The Passionate Hiker: The Blue Yonder

Sun. 30 July: The Blue Yonder

On the Blue Trails today

Note: click on pictures for full size view.

Two blue loops in one busy day! Now I only have one blue loop to go.

These Rideau Trail side trails, marked with a blue triangle, have been a focus for me this year. Now I’m close to having hiked every one of them. Today, a colleague and I walked over twenty kilometres – and rode an Ottawa city bus!

Our first hike required some logistical planning. This blue trail starts in the middle of the Ottawa greenbelt, and so we had to access the trailhead from the main Rideau Trail. Our start was a shopping mall parking lot on a busy city road (Robertson Rd.) but we were immediately swallowed up in the woodlands that surround the city. The trail had some muddy wet patches at the start, a reflection of this rainy summer.

The so-called Bells Corners blue trail heads generally northeast for eight kilometres, skirting residential areas, crossing over the busy four-lane Toronto-Ottawa highway, with one nice viewpoint across to the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills beyond. Down in the fields below us, people were busy picking strawberries. The path was quiet, with the occasional bikers or dog walkers passing by.

A short walk from the end of the trail at Holly Acres Road brought us to the futuristic Bayshore bus station, although most of the buses arriving at the station seemed to have “Out of Service” on their signs. Bus 97 took a scenic route across the western neighborhoods of Ottawa, bringing us back to our car.

It was just a short drive to the trailhead for our next hike. The Lime Kiln loop is a roughly circular walk of nine kilometres. We soon reached the ruined lime kiln, over a hundred years old, which gave the trail its name. The path wandered through an area of new growth forest, which was burned in a fire five years ago, and through pleasant woodland and swamp landscape. The well-marked trail, mostly a wide forest pathway, was quite dry, with just a few wet patches. We saw very few people, but plenty of mosquitos.

It was hard to believe that we were within the capital city of Canada. Distant traffic could occasionally be heard, but our journey took us along enchanting woodland pathways for kilometre after kilometre. We may have been in a city of over a million people, but it felt more like the blue yonder to us.