One of the highlights of nice weather is hopping on a bike and riding the trails. For residents of and guests to York and Simcoe Regions, there are plenty of trails to choose from.
Simcoe County Trails have created 20 loop trails in county forests and conservation areas over the past decade. Linear trails, connecting communities and other trails have also been created. It is important to note that the trails are created to accommodate different types of users with some designed specifically for walking or hiking, known as single use trails, and those designed to accommodate various users, or multi-use, or shared-use trails. Check the trail guides before heading onto trails with your bike to ensure the trail you’ve selected does in fact accommodate cyclists.
In the York Regional Forest, open every day of the year, more than 120 kilometres of trails are available to the public to enjoy on 2,300 hectares of protected land scattered across the Region.
It is the Brown Hill Tract, located in the Town of East Gwillimbury that is dedicated to mountain biking and offers more than 15 kilometres of trails that are amongst the best mountain biking terrain in the Greater Toronto Area.
Perhaps the best part of the York Regional Forest trails is that they are located on the Oak Ridges Moraine – an ecologically sensitive ridge of land extending approximately 200 kilometres from the Niagara Escarpment in the west to Rice Lake in the east.
The Oak Ridges Trail Association has established a 275-kilometre trail system running through the moraine, some of which includes York Regional Forest tracts, enabling users to enjoy the marked trail.
When biking the York and Simcoe trail systems, it is important to keep safety in mind. As such, you must always wear an approved helmet, stay on the trails, slow down and yield to others, let others know you are approaching them from behind, avoid using trails after heavy rainfall or wet periods – particularly in the spring – and of course, like on all trails, leave nothing but tracks and be courteous to others.
