The Victoria Rail Trail

Back in April I wrote about my plan to do a more local long distance walk this fall. Basically, I wanted to do a shorter multi-day walk in my home province, ideally one that was either close to Toronto or close to my hometown. Originally, I’d planned a slightly longer walk which included the Haliburton County Rail Trail, which runs from Haliburton to Kinmount; continuing on the Victoria Rail Trail (the same former railway, just a different county so a different name for the trail), from Kinmount to Lindsay; and finishing with a small part of the Kawartha section of the Trans Canada Trail (also on a former railway), from Lindsay to Peterborough. Well, that was my plan…

But the challenges I’d identified in my earlier article, namely lack of accommodations on or near the trail, especially after Thanksgiving (I’d taken the week after Canadian Thanksgiving in mid-October off and planned to start on the Tuesday as I like to take a short vacation around that time to unwind after a busy summer at work) and lack of public transit in general in rural Ontario (where the trails are), made me alter my plans.

My revised plan, based mostly on where I could find places to stay, cut out the part of the walk from Haliburton to Kinmount, but kept the rest so it would be a shorter, 5-day walk at basically peak fall colour time. And then a severe allergy attack during my walk had me cut out the last leg from Omemee to Peterborough so it only ended up being 4 days in reality. But despite my allergies, it was a fabulous and beautiful, if quite flat, walk. And the Victoria Rail Trail would be a great beginner trail for anyone interested in mulit-day walks as it’s not technically challenging (meaning flat and well groomed), and can be broken into doable segments.

So what was it like? While I will also post an article for each day of walking, I wanted to give an overview here, plus detail what worked and didn’t work.

The Victoria Rail Trail follows an old rail line from the small village of Kinmount to the town of Linsday in central Ontario. It’s 55 km in length and is managed by the County of Victoria (hence the name). There’s also a portion that continue south to the village of Bethany but I stuck to the northern portion. It’s a multi-use trail which is used year-round for hiking, cycling, ATVs, horseback riding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling. As I was on it in the fall, I saw a few cyclists, a couple of people walking their dogs, and a few people on ATVs. But most of the time, it was just me and the trail which was just what I needed. Everyone I encountered was courteous and friendly, just be aware of your surroundings, especially if you’re not used to hiking multi-use trails. And from what I’ve read about the trail, it tends to be fairly quiet during the week, especially in the fall, so if you’re looking for a quiet walk with less traffic, that’s when I would plan your walk.

*Because it’s used by snowmobile clubs, the portion between Kinmount and Fenelon Falls was well signed*

I should probably point out that there are very limited facilities (read: toilets), basically only in Kinmount, Fenelon Falls and Lindsay and while rural, much of it is cottage country so keep that in mind. But the same is true of most trails (no or very limited toilets). And while it’s always good to have a map, the only confusing part of the trail is in the town of Fenelon Falls as you need to take a detour when the swing bridge is open (which seems to be most of the time as it was open when I was there after Thanksgiving).

Accommodations

When planning this, I knew that I would start the trip from my mom’s house rather than my place in Toronto as I would be visiting her for Thanksgiving. But I didn’t want her to have to drive everyday just so I could walk which meant that I needed a place, or places rather, to stay for four nights. While I wasn’t able to find anything in Burnt River, I did find a B&B, Sweet Dreams B&B, just outside Fenelon Falls that offers to pick people up and drop them off at the Trail. So I contacted them to see if I could stay for two nights with pick up & drop off and thankfully, they were available. I’d highly recommend staying there. The hosts, Phil & Barb, were wonderful, the place was lovely and clean, it’s reasonably priced, and breakfast (eggs benedict one morning and caramel apple waffles the other) was delicious.

The night I finished in Lindsay I stayed in Kent Inn, a decent, reasonably priced motel in downtown Lindsay that wasn’t too far from the Trail and close to restaurants. It was clean, quiet and comfortable, although there was no tea (often an issue for a tea drinking traveler). There were also other options in Lindsay as it’s a decent sized town.

My final night should have been somewhere in Omemee but I wasn’t able to find anything there that had availability on that date so I ended up staying at my mom’s as it’s not too far of a drive. Which turned out to be a good thing with my allergy attack but if it wasn’t possible, I would have had to get an Uber into Lindsay (or Peterborough) were there were options.

Final Thoughts

One thing I would like to point out, with the exception of the Burnt River sign which was actually fairly close to the village of Burnt River, most of the other signs for the villages/towns I was approaching are a couple of kilometres from the actual village or town. So don’t get too excited when you see one, you’re not quite there yet.

*The end of the trail in Lindsay, there’s a nice info board here as well as a bit of the original track*

I also made a rookie mistake of underestimating how long my last day would take and the small detour I had to take didn’t help. This isn’t normally an issue but I was meeting my mom in Omemee and since I gave her a specific time, I didn’t want to make her wait. Always add extra time to your estimate!

Which leads me to my last point, huge thanks to my mom, as without her dropping me off in Kinmount and picking me up in Omemee, I wouldn’t have been able to do the walk solo as there is NO public transit to/from either village (or anywhere in the area I was walking). Thankfully, my hometown isn’t that far and she didn’t mind. Thanks mom!

As I said earlier, the Victoria Rail Trail is a lovely walk and a good one for beginners to multi-day long distance walks. But it is rural, so take that into account when planning. More details on each day coming next week!

Have you walked the Victoria Rail Trail in Ontario? What were your thoughts?