Walk to the end of the Fifth Line in Angus and you will find a small trailhead that did not exist last winter: a large map board, a row of bike racks, a bench, and a sign that lays out what this stretch of ground used to be. It is a modest scene for what it actually represents. Since this past spring, that spot has been the eastern edge of a rideable corridor that runs nearly 34 kilometres west, through New Lowell and Stayner, all the way to Collingwood and the edge of Georgian Bay.
Most of the coverage around this trail's opening framed Angus as the destination, the place the new infrastructure finally reached after years of planning. That framing gets the geography backwards for anyone who actually lives here. If you are in Angus, you are not at the end of anything. You are standing at the one place in Essa Township where you can currently get on a rail trail and ride toward the water without touching a highway shoulder. The trail does not arrive in Angus. It leaves from here.
What actually opened, and when
The County of Simcoe held its grand opening on April 30, 2026, at Station Park in Stayner, with Warden Basil Clarke, Essa Township Mayor Sandie Macdonald, Clearview Township Mayor Doug Measures, and Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin walking the new stretch together. The county's own release puts the extension at approximately 23 kilometres, running along the former Barrie Collingwood Railway corridor between Stayner and Angus. Add the pre-existing 11-kilometre Collingwood-to-Stayner section and the total rideable distance from the Fifth Line to Collingwood comes to nearly 34 kilometres.
"The Barrie Collingwood Railway Active Transportation Trail is a great addition to the region, connecting a number of our communities in a meaningful way," Warden Basil Clarke said at the opening.
That kind of quote gets said at every ribbon cutting. What is worth knowing locally is what it took to get there. Rail operations on the Collingwood-to-Angus section ceased back in 2011. The county did not purchase the Clearview-to-Angus corridor until 2018, first floated the trail conversion in 2019, then lost most of two years to pandemic delays before construction resumed in 2021. More than 46,000 tonnes of screening gravel went into building the surface, and the whole project came in slightly under its roughly $6 million budget, according to the county's general manager of engineering, Rob Elliott. That gravel detail matters for anyone deciding what bike to bring. This is a crushed stone surface, not pavement, which means a gravel or hybrid tire will treat you better than a road slick.
The part the press releases leave out
Here is the piece that does not show up in a county announcement. The corridor from Angus toward Barrie, the direction most residents would actually want to travel if they are heading into the city rather than out toward the bay, is still owned by the City of Barrie and is still an active rail line. It has not been idle since 2011 like the Collingwood side. Freight still runs on it. That is the actual reason the new trail stops cold at the Fifth Line rather than continuing east.
A cyclist who documented the ride on the blog Two Wheeled Politics rode the full extension on Victoria Day this year, starting from Barrie's Allandale Waterfront on a bike loaded onto the GO train. To reach the Fifth Line trailhead at all, the route required about 16 kilometres of on-road riding: Tiffin Road, which has painted bike lanes or paved shoulders most of the way except for a short unpleasant stretch under Highway 400, then a run along Highway 90's wide paved shoulder despite its posted 80 km/h limit, then a quieter cut down Sideroad 30 from the 9th Line to avoid traffic before finally reaching the trailhead. That is the honest answer to "how do I get from Barrie to the new trail." Right now, you ride roads to get there. There is no trail bridge over that gap, and nothing in the county's materials suggests one is scheduled.
Once on the actual trail, the rider split the experience into three legs: Angus to New Lowell, New Lowell to Stayner, and Stayner to Collingwood. The Angus-to-New Lowell stretch had decent, if intermittent, shade and solid surface quality, with enough traffic already a few weeks after opening that people, and at least one dog, were cooling off in the water near Angus on a hot day. Conditions got rougher and hotter heading toward New Lowell, where fatigue set in by the time the rider had covered roughly 73 kilometres for the day. Three rest stops break up the ride, in Angus, New Lowell, and Stayner, each with a trail map, bike racks, a bench, and a sign describing the corridor's rail history. New Lowell's stop is the only one of the three with a bike repair stand, worth remembering if you are the type to ride out further than planned.
The rider's overall verdict was that the trail, taken as a whole, has real potential given its safe road crossings and the string of small towns it threads together on the way to Georgian Bay. After finishing the ride into Barrie on local roads, they stopped at Malone's Pint House for fish and chips before heading back to a waterfront that was, in their words, packed and pleasant with a cool breeze off the bay.
What this means if you already live here
If you live in Angus, you now have direct trail access to New Lowell, Stayner, and Collingwood without a car, something that did not exist before this spring. That is a genuine change to how a Saturday morning can look. But the framing that matters is which direction the value runs. This extension does not connect Angus into Barrie's trail network. It connects Angus outward, toward the bay. Getting into Barrie still means roads.
A few things worth knowing before you head out this fall:
- Bring gravel or hybrid tires. The crushed stone base built from that 46,000 tonnes of screening gravel is not friendly to narrow road slicks.
- The New Lowell stop is your only trailside repair option between Angus and Stayner, so plan accordingly if you are riding the full distance.
- If you are trying to connect from the Barrie side, Tiffin Road and Highway 90 are the documented route, with a stretch under Highway 400 as the one genuinely rough patch.
- Expect company. Cycling tourism generated more than $2.2 million for the local economy across Simcoe County in 2025, before this extension even opened, and the county has more than 241 kilometres of multi-use trails it actively promotes through Cycle Simcoe. This corridor is going to see traffic.
None of this shows up if you only read the ribbon-cutting coverage, which tends to treat "Angus" as a place the trail finally reached rather than the place where a resident's actual ride now begins. For anyone in Essa Township deciding how to spend the next few weekends before the weather turns, the more useful question is not whether the trail reached you. It is which way you're planning to ride it.
If a piece of new infrastructure like this changes how you think about a property's setting, or you're weighing what else has shifted in Essa Township this year, The JRB Group knows this corridor and this township well enough to talk through it properly. Reach out for a conversation about what's actually changing here.
