Ruth's Travelogue on the Railway Trail

Every day we had great weather for hiking. Thursday we traversed beaches and dunes of South Shore Park, Friday toured the cultured Botanical Gardens and roamed the wild trails around Spittal Pond Nature Reserve, and today--the last day valid on our transportation pass--planned to navigate some of the loveliest vistas in Bermuda on the route of a railway that had wended its way across the island chain from one end to the other, catch the ferry to cruise across the Sound, and come back, a real round-about loop to see the City of Hamilton.

From Willowbank we took a footpath to enter the western side of the Trail near picturesque Heydon Chapel, shown on the Norwood Survey of 1616, headed over to see Somerset Village and buy Joe a cap to cover his sunburned head, then followed the road skirting Mangrove Bay to the ferry stop at Watford Bridge Wharf.

On our return hike up the trail from Somerset Bridge, we admired scenic Skroggins Bay on the right and talked about our other visit to Scaur Hill Fort Park on the left, where we lunched at a great picnic site overlooking the Great Sound on the east and Ely's Harbour on the west with Willowbank's dock. Fort Scaur, completed about 1880, is one of Bermuda's largest forts built in defense of the important Royal Naval Dockyard.

All along the way we admired the panorama of water and sky flanked by vibrant vegetation, most notably the Bermuda Cedar, an endemic (our great Botanical Gardens tour guide Steve made sure we knew this meant native or indigenous) species of juniper, Juniperus bermudiana, used for centuries for ship building, houses, furniture, and fuel, becoming endangered in the 1940's when a blight swiftly reduced the population 97%.

The Railway officially opened in 1931 and operated 17 years, a tenth of its 21 miles linking the islands over 33 trestle bridges built as close to the shore as possible, since people didn't want to sell their land for the route.

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