It had been four months since our last hike – the muggy and buggy one in July. Work, family, travel – all busy schedules for both of us that had refused to synchronize until now. To make up for the lapse we decided to cover 15 km of Bruce Trail. The day was perfect, cool and clear but not too cold. We even got off to an early start. I left Jack at home as I felt that 15km would be too much for my senior Labrador and Kim left her dogs for the same reason. But I did bring Coco, my 6.6kg warrior princess. Light on her feet and with boundless energy, she proved that 15km “ain’t no thing”!

We started out in a roadside parking spot on Quarry Road just south of Beamsville. There was only space for 2 or 3 vehicles here, yet at the end of our last hike and the start of this one, we were the only ones there. In fact along the entire 15 km of our hike this day, we encountered no one else on the trail. And we were off!

For the first 5 km the trail stayed along the edge of the Escarpment. Happy to be hiking we enjoyed the walking, the motion of forward progress. There was no need for heavy talk, in fact for some time we left the rest of our lives behind. There is something so simple about solid ground, cool air and a path to follow. And for Kim and I, the sharing of this purpose is refreshing, relieving and somehow feels like home. I suppose since we grew up together, sharing space and time will always feel like a homecoming for us. And in the solitude of nature, we can feel 10 years old again, like none of those other things ever happened.

In some places, the Bruce Trail is definitely the road less travelled. Thank goodness for the white blazes so that we can find our way. And sometimes we miss these! Look at the trail in the following picture. It is only the absence of moss that is telling.

At one point, the trail opened up into a park. It is an interesting perspective to enter a park through its back door. Signs are placed with the assumption that everyone is driving in through the front entrance. We had no idea where we were. Since then I have looked at a Bruce Trail map and know that we had come upon “Kinsmen Community Park”. Now that tells all!

Somewhere south of Beamsville we came down off of the Escarpment to the back of a large property that was, or had been, a Christmas tree farm. High fencing was clearly marked to keep out trespassers, yet where the trail crossed their property they had placed a bench for weary travellers!

We were about to find an even better place to rest. The trail entered a winery, through the back of course. There seemed to be no one around so we looked around for a place to eat some lunch. On the outdoor patio, with the most fantastic view of the Niagara valley, Lake Ontario and the Toronto skyline, there was a single table and chairs. In true Goldilocks fashion, we enjoyed lunch at the winery! At least the food we brought was our own.

As we left the winery, we exited through the entrance of course. The small sign read “East Den Winery”. I can not find this online anywhere. It sits off Mountainview Road between Fielding Estates and The Organized Crime Winery. You must be small and not yet online – thank you for the lunch spot East Den! This more prominent sign was to the south as we walked out the lane (later I found out it was Locust Lane). Because of this sign I was able to figure out our location later on.

We crossed Mountainview Rd and entered the Mountainview Conservation Area where the trail once again became one with nature. Can you see it?

And somewhere in here we came to Thirty Mile Creek as it cascaded over the escarpment. Just us – two girls (ladies/middle-aged women – is that what happened??) a dog and a beautiful waterfall with no one else in sight. Thanks for the sign Bruce Trail Association. It’s good to know that someone else has defined this spot on what is not the beaten path.

We became lost on this hike missing a left handed turn. It’s easy to do in the less travelled areas. Especially when we are talking! Eventually you realize that you haven’t seen a white trail marker for awhile and your attention shifts from the conversation to the world around you. The picture below is what suggested to us that we had made a very wrong turn…. we could not come up with any explanation for the intention of this “tree house”. Adults now, we didn’t turn about face and run, but we certainly didn’t linger!

Here is the turn that we missed. 90 degrees to the left at the T-Bar. WTF!?

There are distances along the trail where we walk along roads. This must be because private landowners have not given permission for the trail, and thus hikers, to cross their properties. For Kim and me, gentle hikers who are working through some of the big potatoes of life, this protectionist attitude seems wrong and somehow small minded. But then Kim was able to give me an example of a home on a popular portion of the trail in Dundas where visitors overstepped boundaries and trespassed, even peering in the windows of the private home. Unfortunate that these trespassers ruin it for the rest of us. Here is a property that we had to use the road to walk around. It clearly screams “Keep Out!”

Some have the opposite approach – inviting. Their signs keep you focused on the trail and the rests stops show their generosity. You feel welcome and not uncomfortable as you walk through their properties. I don’t know if a land owner will ever read this, but Thank You.

This one was fun – but we didn’t actually sit down on it!

We had decided to do 15 km today which is a bit more of a push than previous hikes. I can honestly say that at this point I was starting to feel tired. There is a lot of up and down – up the escarpment and the down the escarpment. It’s like a very long, irregular staircase that repeats and repeats. I watched Kim trot lightly down this rocky staircase ahead of me and I thought of resilience. She has always been resilient. For over three years now she has been raising three teenage girls on her own since she lost Brett. There have been challenges one after another, yet she always remains positive and she never misses an opportunity to be available for her girls. Resilience. That’s what it takes to keep going after loss because grief is not a day, a month, a year. It’s a lifetime.

This is our destination today – Grimsby. It is a town that I had only thought of as an extension of Hamilton off of the QEW. Now I see it as a quaint historic village nestled into the base of the escarpment. What a view today. Straight across the lake to Toronto.

And we did it – 15.4 km from Beamsville to Grimsby. Today also marked the completion of the Niagara section of the Bruce Trail. That is a total of 80.4km that we did in 8 hikes over an 18 month period. I even ordered us the badges to show it! We both have hopes of moving along the trail a little faster, but that isn’t really the point of all this, is it?