Ile Madame Power Walk

July 21^st

We were up for a good hike so when asked if we would like to join the local walking club for an outing we said yes. It turned out to be quite an eye opener. We thought we would be hiking with a bunch of slow older hikers. Turns out we were the slow old hikers! Although both Anne and I are in good shape and walk/run on a regular basis, this group had us beat. When they whipped out their hiking poles, we thought it might be for balance. Turns out these 'batons' actually propel them forward and make their stride much more effective. We could hardly keep up. I finally had to do some jogging to keep up.

That was easier for me anyway. We both tried the batons for part of our journey. We felt quite inept with the strange poles in our hand. But we kept at it and felt a little better after about an hour of training. However, we ended up returning the poles and continued our fast walk/jog.

The place we went hiking was called Ile Madame. To access the island you have to wait till low tide when a path appears and you can walk across, bike across or drive across. The island is small and there is only one inhabitant. They do have a small industry on the island called Agricole. They make use of the sea to grow seafood like oysters and clams in some small ponds. There is also a small fort built in the 1700's to explore.
But the most interesting thing to see are all the fishing shanties on the shore that are mounted on stilts. Be sure to note the time of high tide or you will be stuck on the island for much longer than you intended! Not fun unless you want to walk around the island several more times. There's not much else to do.

We returned before high tide and walked a little longer on the shore line of the mainland. There was a neat little tidal swimming pool with a sandy beach. It even had a life guard!

Public toitlettes are few and far between. It's usually with good reason because most of them you wouldn't want to visit. So if you need to go, be sure and pack TP or do what I did. We passed a camp ground on the way back to the car. I just marched right in the front gate like I was a camper returning from my hike and used their facilities! It was a rather nice facility I must say – and very welcome after 3 hours on the trail!

Happy trails!

Here is a link to see the island. I'm not sure you can translate the page or not.

http://www.ilemadame.com/index.htm