Belwood to Luther Marsh

I’ve been wanting to do this route from Belwood to Luther Marsh for a while, and today was the day I finally got around to it.

I actually started my ride at the Conservation Area at the very bottom of the map since I knew there would be a washroom there. From that point, the first thing you do is to cross the dam. Looks like fall colours haven’t peaked at this spot yet.

Heading across the dam. This picture doesn’t show that it was about 6°C and windy.

Once I got warmed up, it was pleasant riding on gravel roads with very little traffic.

The least fun part of the ride was this stretch along route 16 which had a decent amount of traffic. It didn’t help that it was into a headwind/crosswind and there was no shelter from trees.

I’ll note that the updated version of the route avoids this stretch, and also take advantage of more of the West Luther Trail.

Just north of route 109, you turn east onto the West Luther Trail.

It is overgrown a bit in spots, but it is flat and arrow straight for about 6 km.

The trail ends at Luther Townline where the route turns north again.

Across the street is the Upper Grand trailway. My thought at this point was that I’d have to come back to explore it at some point.

As I approached the marsh, at one point the route turns off the gravel road onto a trail. At this point, I met this nice gentleman who advised me that it was hunting season, and that it would be inadvisable for me to travel through the marsh. I decided to play it safe and backtrack to where the Upper Grand trail went further east.

Can’t really complain about the biking on these roads with next to no traffic.

As you can see from several pictures back, the Upper Grand Trailway is groomed like a true rail trail, and it was easy to blast along this section with the wind at my back. 10 km of easy riding.

Crossing the Grand River on 13 Line.

I did make a detour to Belwood to get some of the excellent butter tarts from Belwood Country Market.

The lake level was really low.

From this point, you take the Elora Cataract Trail to the conservation area. I posted about this trail a few years ago.

Here is the truncated version of my ride which ended up being about 70 km.

Further investigation reveals that waterfowl hunting season goes between Oct 1 and Christmas, and deer season is a bit more complicated.

This brings me back to the days when I taught at Michigan State, and it was well known that you didn’t schedule a midterm on opening day for deer fun season. I guess that I’ve been living in the city too long.

You can find out location specific information for Luther Marsh here.

At any rate, something to keep in mind for late fall gravel riding….