The Devil's Punch Bowl

Check out the trees across the river!!!

IT was a wild and stormy night... 

Black Horse corner

To be honest it was daylight, but the fiercest wind I have yet to encounter while riding PEI.

I was on my trusty Yamaha Serow 225, sticking as much to treed country as possible.  The wind was out of the south and as such pretty warm and humid, we'd had sporadic rain during the previous night. 

I'd estimate gusts near 80-100 kph and steady winds well over 50k.  The little trail bike (weight 238lbs) and it's pilot, moi (weight 150lb) were nearly blown clear off the road at times when I was transiting forested roads to open highway.  I rode sideways whenever I was caught in the open heading east or west.  The odd time I was pointing north, the 223cc motor breathed a lot easier, just the opposite of riding into the teeth of the storm, when I couldn't pull fifth gear much less sixth!

Oyster fishermen on Long River.

What I was doing was riding some more familiar terrain and ambling down various forest trails.  Many places are off limits posted private or of course a farm lane will carry you into a corn/potato/hay field, or as it happened to me on one occasion, after traveling a dense wooded trail, I came out into a brand new subdivision with huge homes on acreages.


THERE is virtually no traffic when I ride like this, but today I was surprised by first coming across a road grader on a trail that is as rough as anything I have encountered yet on the Island, really nothing more than a winter snowmobile trail, with the occasional seasonal woodcutter in with his 4X4. 



I had a chat with the operator, who looked like he should have retired some years ago... turns out every so often, someone will put in a request and highways will send out a grader to smooth the lumps, which is what he was doing.  Last time I was here in the spring, there were ruts 2 feet deep made by some timber clearing equipment.  Oh... the first 18 inches of the rut was actually water filled and slick as proverbial goose poop!

Later I came across an old Oldsmobile on a rutted clay road, taking up the entire lane.  I had to pull right off the road onto the graded bank to escape that beast!

Steeper than it looks!

I rode around in the woods for nearly three hours.  Dead ends mostly but I did find a trail that again, was signed for S/M usage.  It was gnarly, steep and rough with lots of moss covering tree roots and boulders.  If I didn't know better I could have sworn I took a wrong turn and was somewhere in the Rockies.  Of course here on the Island, you're never far from a paved road and shortly there is was.

Now what's this?

It was so much fun riding up that trail in second gear, I turned right back round and went the other way!
While on this trail a thought occured to me... there can't be too many sixty year old's, standing straight up on the cleated metal footpegs of a street legal dirt bike bouncing along on a wooded trail or for that matter, an Arizona desert track!



I came across a sign telling of the mysterious "Devil's Punchbowl" and how that story came to be.


Seems like a Mr. John Hawkins, while carrying a load of supplies lashed to his ox cart, from Charlottetown destined for Black Horse corner and ultimately to the Black Horse Tavern, was assailed by none other than the Devil hisself  !!!  Such was his fear that when the Prince of Darkness * commanded him to 'cut down that barrel of rum' Hawkins did so, without question.  The rum barrel proceeded to careen down into the abyss, the devil in hot pursuit, laughing a hideous laugh!

The abyss, Devil's Punch Bowl

WHEN eventually Hawkins arrived after walking many miles, to the tavern... empty handed of course, no doubt fortified by some ale to calm his jangled


nerves, he convinced a rather skeptic group to return  to the scene only to find the remains of the Ox cart smashed into unrecognizable pieces.  Among the debris they also found tiny hoof-prints and shortly thereafter smelled the odor of rum and sulpher!

This is where I like to be on a weekend

While peering into the void, they heard the clinking of glasses and the voice of the devil...

"Drink up me hearties for the drinks are on John Hawkins... who be standin' outside the pit now, with a bunch of his cronies!"

Needless to say, Hawkins and his former disbelievers made haste in the opposite direction.

Now I stood there and even leaned well over the cliff, the sounds of silence loud in my ear.  I listened and listened but I could hear nothing.  But then I heard a single 'tink, then another 'tink! I listened even closer... only to realize that was my motor cooling after it's long climb.

It was not a glass tinkling nor a Devil laughing.

Of course... that doesn't mean that is isn't true, me hearties!

* No... not Joe Lucas