A Peterborough Walking Tour for Old but Adventuresome Hikers

[Jason]

"I don't follow. You had phones or you didn't have phones? "

We have phones for emergencies, but not for finding our way. We have to find our way using the position of the sun, our instincts, or our luck, or a paper map we have, just as we did 40 years ago.

Gotcha'. Sorry, I'm one of those who likes to follow along as I read. When I'm reading fantasy or historical novels, I do the same thing. Maybe it's because I can't depend on the position of the sun, instincts or luck. If you can still find a paper map, they're good, though. I'm old enough to have used maps during long drives. But honestly, I'm glad we're beyond that, even if it's nice to get away from looking at a phone for a while. It's nice to listen to music while walking, obviously I mean when you're alone. It'd be downright rude to do that when you're with someone.

[buster]

Searching for Greenery, City Streets, and the Crawford Rail Trail

We hope to end today's trek where the Crawford Trail crosses Monaghan. This gives us a good place to drop a car for our planned end point, Lansdowne Place. And sadly this leaves us with only two days of the route to finish back to Trent, and it's not as if I can say, 'Let's do this again in five years.' My body does not keep up with my aspirations.

We dropped the endpoint car and headed northwest to where we had finished day 3, and it was a worrisome drive because it seemed much farther than I thought it was going to be. Houses and stores flashed by as we drove to the start which was a long way to reach.

In fact it proved to be a perfect length, and that may be the result of my slack body relearning how to walk. This was, after all, our fourth section.

As I write this I have to do something I'm not happy to do. I have to praise Bill publicly for the genius map reading skills he has that not only found, but linked in an almost continuous route parks, paths, woods, and lovely tree shaded sidewalks down towards Costco. His luck ran out when one of his adventures took us to a tall Frost Wire fence with barbed wire on the top. This was in fact a map error. And it wasn't ultimately inconvenient.

To this point of the morning, the unpleasantness was limited to a section of the Parkway with its traffic and noise, but we reached, unscathed, after walking through the Costco parking lot, The Crawford Rail Trail, and we headed east.

For those who don't know it, the trail is tidy, arrow straight, paved, and in some ways a bit boring. There is no chance for us to get lost, which is a favourite pastime for us, and people seemed in a hurry and uninclined to chat. But it did get us to my car, where we ate Bill's freshly baked sourdough bread with jam and continued our discussions about the ecological collapse of the world, or the fires, or the loss of insects, or the paucity of fish stocks in the ocean, or the possibility of the gulf stream altering, or the floods in St Catherines or Montreal.  Next walk we can discuss the incredible lack of water in the Colorado River, which we have both camped near, and the emptying of the world's aquifers, and the rapidity of the recent changes.

I have been surprised how much of the natural world you can find in a loop around our city, or maybe Bill can find. But you have to look for it. And on a path in the trees of a forest today we met a lovely lady from Birmingham England, who walks every day, and was happy to chat. With the leaves and branches over our heads we were encouraged to converse and share, but we were in a little island of the natural world, not, say, in a crowded city centre. The world is different in the world our ancestors inhabited. And they did it without phones in their pockets.

[buster]

The River, the Park, and then the Bike Path All the Way

We had finished at the eastern end of the Crawford Rail Trail, so we started today from that spot and zigzagged the streets east and south to Brinton Carpet Park which surprisingly was actually covered in grass.

But I have to comment on the neighbourhood we walked through to get to the park which was right out of a 50's movie. It was wonderful. The lots were large and tall trees could be spotted here and there in back yards. The gardens were bright. And the houses were a total mix of styles and I assume value, but all were well cared for. Probably most lots had different builders back then. Still, as a neighbourhood it had both variety and continuity. It appeared to be a set of houses where the neighbours were connected, which of course I cannot know. But to me it felt comfortable.

It seemed the opposite of the newer developments where lots are filled to the maximum with giant similar houses, and if you stand between the houses you can touch both walls. And the passersby here said hello as we met on the sidewalks, and that doesn't happen everywhere in our city. These streets are one of Peterborough's pleasant hidden places.

So we crossed Carpet Park diagonally on grass and stepped onto another trail with trees with, in this case, a river beside it. (I'd like to say it was charming, but men aren't allowed to use that expression.) But this very spot has significance for Bill and me because from somewhere near here we took off, downstream, on the first day of our long canoe trip all those years ago. We ended up camping, cooking, and sleeping in a farmer's field with cows our first night, which really wasn't much of a problem as long as you watched where you stepped. And five days later, as we canoed into Lake Ontario, we had covered the river system from Peterborough to the big lake.

