Dufferin Quarry - Hike 18

I went out on my 18th Bruce Trail hike today with my wife and two sons (it was Mother's day) - another beautiful weather day.

We parked one car at the end of our hike and drove back and parked at the Halton County Golf Club and started our hike at the 2.5km mark of the Toronto section of the trail.

The trail wound along the escarpment with lots and lots of trilliums and views of Toronto - again! Soon, as I head further north on the trail, there won't be anymore shots of Toronto from a distance (as I've been taking since the Niagara area).

The trail steadily rose until we arrived at the Dufferin Quarry bridge. This bridge is something that I've seen a hundred times or more over the years as I drove west from Milton on Highway 401. Once you actually get close to it, it's not quite the "romantic" idea of a suspension or rustic bridge of any type. It's a heavy duty steel, very industrial looking bridge over one of the access roads into the quarry.

The quarry is huge with a number of bright blue lakes. The quarry was originally the Milton Quarry established back in the early 1900's. A huge amount of aggregate is quarried here and shipped into the Greater Toronto area.

The trail continues to hug the edge of the escarpment all the way to the 8.6km mark on the trail where it then heads into the bush. Lots of beautiful flowers and scenery along the way.

As the trail wound in from the escarpment there was higher and drier sections but lots of low swampy areas with ponds - not the place to be in the heat of summer with mosquitoes!

At the 11.2km mark we arrived at Pear Tree Park which is just a few hundred feet west of Speyside (at the corner of Highway 25 and 15 Sideroad). Speyside today is a general store on the southwest corner of the intersection and not much else. Speyside was named after River Spey in Scotland and back in the late 1800's was a much larger and busier village. It boasted nine streets with the general store, 2 hotels, a tannery, a sawmill, village hall, post office and school. Even though the general area is very rocky and wooded, it was cleared back then and farmed. Apparently they grew a lot of hops in the area for beer breweries. Today it's a ghost of the village it used to be!

We picked up our car in the Pear Tree Park parking lot and drove back to pick up the second car.

A nice family hike!

Completed: 212.9km