Hiking The Avon Trail: Hike Three

   Yesterday,  I managed to get in my third hike on the Avon Trail, in an attempt to get the end-to-ender done this summer.
   My lovely and angelic wife, Doralyn, agreed to travel with me in an hour-long convoy to a spot on Line 110, just east of Stratford. We then parked my car there and Doralyn drove through the country sideroads til we reached the starting point of the day's journey, where she dropped me off or, as she likes to describe it, "left him somewhere in the woods"!
   My journey started at the 30.7K marker of the trail and would take me on to the 48.8K point, by the time I was done. It was a pretty good day for hiking, cool and not too sunny. I found myself encountering all sorts of different terrain today, as you'll be able to see from the pics! Wherein I walked the walk!

My starting point today at the Ironwood Section//Bimini Loop. It's a little bit of a sidetrail
but is also part off the Main Trail and so had to be done. Very pretty in there!

Doing the Bimini Loop, named, I believe, after the nearby Bimini Church Camp.
Or maybe vice-versa....

Yet another stile to climb. And more to come later on!

Across the road from the Bimini Loop and back onto the main trail.

A very slow-moving creek with a very slow-moving carp in it.

Downstream (upstream?) view of the Line 20 bridge.

The farmer's bridge over the creek

How I got over the electrified (maybe) fence!

A sea of periwinkles (look close!) One of the prettiest sections
of any trail I've been in the last two years!

Beautiful in an entirely different sort of way and indicative of the
different types of terrain I encountered today.

View from a creek bridge

Long-deserted deer stand

Out of the woods and on to.......some road somewhere

Took the worst possible pic of a pretty little village called Harmony

Off the road and back into the fields. This section was about the least-fun of
a section I've ever been on. It was about half a kilometer of thigh-high
wet weeds with almost no actual "trail". Soaking wet after this!

Back onto the roadway

And back into the fields. A very long farmer's track, leading to
those woods way off in the distance.

Bridge Over Untroubled Waters

Trail through a very long and narrow tree "copse" between two fields. I learned a new word today!

Whaddya know?! A BENCH! Yay! And there were more!

Gotta love train track pics!

Approaching Highway 7. A short jaunt along the highway......

....and I turn north on Road 110 to get back to my car! Yes! Whew!

How far I went and how long it took me.

Hiking The Avon Trail: Hike Two

   This past Monday, I set out on the second portion of my end-to-end Avon Trail hike.
   I have moved on to Map 2 of the Avon Trail guide but was only able to complete approximately a 10K portion of it. This was due to it being necessary to hike that portion and then walk almost the same distance back to where my car was parked. 
   I set out much earlier in the day than my last outing and this removed that nasty feeling that that I was potentially going to end up in a forest in the dark. I'm not particularly afraid of the dark but my navigational skills are somewhat suspect, even in daylight.
   This was not to say that I didn't have a couple pf panicky moments, anyways.
   Fairly early on, I discovered that I had actually lost my map! Of all things! It was in a plastic sleeve in my pocket and I had already had it out a few times when I discovered it missing. Fortunately, I knew that I had looked at it not that long ago and so I began to retrace my steps. In about a quarter of a kilometer, I found it lying beside the trail and heaved a sigh of relief.
   That panicky moment was nothing compared to the next one. At about 8K in, I stopped to double-check, for some reason, where my car keys were. They were not where I thought I had left them, in my waist pouch. A feverish search did not produce them. It was only after I forced myself to calm down and be a little more methodical, that they showed up, albeit in a different section of my waist pouch than I remembered putting them in. Another sigh of relief!
   Eventually I reached the part of the trail I had picked as my end point. This meant a 10K hike on the trail and round about another 8K (because I could just follow the highway) back to where I had parked my car. 
   Walking back to my car was a bit of a soul-sucking experience. I was pretty well exhausted at that point and the thought of having to put that much mileage on my old, tired legs simply just to get back to my vehicle did not sit well. If those miles had been towards completing more of the trail then, psychologically, it would have been way more uplifting!
   At any rate, I am now 30K into my 113K journey and am working on the logistics for the next section. In the meantime, here's a photo dump to prove that I walked the walk!

A coupla hundred yards in...

Out  into the open

Narrow stretch of woodland

Along the farmer's field

Reaching Line 33

Pretty scenic on Line 33

Passing the Tavistock Rod and Gun Club

Off Line 33 and back into the forest

One of the two stiles which needed to be traversed on this section. The Avon Trail
people really have no idea of my capabilities. There should be a sign there
which says "At this point, seniors must turn back!" lol
(PS They were a piece of cake...)

The fabric electrified fence. I had read about this in the guide book and was
not really looking forward to it. As I stood there, trying to figure out the best way to pass,
it became obvious that people were simply walking around it, through an opening
in the wire fence just after that post with the white blazes. Whew!

