Hiking the Bruce Trail End to End - Part 3

Part 3 – Keddy Access Trail to Guelph Line – 165.7/890km

Part 3 was a weekend hike.

Saturday, September 16, 2023 – 34.6km-58.2km Iroquoia section

We left Toronto at 6:30am and arrived at our starting location around 7:20am. My partner again drove us out. We started hiking where we left off last time at the Keddy Access trail in Hamilton at 7:30am.

It was a lovely day, bright and sunny but not too hot, humid or cool, it was perfect. We also didn’t need to use any bug spray as almost all of the mosquitos were gone for the season. You start by climbing up Hamilton Mountain beside the Claremont Access road before heading into the trees at the top beside a very impressive example of the escarpment rock face.

You continue through the woods along the escarpment, passing the Dundurn stairs and the Chedoke falls before coming to the Chedoke stairs, which you descend to the Chedoke Golf Club club house, there are washrooms located inside. From here you continue along the wide paved Chedoke Radial Trail, which passes Mountainview waterfall. Again, hardly any water flowing. You continue along a bit more, passing through the escarpment rock walls on both sides of the path at one point before passing a stone wall, labelled as the Rifle Range stone wall on Google maps. Shortly after you’ll come to a lookout and then pass Princess falls, which did actually have flowing water!

You’ll enter the woods, passing Scenic Falls, one of my favourite Hamilton waterfalls, it was completely dry! After going through the woods some more beside Highway 403, you’ll pop out into an open field in Iroquois Heights Conservation Area, before heading over top of the highway.

You’re now in Ancaster, and continue along a quiet residential road before heading back into the woods. You eventually reach one of the best and most accessible Hamilton waterfalls, Tiffany Falls. Here there’s a short side trail that takes you to the falls. I’d recommend going to see the falls. Even though we’d seen the falls several times before, the side trail is short enough that it wouldn’t add much time, so we went to see them. Although not as full as they usually are, it was a proper waterfall. There are also benches along this trail, which is where we stopped for lunch around 11:30am and a much needed rest for my feet. I seem to be able to last 3 hours or around 10km before my planter fasciitis becomes really painful. This usually means I end up hiking for 15km or 5 hours in a lot of pain, which also really slows our pace.

Leaving Tiffany Falls you walk through the woods parallel to Wilson St before arriving at Sherman Falls. Again, it’s a very short side trail to the falls and these were some of the fullest falls we’ve seen all summer. The falls are on private property but the owners have allowed access via the marked trail to the falls so be sure to follow the signs and stay on the marked path. You’ll then continue through the woods to Canterbury Falls, again this one was only a trickle. You’re now in the Dundas Valley Conservation Area and there’s a noticeable difference in the trail quality. They’re a lot wider, well groomed, with few rocks. This is because these trails are not only for hiking and biking but are equestrian trails as well. If you do pass a horse, hikers must yield to the horse, bikes yield to hikers and horses.

You’ll follow along the Heritage Trail before linking up to the Main Loop Trail, which goes past the Hermitage. We arrived here at 1pm and rested a bit with a snack as there are several benches here. There are actually a lot of benches located throughout the entire Dundas Valley Conservation Area! The Hermitage are ruins of the wealthy Leith family’s 1855 summer estate that burned down in 1934. The Gatehouse, near the parking lot houses artifacts from the estate and also offers a Haunted Walk around the Hermitage in October.

Leaving the Hermitage, you’ll walk through Carolinian forest, likely passing a horse or two before arriving at the Dundas Valley Trail Centre housed in a Victorian train station. A bit of trivia for any Anne fans, the photo on the promo poster for the 1980s Sullivan Entertainment Anne of Green Gables mini series has Anne sitting at this train station and not the one used in filming which is located in Westfield Heritage Village.

Inside the Trail Centre is a washroom and tables and chairs if you want to stop for lunch here or a rest. Continuing along the McCormack Trail, you’ll go through forest and meadow before crossing Governors Road and heading back into the forest beside the picturesque Valley Farm red barn. There’s a forest pond along the trail before you reach the train tracks. You can’t see them but you’ll hear them if a train goes by. Along this section were a number of old apple trees which were laden with fruit. This part of the trail must have been an orchard at one point before becoming overgrown.

You’ll eventually pop out at the Dundas Valley Golf and Curling Club. I found a concrete slab in the parking lot to sit on as I was really suffering at this point. But we were so close to the end of our day’s hike as we were now in Dundas. It’s a lovely town with very nice houses and quiet residential streets. The trail winds through these streets before coming to St. Augustine’s Parish at the corner of Sydenham and Melville streets at km 58.2. This was the end of our day’s hike at 4pm. And there was a bench right there!

