It’s called a “linear park” and a series of sidewalks (mostly new ones) allow pedestrians to take The Stroll while staying off the travelled portion of Water Street East and West.
In fact, including the path that follows the Low Island shoreline, the trip from Low Island to the Welcome Centre will put 2.5 km on your sneakers so a return trip (if you drive to either the Welcome Centre or to Low Island, park and then walk the route in both directions) earns you a full 5 km worth of exercise. If you take the Campbell Street hill as a deviation as part of either half of this trip, you’ll gain some extra cardio points as well.
It was good to see Sudbury District Health Unit public health nurse Linda Belton, together with her husband Rick, doing The Stroll on Sunday and setting an exercise example.
Little Current now joins the trend of Island communities where one can both get exercise and enjoy the beauties of waterfront parks: Gore Bay’s boardwalk begins at the edge of the Gordon’s Lodge property and runs lakeside to the Mill Site Apartments where it’s just an easy walk along the waterfront and past the town office/library complex to the Lions Club waterfront playground, the Red Roof Pavilion and then along the docks. This walk, too, would be about 5 km, assuming a return trip.
And on the south shore of Manitoulin, the expanse of Lake Huron can be enjoyed in its fury (some days) and as a placid, sunlight dappled mere (other days) from the vantage point of Providence Bay’s duneside boardwalk.
Perhaps not quite as long a stretch as the others, but the amount of exercise one generates anywhere depends, after all, on how much effort over what period goes into the endeavour.
Manitoulin’s communities are appreciating their natural waterfront attributes and have gone to substantial lengths to make them accessible to both local folks and tourists and designing them to be handy places to get a reasonable amount of exercise, enjoying changing scenery in the process.
These changes are certainly signs of not only progress, but of community maturity as well.
