St.Norbert Heritage Trails / Cloutier Trail

Last time I went to the eastern fringes of Winnipeg to explore a trail in Transcona. Today I traveled to the southern point of the city to explore the St. Norbert Heritage Trails. Like Transcona, St. Norbert is sort of its own distinct community within the city limits, although very different in almost every other way.

St. Norbert Heritage Trails is an umbrella term for actual trails and designated streets through St. Norbert. The actual trail that I started on is Sentier Cloutier Trail, which translates into "Trail Cloutier Trail". For simplicity, I shall refer to it as "Cloutier Trail" in this post.

St. Norbert Heritage Trails

DESCRIPTION
Cloutier Trail is a short paved trail that starts at the very south-eastern point of Fort Richmond next to the Red River, ducks underneath the very noisy Perimeter Highway, passes through a small but pleasant forested area and follows Cloutier Drive up to Pembina Highway.

REVIEW
At only 2 km in length it's really not much of a trail, but the area along Cloutier Drive is park-like and the trail has some small curves in it making it at least a little bit interesting. It also serves as a useful link between the city north of the Perimeter and St. Norbert. When I reached the end of the Cloutier trail I continued down the sidewalk, dodging people walking to and from the farmer's market, and made my way into the streets of East St Norbert.

I knew that somewhere there was a park with another small trail that I would try out, but I couldn't remember how to get there, so I followed the signs. They have these trail signs posted to lamp posts on otherwise very ordinary residential streets.

I jogged along looking for these signs, but before I was able to find anything resembling a trail head I had ran almost 5k and it was time for me to turn around. Although the streets in St Norbert are quiet and generally pleasant to look at, a street is not a trail.

SCORE: 5/10

GOOD STUFF

• Nice greenery along the trail. Some treed areas, some grassy areas.
• Spiffy houses on the south side of Cloutier Drive to look at.
• Takes you to St. Norbert, a very nice area of town. A person could easily park in Fort Richmond and walk to the farmer's market on a Saturday, although that would limit the number of jars of jam you would want to buy.

BAD STUFF

• Short
• Highway noise
• Poor connectivity to other trails

I don't recommend this one for joggers, but it's a nice little trail for casual walkers. It would be great if they could build additional trails along the Red River, connected to the Cloutier Trail, to make better use of that space. From Google Maps it looks like most of the river bank is undeveloped.

My results are posted below. I had a cramp around 6k that forced me to walk for a while. That hurt my average pace, but still a pretty good run.

Transcona Trail & Bioreserve

I normally try (really hard) to avoid Transcona. It's not that anything bad ever happened to me there. It's just that dislike driving in and around Transcona and I have a possibly unwarranted negative perception of Transconites as unsophisticated Camaro-driving mullet-wearing bumpkins that just don't fit in with the rest of the city.

Despite these prejudices, I chose a trail in Transcona for my inaugural post in this new blog of mine. As I train up for a half marathon in the fall, I hope to try out many of the city's trails and paths. For whatever reason I chose this one tonight.

DESCRIPTION
Paved and 6.7 km in length, although I only ran a portion of that. It is very straight and follows a rail line and power lines for much of it's length, but it is also treed and has relatively few road crossings, which is important. The busiest crossing at Plessis has crosswalk buttons to stop traffic.

REVIEW
I parked at one of Winnipeg's rare off-leash dog parks, near where the trail crosses Plessis. I think there was a drug deal going on when I pull up. There are two things in this park: a play structure for kids and a open space for dogs, and the teenagers in their urban wear had neither, but they buggered off after I parked and I got on with my run.

The trail is well used by couples going for a walk, cyclists, dog walkers and rollerbladers, all in vast assortment of sizes and apparel. It's not a bad place to go for a little people watching as you jog.

1.3 km down the trail from where I parked, I diverted off the path, across the rail tracks, and around the Transcona Community Bioreserve -- a naturalized old industrial site that made the news a little while ago when local residents fought against a planned concrete plant near by.

The trail through the bioreserve is crushed limestone, and follows a loop around a swamp. It's quite pleasant, with a soundtrack of frogs and birds, mixed in with the traffic from the Perimeter Highway to the north. I definitely recommend it, unless it's after dark.

Overall score: 6/10.
Highlights: Good condition, easy parking, connections to other parks and short trails including the Bioreserve and the Cordite Trail. Also, the possibility of a rare caboose sighting as the Central Manitoba Railway train passes by.

Lowlights: Straight, marginal scenery, in Transcona.

At the end of the day, when I got in my car and followed a Camaro (true story) out of Transcona and into the setting sun over Winnipeg, I left pretty good about my evening. The excellent weather certainly had something to do about it, but the trail and Bioreserve are certainly worth exploring if you're a runner or walker and don't like too far away.