon weather continued to improve as we drove to the other end of the island to see Head Harbour Light Station - also know as East Quoddy Lighthouse. This wooden lighthouse with a distinctive St. George red cross daymark is the oldest surviving lighthouse in New Brunswick and one of the oldest in Canada. It's only possible to cross out to this lighthouse for a couple of hours around low tide and we'd arrived in perfect time to make the crossing. This is only a short distance but is up and down a series of steep iron staircases over rocky outcrops, one so steep and long that Jill knew the only way to tackle it was backwards: another couple of visitors decided to turn back at that point. Taking a breather mid-route we were treated to seeing a minke whale swimming round the headland. Minkes are quick moving creatures that don't spend long on the surface so it is amazing that Dave has the evidence of this sighting on his camera, albeit you'll have to take our word for it that the blurred photo of a dorsal fin is that of a minke! We had the lighthouse to ourselves - not much to explore for the effort of getting there and it started to rain again: great..... but hold the sarcasm! It really was great as the sun was still shining and we had the wonderful sight of a double rainbow arc running right behind the lighthouse. Dave has prize-worthy photos as a result!

Then a quick change into clean clothes and off to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Family Fisheries is another of these Fundy Isles no nonsense take-aways with simple cafes attached. Dave ordered the lobster dinner and Jill, based on fish dinners elsewhere the two-piece haddock dinner. Both meals were huge, Jill really should have had the one-piece dinner, but Dave's meal was simply enormous. His plate of chips would have fed four greedy people quite easily and his lobster, well you'd better look at the photo of Dave and "Maurice" (he just looked like a Maurice!) and see for yourselves. A TripAdvisor report states that it is "nothing fancy but first rate". We'd add that the portions are huge, and amazing value - Dave's 2lb+ lobster cost about £10.

Back at Owen House we decided to have a quick look through some of the books and pamphlets on the history of Owen House which is the oldest building on the island. Admiral William Fitzwilliam Owen, the son of a Welsh Captain was granted Campobello Island in 1769 (for services rendered, seems difficult to our modern world to understand that land was granted to senior servicemen to reward/recompense them for their service) and built Owen House in 1835. The Owen family ran the island of Campobello as a feudal estate for nearly a century. The house has always been run as an Inn and still has most of the original construction, furniture from the 1800's, quilts and fireplaces. In our room the age and history of the house were all too evident. The floor sloped uphill fairly significantly towards the bathroom such that it was a bit of a challenge heading to the bathroom in a sleepy middle of the night visit: heaven knows how you'd cope if a little drunk!