Cross-country Skiing Part One

 My favourite winter activity before getting paralyzed was cross-country skiing.  And here in Grey County we have several great skiing locations.  My favourite was always the Glenelg trails, just south-west of Markdale.  Here, anchored by a 400 acre parcel of public forest, but expanding onto several private properties, were miles and miles of groomed trails.

On the east side of Hamilton Lane is an interesting network of trails on private land that made an easy hour-long ski, with few significant hills.  It always felt safe coming here by myself.

The trail led around the edge of a pond and into the woods.  It wasn't long before I was skiing along the edge of a large field marked by a line of big old Sugar Maples.

Then I cut across a snowmobile  trail and came to my favourite trail, the Long Piney Woods Trail, a completely straight trail through planted pines.

It was an easy run as you can see, going gently downhill.

You had to rise up a short hill where you lost sight of the continuing trail for a minute, and then crested the rise to build up speed on the other side..

But then you went downhill fast to the end.  The only problem was the abrupt ending, where you had to stop and then turn right or left.  More than once I crashed at the end, once with people standing there watching me!  But it was fun.

After that you simply had to ski a flat trail back out past a row of beehives, and around the other side of the pond to the car.  A really enjoyable short ski.