Three Friends Journey Around Entire Perimeter of Block Island

Three Friends Journey Around Entire Perimeter of Block Island

Sandra Stavola is a self-described “big Block Island fan.”

So much so, Stavola decided that she would walk the entire perimeter along the shoreline. 

“It was much harder than I thought it was going to be,” laughed Stavola, in an interview with GoLocal. “And I’ve walked a lot of the island.”

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For Stavola, her original intent to make the approximately 17-mile journey for her 60th birthday last year got waylaid. 

Then she regrouped and came up with another plan, and accomplished her mission this year on September 27, one day before she turned 61. 

According to Stavola, the trek "took about ten hours" plus breaks. 

“The east side of the island where the tourists go, that’s really easy walking,” said Stavola, who made the journey with friends. “But any part of the island I’d walked before, it was pretty much all rocks.”

 

Setting a Goal

“I really just love the island,” Stavola told GoLocal. “During COVID, I started walking a lot. I would walk sometimes 12 miles a day, so I just figured hey, walking around the perimeter of Block Island would be pretty cool.”

Stavola, who said she had seen that other people had done it, wanted to do it for her milestone birthday.

“But the friend I was supposed to do it with — she’s much younger than me — she got pregnant,” laughed Stavola. “So I thought it might not happen, but I had another friend who was interested in doing it with me. And then I talked with my massage therapist about it a lot, and she said maybe I’ll do it with you. She ended up coming.”

And with that, Stavola's friends David and Shea were on board for the day-long mission, completed one day before Stavola’s 61st birthday. 

"Three people brought together by fate, and a common cause," said Stavola, who is a Connecticut resident and "regularly" visits the Rhode Island destination year-round. 

“I’d seen one post from someone who did it and I thought, hey I’m in pretty good shape. I felt if he could do it, I could,” said Stavola. “I had a few people tell me they didn’t think I could do it.”

“I will say this. It was very very rough terrain,” said Stavola. “I’m an engineer by trade, so I put a lot of thought into it. I checked the tide, obviously, sunrise and sunset...we started at first light, about a half hour before sunrise. We started at 6:12 in the morning.”

 

On — and Off — the Rocks

According to Stavola, the group had a plan to tackle the most difficult portions first — and enlist support. 

“We had a friend — Frank — who met us to bring us lunch, to minimize what we carried,” said Stavola. “We pretty much started out with a water bottle for each of us, then he refreshed our water and brought us lunch." 

“We started at Coast Guard beach and headed south, so we knew we were getting the rocky part out of the way at the beginning. We were glad that we did that, because we said after if we were nine miles in and hit that, we probably would have quit,” said Stavola. “We got through the rocky part, and our first real stop was at Ballard’s — where we got some non-alcoholic beverages. It was nice to have an iced tea.”

Stavola said there were a few surprises along the way. 

“We’d felt a little nauseous. When Frank brought us sandwiches, I had a half and couldn’t really stomach much more than that,” said Stavola. “I managed to eat the rest of the course of the day, but it was tough."

And soon the group of three became four, as Stavola's friend Marina then joined the crew at approximately nine-mile mark.

When asked if she would have done anything differently in retrospect, Stavola shared one regret in particular. 

“We walked about it a lot — footwear was definitely a topic of conversation,” laughed Stavola. “Typically when I walk on the beach, I do it either barefoot or flip flops. I started in flip flops and brought sneakers with me, which I was going to change into…but I didn’t until we stopped at Ballard’s, and that wasn’t my smartest move. I would advise proper footwear.”

Stavola said the group had hoped to find some local treasures along the way, but that did not end up happening. 

“We were looking for glass floats a lot,” said Stavola. “I thought maybe we’d see a couple of them in more remote places on the island, but we came up empty-handed. I will say at one point we stopped looking in our determination to finish.”

For Stavola, who counts the Darius Inn as one of her favorite places to stay on the island, she is glad she completed the journey when she did. 

“I told a couple of people I wouldn’t want to be any older than I am now…I wouldn’t have wanted to wait until I was 65 or something!” she laughed.