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.