Unfortunate for my feet our walking was not done for the day. We still had about 2km more to get to our Airbnb. If you’ve never been to Dundas before I’d recommend taking a detour to the downtown along Hwy 8, some very lovely buildings and restaurants! However, our mission was to get food and then get to our accommodations. En route was a Subway and a Tim’s. We stopped at the Subway to eat and got tea for the road. After resting for awhile I thought my feet could take a bit of a detour, so we stopped at Canal Park beside the old 1837 Desjardins Canal, which connected Dundas to Lake Ontario. It ceased shipping operations in 1876 with the coming of the railway.

We finally reached our Airbnb around 5:30pm. It was in a quiet residential area under Dundas Peak and was very clean and cosy. They even left us some snacks and Bubly sparkling water! I put ointment on my inflamed feet and fell asleep around 9:30pm. I was in a lot of pain and was apprehensive about our hike the next day.

Sunday, September 17, 2023 – 58.2km-82.6km Iroquoia section

We got up at 5:15am and got our stuff together, leaving the place around 6:15am. It was still dark outside as we walked to the Tim’s for some breakfast wraps and then back to the start of our day’s hike at km 58.2. We started at 7am, having already hiked 2km to get there, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, however I woke up with the sharp pain still in my right foot and was very unsure if I would be able to complete today’s intended walk.

Immediately you start walking up the hill from Dundas to the top of the escarpment. The sun was rising at this point and was gorgeous! You walk beside the road for a bit before dropping down into the woods on a path parallel to the road. You end up a little past the Sydenham Lookout, which you’ll want to double back for. It’s only 100 or so meters, and well worth the view over Hamilton and the lake.

Heading back along the road, you’ll turn down a residential street at the end of which is the entrance to the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) Rock Chapel area. The RBG has a number of formal gardens and natural areas around Burlington Heights and is well worth a visit, my favourite being the Lilac Dell at the end of May!

The path goes through the woods with a couple of lookout spots before coming out on Rock Chapel Road which leads you to Borer’s Falls. You’ll skirt the field next to the falls before heading back into the Borer’s Falls Conservation Area woods.

After crossing Valley Road you head back into the RBG’s Berry Tract for a bit before continuing along in the woods for awhile. You’ll eventually descend some stairs to the Hwy 6 underpass. We got here around 9:30am and I was pretty much done. There was a guardrail beside the underpass on which I rested my feet a bit but I was not sure I’d be able to go much farther today. On the other side of the road are some stone ruins. I’m not sure what the structure was but there’s a fire pit and bench inside so perhaps someone is using it for shelter or it’s a local hangout? You’ll then come to Sheppard Quarry where there’s a pond and it’s directly behind a Walmart if you wanted to venture out and have a rest there. But if not, the trail continues through Clappison Woods. There are nice wide trails here and we encountered a lot more people as it’s close to the town of Waterdown. The path leads you across some train tracts and then to Snake Road.

You continue through the woods until you get to the Grindstone Creek bridge, which has built in benches. My feet were really bad at this point and all I wanted to do was get to Smokey Hollow Waterfall. Waterdown downtown was right next to it so I wanted to go to a cafe and rest asap!

The section from the bridge to Smokey Hollow Waterfalls goes along Grindstone Creek and is gorgeous! However, there are a lot of ups and downs and roots and rocks and I wasn’t able to really enjoy this section of the trail. We finally got to the falls and sat on one of the benches for about half an hour and had lunch.

With planter fasciitis, the bottom of the foot where the fascia is gets inflamed and so you can imagine the pain of putting pressure on something that’s inflamed, it’s an awful kind of pain. My mom said I looked like I was really suffering and that maybe we should stop here. We still had about 10km left of our planned hike and we only had one more weekend left to hike the BT planned for this year. After resting a bit, I felt I could do maybe another 5km and then call it quits. So at 12:30pm, we set off again.

After going through a field and residential area you’ll come to the woods again. At this point you’ve now entered Halton Region and the path here was wide and had wood chips on it! It was lovely! You walk for a ways through Waterdown Woods and will eventually get to Kerncliff Park where there’s a nice view of Burlington and the lake. You skirt a meadow and then come out onto busy Dundas Street. Crossing this, you head back into the woods before coming to Cedar Springs Road. This was where we had planned to stop but I had been sitting down to rest my feet whenever I could and felt I could finish off the 3.5km to our intended destination. So we continued along.

You go into a residential area and then into the woods at the end of the street before crossing a lovely meadow beside Fisher’s Pond. There were a whole lunch of monarch butterflies here and a lovely little lookout spot with benches. The last 2km is through the woods and then you pop out onto Guelph Line at km 82.6. We got there around 3:40pm, it was really slow going for me due to the pain but I was pretty happy I was able to finish the hike as intended, although I maybe shouldn’t have pushed myself as I’m sure I’m making the plantar fasciitis worse. 😢 My partner picked us up at 4pm and we got some well deserved tea. He had also cooked us some ribs, bok choy and sweet pepper soup for dinner. 🥰🥰