The Hockley Road Side Trail, described as an access trail, begins in the Bruce Trail Parking lot on Hockley Road. The 250 metres of this blue-blazed Side Trail lead you along the Hockley Road to the junction with the Main Bruce Trail.
Say the name slowly. “Hockley.” In the instant those two syllables leave your tongue, an entire lifetime lies quietly breathing within them. In 1863, a man named Thomas Hockley lived in this valley. He opened a general store and successfully petitioned for a post office. He ran a sawmill and kept a tavern and inn alive with light — a quiet mercy for travellers worn down by the road. People came to post a letter, to buy lumber, to rest their bodies for a single night — the most ordinary, concrete rhythms of this valley community passed through his hands. His name became the name of a village. The village flowed outward along the road. Eventually, the name came to rest over the entire valley – Hockley Village, Hockley Road, and Hockley Valley. Names carved in stone wear away. A name carried on people’s lips, roads, and maps keeps walking on. Thomas Hockley left this valley long ago; however, his name never did.
At the far end of these 250 metres, where the Hockley Road meets 2nd Line EHS, the landscape seems to hold its breath. Other names are waiting, branching out into the trees: the Main Bruce Trail, and to the north the quiet Side Trails of Tom East, Isabel East, Cam Snell, Glen Cross, and the Jeju Olle–Bruce Trail Friendship Trail. To the south the intriguing Goodyear Memorial Side Trail and others await. Within the Bruce Trail system, names like these are rarely chosen at random. Some names reflect geography – many are quiet tributes to people who spent years repainting blazes, clearing fallen trees, or sharing their own land so others could keep walking through. Hands to open the way, hands to keep it clear, and now, with the Jeju Olle Friendship Trail, hands reaching across an ocean.
The small blue iron horse that you will see if you hike north on the Main Bruce Trail signifies that these designated sections of Trail are twinned in friendship with a series of walking routes on Jeju Island, 130 km off the southwest coast of South Korea. Like the Bruce Trail that is part of the Niagara Escarpment UNESCO world biosphere, Jeju Olle is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Its walking routes offer windswept coastline, countless tangerine groves and a mountain peak, Mountain Halla. The Hockley Valley is known for its never-ending hills that can be challenging in the heat of summer, not to mention the snows of winter! It may not hurt to let the mind wander to the semi-tropical climate of Jeju Island!
The Hockley Road Side Trail is a short, humble path along the shoulder of the road but the bonds it carries are endless.
As you pass along this access or connector trail between the parking lot and the Main Trail, your steps will trace the way a single life became a village, a road, a valley, and, now points the way to a marker of friendship reaching across the sea.
In the end, we are never just walking a path — we are walking together through the layered time of every name quietly settled into this earth.