Not surprisingly, we reminisced about that day forty years ago, and stared at the fast flowing water.

We did chat with a man, though not with his dog, who had lived here all his life and loved it. He told us of fishing from the shore with friends on the weekend when he was a youngster. It was obvious this area was not just where he lives. This is his home.

But we had to get to the other side of the river, and used the boat lock just south of Landsdowne to do this, climbed up the steep bank on the other side, and turned left onto Whitla, crossed at the light and walked into the grounds of the Peterborough Naval Station expecting at any moment to be surrounded by rifles.

It was silent. We walked through the mostly unused horseshoe pits, and saw an orange fence that cut us off from our destination, Beavermead Park. We did find one friendly, narrow opening and going through meant we saved a bucket of steps, rather than travelling the long way around on roads. And fortunately we found shade for walking on one side of the soccer fields, saw soccer coaches putting youngsters through vigorous drills and we also saw a friendly bench, also in the shade, that looked out over the water.

I immediately took two pain pills because of my leg, we ate two of Bill's cookies, and we talked of the time we canoed through the Lift Lock as the solitary water craft in an otherwise empty tub, and then paddled across the blue waters of Little Lake, again many years go.

Today we saw kayakers, little kids with smiling parents, people obviously born in other regions of the world, and a very large osprey. It felt as if the world isn't falling apart.

So we continued, following the Rotary Greenway Trail and it was mostly pleasant rather than exciting. We passed the Canadian Canoe Museum, which has Canoe rentals, crossed over the lock, went through Rogers Cove and headed north on streets for about three blocks and then were back on the trail. (I mention these places because readers may have been there at one time or another.)

We could have stopped for a draught at the Ashburnham Ale House, sat outside, and watched the world ride or walk by on the trail, but we still had distances to cover on old legs. Wisdom prevailed, and reluctantly we continued north, finding more and more friendly benches the farther we went. We both liked this trail, but each of us had ridden it many, many times. It was like having an old friend who is pleasant to be with, but not likely to come up with an idea we haven't heard before. Although this isn't true with Bill, who often has outlandish ideas bursting from him that no other human would dare spout.

And the car at our hike's finish was at Nicholls Oval Park, where we saw the setting up for the weekend music festival. We shared some sadness because we only had one more hike to finish to complete the loop back to Trent, and because we couldn't afford to have a music band to greet us when we arrived. This meant we had to go with plan B, which was to have my cousin May play the accordion as we took our final steps. I was a shame though that she could only play religious music.

[buster]

Before the Final Section Begins

The final walking section would have to wait a bit because other things were scheduled for the following week. Really though, neither of us was in a hurry to complete the hiking circle. And the final section would be straight and one of the shorter hikes, so not very exciting. But we would complete the circle, so the final score would be Bill and Harry 1, Magellan 0.

[ssfc72]

A very good narrative of your trail walks! Thanks Buster.

The River, the Park, and then the Bike Path All the Way

We had finished at the eastern end of the Crawford Rail Trail, so we started today from that spot and zigzagged the streets east and south to Brinton Carpet Park which surprisingly was actually covered in grass.

[buster]

Still one section to go Bill. Maybe Monday or Tuesday.

[buster]

Linking to the start. The final five kilometres

We started our walk today wearing jackets because of slightly cooler weather. And at least for me, there was a sense of melancholy that matched the partially cloudy sky, and the clouds weren't the puffy white ones we watched as kids as they changed shape. We would reach our forty kilometre mark, link up with the beginning, and be quite certain our circle route was done. This would be not an accomplishment, but an end.

Our long lives are littered with endings, especially when you're ancient like me, and it's good to walk with Bill who has a much more optimistic view. He always sees beginnings.

So we began our final day with smiles, heading north on the bike path that goes from Nicholls Oval Park to Trent University. And we did meet others on the trail, and we saw friendliness and smiles, a product I think of being outdoors in a sort of natural environment.

All the drama, surprises, and ponds were used up on the first five days, but it was, while quiet, pleasant to be strolling along with talk of other times, enjoying the end of the summer. And the river was beside the trail as were the gulls and the geese.

There is a bridge that crosses the river, and this route joins with Hilliard, and it goes up steep inclines to the area where Marilyn and I live. This bridge I have crossed many times, but the most dramatic crossing occurred about half a century ago. At that time the police used to auction bicycles for really good prices that they had accumulated, and so a bid of maybe $20 would get you a usable bike, and that's what our children had for years.

