Grand River Rail Trail (Cambridge to Hamilton, ON)

Vanessa:

If you come away with one message from this post, let it be me telling you to ride this trail as soon as possible! The Grand River trail system stretches 77km between Cambridge to Hamilton, however it is actually an amalgamation of four trails that link the municipalities en route, check it out here:

http://www.grandriver.ca/trails/HBCTrails06.pdf

To connect with this trail we relied on our trusty friend GO Transit, making AVClub bike trips possible since 2009! No, we haven’t received any money to promote them; we just love their bike accessible vehicles for transporting us to and from our routes. For this trip, we took the train to Mississauga and caught a local bus to Square One where we caught the GO Waterloo bus to Cambridge (both buses were equipped with bike racks). Since this bus route is less frequent and lengthier than most, we made our way to Cambridge after work on Saturday evening to then start our ride on Sunday morning.

We started out riding toward downtown Cambridge, mostly along treed trails along the Grand River. It took us a little meandering to locate the trailhead at the Canadian General Tower, although we didn’t mind spending the little bit of extra time in Cambridge.

The trail itself is firmly packed gravel with only a few connections by road; there is nothing better than riding traffic free for almost 80 km! There is a map at the trailhead and the kilometres are well marked along the way, as are points of interest. It is well shaded through the majority of the route, which is often near the water so even on a sweltering July day we were nice and cool as we rode through the forest. The trail is easily broken up into sections so many people do shorter rides or walks, yet even on a Sunday it was not at all crowded and there was plenty of room to pass slower moving users.

Rather than attempt to describe the river vistas and pure bliss we felt on this ride, here is a sampling of shots from our first ride on the Grand River Trail. We will definitely be returning.