The Passionate Hiker: Echoes of the Past

Fri. 15 September: Echoes of the Past

It's that time of year again

Note: click on pictures for full size view.

You can never have too much of a good thing – so they say. And so, early today, I was back in Tichborne, heading south on the K&P Trail on my bike. It was a familiar journey through the woods, beside lakes and swamps, across green fields, past farms. I turned around at Godfrey, a wide spot along Highway 38 at the Westport Road junction, where there’s a gas station and general store.

Returning northwards, I noticed a twisted rusty metal post beside the trail, with a diamond shaped top which had a faded capital W marked on it. Perhaps many passers-by would not even notice it. But here was an echo of the past: this sign indicated to the engine-drivers of the steam trains that they should blow their whistle. Somehow, while all other traces of the old railway line had long since been swept away, this one sign had survived. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to hear the sound of the train whistle carrying across the fields.

I had seen no other people on my travels today, apart from a speeding quad driver who came round the corner at top speed and had to slam on his brakes, before disappearing ahead of me in a cloud of dust. Sorry, but I’m not a fan of speeding ATV’s on a joint-use trail. But nearing Fish Creek, I met a man on a bike. I asked him where he was heading. He replied, to my surprise, that he had started off in Kingston in the early morning mist, and was about to return there, a round trip of 120 km or more. Judging by the speed with which he accelerated away, he’d be home by early afternoon.

Biking at my own steady pace, I caught a heron unaware (not easy to do) as it sat beside a lake. It quickly took off across the water. I watched a small turtle cross the trail and hide in the grass, and I followed a colorful green frog hopping into the ditch. In no hurry, I stopped for lunch on a slab of rock beside Fish Creek – a tiny tumbling stream.

Continuing north past Tichborne, I followed the route of the old K&P line north from Bradshaw Road to see if any progress had been made yet on the new trail. It still lay untouched, a forgotten, enchanted pathway through the woods, leading to the flooded section which last time I had christened “the canal”.

Beside the line, hidden in the trees, were the old telegraph poles, many still with their glass insulators on them. I hadn’t noticed them before. Here was another echo of the past. I enjoyed the challenge of finding each post, well camouflaged by the woods which had grown up along the route since the closing of the railway decades ago.

There’s always something new to discover, if you give yourself time to find it.