Back in those days we simply left our bikes leaning against the house, not worried about theft. But one time our daughter's bike disappeared, a cheap full sized racer, and we never saw it again until one day as I walked across this bridge I saw it at the bottom of the river, resplendent with its ugly brown frame. Retrieving it seemed dangerous and decidedly not worth it. But I saw on later trips that it had gone somewhere, but not back to our house.

Anyway, Bill and I spent some time on the bridge, admiring the river and trees.  The weather edged itself to pleasant, and then we resumed our northern walk.

About where the path goes by Thomas A Stewart we found we could spend some time to the left of the path, and we kidded ourselves this route was a little less civilized, ignoring that the grass had been cut. Jackson Park it was not, but we were at least away from people for a bit and that's usually refreshing.

We stopped at a friendly bench that had been paid for by some acquaintances of ours and ate the two plumbs Bill had brought. When you're covering ground, in a canoe, biking, or hiking, eating takes on an aura of ritual, so we were a bit quieter. We were outside, there was a tall Spruce and an even taller Red Pine, and our falling apart world felt almost sane.

And if you know the trail, you know it crosses a road, and we decided to leave the path and stay on the road because it hugs the river, and a river is often more interesting than trees and grass, which it proved to be.

On the first day of our hike on the other side of we river, we had gone out onto the island at the zoo. We had that human-less green world to ourselves, and enjoyed the almost natural conditions of trees and water, but with a civilizing touch of a bench. We sat and I don't think we talked much in the silence. And at that point we had still about thirty-five kilometres to go, most of it uphill if I remember correctly.

From where we stopped on today's walk, we could see the same island on the river's other side. I measured it on a computer map when we finished today. At that point of today's hike we had only one and a quarter kilometres to go to the car. (I wished we had ten more days of hiking left.) But the island I suppose will always be a symbol of beginnings now in my mind, whatever that means at my age.

It was lucky that the conversation was good for the final 1.25 k, because the trail has left nothing stuck in my mind. But the coffee was good at Tims, as was the chat. And we agree that this didn't match our canoeing of the Trent Severn system, or later the canoeing of the Rideau canal, but it was pretty good for old guys.

Summing Up

It's worth noting that millions of people travel thousands of expensive miles to visit quite amazing places. And that is completely understandable. But none of this circle route that the two of us enjoyed was ever more than 9 kilometres from my house, and many of the things we experienced were new to me, especially some of the things that fellow traveller Bill found for day 4.

We met someone from Poland, and someone from England, and a variety of people from Peterborough, each seeming to be unique. Smiling faces were the norm, and I attribute this to being outside in greenery, and walking. The mother duck, the frog, the osprey, and the people looking the other way may very well have been smiling too, but of this I can't be sure. I do know the little ones pulling their parents towards the train at the zoo were on the edge of laughing.

And finally, I am certain that being outside and walking in the trees is something I'll continue doing until my legs fold under me.

[Jason]

Thanks for sharing your adventures, Harry. I enjoyed them.

If you ever do this again- and I know you said you probably won't- I would love to join you guys. Contrary to popular belief, I can walk. I walk several times a week to and from Lansdowne Place, which takes 45 minutes both ways at my brisk walking pace. I do get tired from it, but I've also walked downtown sometimes or from the hospital, which are one-hour walks from my place. I only look out of shape. Okay, I'm still out of shape, but I can do walks if the heat isn't too bad.

[fox]

I don't know how I could have missed this fine adventure, until now. Way to go, Harry! I have walked and cycled along most of this route at different times, but you made this a noteworthy adventure, and a good story!

At the end of September I will be doing a little adventure of my own, with two old friends. This one will be on bicycle; a slight modification of the Simcoe County Trail. It will be 200 km in four days; overnighting a B&Bs and motels. So an average of 50 km/day for a guy that hasn't done more than 25 all season! I'm not quite as old as you, Harry, but I'm no spring chicken either. I expect this to be quite a challenge and like you, I look forward to enjoying the mostly natural scenery.

[buster]

Good to see your name again Mike. Your trip sounds great. I'm assuming your daughter is still doing long hiking adventures.

You and I know that human powered long trips 'out there' are astonishing, especially when the environment lacks humans.

You are a youngster Mike. If I could miraculously live 13 more short years, I would have been on the planet for a century. And the aging is more pronounced each year.

Takes me forever now to get through a bottle of Irish Whisky.