Travel Close to Home # 10: Round and Round the Pond

Spring has undoubtedly sprung in Ontario, and although the Covid-19 lockdown still continues here, it's been perfect weather to get out and about for some walking and hiking in the region.  Here I am continuing the series on local beauty spots and points of interest which I began last year.

In a small town not far from where I live, a town named Dorchester, there's a pond.  It's a flexible term, a pond.  It can mean a small pool of water on a farm, big enough for a dozen animals to drink from at once, or it can mean (and does in New England) a lake several kilometres long and wide.  

The Dorchester Mill Pond lies between the extremes.  It's about 1.6 kilometres long, and the scenic walking trail around the shorelines stretches for 3.5 kilometres.  It's the crown jewel of a network of trails in different parts of Dorchester, and in my latest visit I got to sample one of the others as well.

On an earlier visit in April, I encountered a cloudy day, and the pictures I took on that day are easy to pick out in this post.  This week I had a gloriously sunny morning.

As the name "mill pond" indicates, this is an artificial lake created by a dam, which is located where the stream flows between the slopes of the river valley to empty into the Thames River.

The pond is a beautiful, peaceful place, not least because motor boats are not permitted.  

I did see a couple of kayakers enjoying a leisurely paddle along the shores. 

A great deal of work on the part of members of the community goes into keeping the Mill Pond Trail in good working order.  Because the slopes of the land on either side of the pond are in places loose and unstable, several rather lengthy sections have had to be built out on wooden walkways projected over the crumbling areas.  

There's also a sizable wooden footbridge across the narrow neck at the upstream end, where the pond gradually gives way to marshy wetland.

 Other parts of the trail are constricted to narrow footpaths, where walking side by side is basically impossible, and there are a couple of steep dirt slopes that could get slippery and risky in wet weather.

Earlier in April, before all the greenery began to emerge, the trunks and branches of fallen trees created some striking natural sculptures along the walkway.

 

 

Word to the wise: you really need to keep an eye on the ground.  Tree roots and small stones occur regularly on this trail.  Also, at odd intervals, you may come across the end of an angle iron sticking out of the ground.  They've been cut down to ground level, but they still have a knack of protruding just enough to trip the unwary walker.  I think they're the remains of earlier attempts to stabilize some of the more uncertain parts of the path.

 

The trail on the west side of the pond comes right down to County Road 29, Hamilton Road.  Across the road you can see the beginnings of another trail -- the Lions Trail, along the shore of the Thames River.  This trail runs west to a small riverside park with picnic tables, and took me close to 15 minutes to walk each way.

 

It's a very different kind of trail to the Mill Pond Trail.  Some parts are dirt, some grassy, and a few patches have been filled with gravel.  There are a couple of perennially muddy patches where water coming down from the valley walls seeps under the road and across the trail towards the river.  It's just uneven enough to make keeping one eye on the ground advisable, although for different reasons. 

What you do get is a diverse range of native wetland vegetation, which is being deliberately placed here to create a border of native greenery along the riverbank.

 

And then, you get the placid waters of the Thames as regular backdrop.

 

And here's the picnic park at the trail's western end.

 

Along the way back, I spotted a striking cluster of fungi growing out of a tree stump.

 

So there you have it.  In Dorchester, these two totally different but both lovely walking spots, just across the road from each other, offering a combined total of about 90 minutes of walking enjoyment.

To close, here's my usual indicator map showing the approximate location of Dorchester, which is just a short distance to the north off Highway 401.  The Pond and the Lions Trail are both on the western edge of the town.