There were literally trilliums of these things!

Trout Creek, we meet again!

Out on to Perth Oxford Road, on my way to.....

...Fairview!

Camp Bimini, a United Church camp. I stopped right after this, at
the Bimini Loop, sort of a side trail. Started walking back at this point.

The smiling face belies the VERY tired legs at this point. To top it
all off, am pretty sure the manure in the fields was starting to go bad....

Had never seen one of these before, seemed like a collection
of stones from a nearby plowed field

At this point, I am back in my car, headed home. This seemed like the place for me!

Hiking The Avon Trail: Hike One

   Yesterday, I set out to begin this summer's end-to-end Avon Trail adventure!
   The Avon Trail starts in St. Marys and runs northeast for 111 kilometers, until it finishes up in Conestogo. It provides a trail link between the Thames Valley Trail (which I hiked end-to-end last summer) and the Grand Valley Trail.
   Yesterday's plan was for Doralyn and I to drive our vehicles to where I hoped to hike to, drop off my car there, and for Doralyn to drive me to the start point, in St. Mary's. I had picked a drop-off point that was about 18K from the start. The Avon Trail provides you with maps and directions and they have all the access points marked off. Yesterday's Map 1 would have involved a 20.5K hike and I wasn't sure if I was up to hiking that far this early in the season.
   The first problem we ran into was actually being able to access that 18K parking area. We started out driving Highway 2 headed east, looking for Line 29, going north, which would have taken us to that access point. Well, about halfway up Line 29, we discovered it was closed for an emergency. This necessitated head farther east, to Line 31, which then took us north to the 2o.5K access point. So, I was going to be doing a 20.5K hike whether I felt I was ready or not!
   We left my car there and Doralyn drove me back to St. Marys. We parked at the tennis courts and I found the commemorative marker which marks the end of the Thames Valley Trail and the beginning of the Avon. I then set off.
   Before I had even walked a full kilometer, I began to feel a "hot spot" forming on the ball of my left foot, generally an indication of a blister beginning to form. It was a minor irritation at first and I thought that if it got any worse I would find somewhere to sit down ad apply a moleskin to it from my first aid kit.
   St. Marys is a pretty little town and I was able to see parts of it I had never been to before. Fairly quickly I was out of it, though, and walking country roads, on my way to the Wildwood Conservation area. By the time I got to Wildwood, my foot was bothering me enough that I decided to sit down by the dam and apply a moleskin. As I was rummaging through the kit, it started to pour rain so I quickly just grabbed a band-aid and slapped it on. It didn't help.
   From there, it was into the conservation area, following along the banks of Wildwood Lake. I ran into a bit of an issue there, following the blazes. The Avon Trail uses white blazes, Wildwood Conservation uses blue ones, which is not a huge issue but the blue blazes and markings all seemed to be shaped differently and some of them were just random numbers, painted on trees. This wasn't too much of a deterrent, it just meant I had to stop and double-check more often than usual.
   And it was in Wildwood that I spent about 20 panicky minutes thinking I might be lost. The mileage on my Garmin didn't seem to match up with the written directions on the map. On top of everything else, it was getting past supper and I really wasn't sure I had enough daylight left to get back to my car. I kept checking the Garmin and yanking the map (which was by now in tatters) out of my pocket until things started to fall into place a little more in my head. I realized I was where I was supposed to be and, at the same time, also realized I had plenty of daylight left. Whew!
   At then end of it all, my legs and feet were in bad shape. The band-aid had done nothing to alleviate the blistering and I knew, even as I continued to walk on it, that it was going to be pretty bad. Which it was. I have never had an issue with blisters while hiking and I obviously will need to do something different the next time out.
   What I will say, though, is that there was some amazing hiking involved! A good portion of it was city and country roads but even these were nice. There was much tree damage (lots of wind and ice storms lately) on the trail portion and this necessitated some minor re-routing. Even the damage itself was kind of pretty!
   The following is a bit of a photo dump, just proving that I walked the walk! Cheers!

Where last summer's adventure ended and where this summer's adventure begins!

Along the Thames, headed for downtown St. Marys

Queen Street Bridge

One end of downtown. Very pretty!

Grand Trunk Bridge

Out on the highways-Trout Creek (didn't see any!)

Headed on to the trails

Short highway jaunt

"What in the blue blazes...??"

Nice little spot by Wildwood Dam

A stream

Walking on a blanket of pine needles

Yay for re-forestation!

Popping out onto Line 27

Lots of mud! And this was one of the drier areas!

Line 29 bridge, off in the distance

There was a ton of wind damage! This one fell AWAY from the trail,
many others didn't.

Have done a lot of water crossings in the last year but not one quite like this!

Finally! 20.5 kilometers later and I am back to Line 31---and my car!