Every corduroy road leads somewhere: This past Tuesday, I walked an early settlement corduroy road that my late dear friend Clive drew a map of from his memory and sent to me. His grandpa told him that at one time it was the only road between Duncan and Flesherton, and that it was an ox cart narrow passage through a swamp in Osprey Township. Just up from the old road is a vintage car on a hill in Rob Roy Village. The village is named for Rob Roy McGreggor (1671- 1734), a highland chief known as the Scottish Robin Hood, who was known as either a hero or an outlaw, depending upon your own clan loyalties. The first Rob Roy School, built in 1881, burned under mysterious circumstances in the spring of 1889. Student delight was short-lived, as school quickly reconvened in Thomas Freethy’s hot blacksmith shop which meant sitting on backless benches until the present building was completed in the fall of the same year. The Schoolhouse is the most architecturally-detailed schoolhouse in Ontario and is now the Osprey Museum, located at the end of Pretty River Valley Road. I love the hidden pioneer roads in the forests of the Niagara Escarpment. Where they lead, one just never knows. Signing off, “Hiking with the Viking”.
NIAGARA ESCARPMENT HISTORY & HIKING 