Vaughan to Cambridge: Galt's limestone, the Grand and the film crews' favourite main street

Cambridge, three towns on two rivers

Cambridge is the city the province made in 1973 from three towns on two rivers — Galt on the Grand, Preston and Hespeler on the Speed — and Galt is the one Vaughan drives to: a downtown of limestone buildings on both banks of the Grand River, with the Cambridge Mill restaurant in the old mill on the water, the Main Street bridge, the churches' spires, and a streetscape so intact that film and television crews use it as Victorian England and small-town America by turns. It is an hour from Vaughan on the 401, close enough to be a Saturday, and the chauffeured version exists for the same reasons as St. Jacobs and Elora nearby: a river town's parking on a market morning, a lunch on the water with wine, and a family that wants the walk and not the drive.

Galt's downtown and the river

The Galt downtown is a walk of a dozen blocks: Main Street's shops and cafés, the Cambridge Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings in its 1887 market building, the Idea Exchange's library in the old post office, the Cambridge Sculpture Garden by the river, Queen's Square with the churches, and the Grand's banks with the trail south to the Cambridge-to-Paris rail trail — a flat, paved cycle and walk along the river for nineteen kilometres to Paris, the day a family with bicycles books the Sprinter for. The chauffeur drops at the market building or the Mill's forecourt and the downtown's lots are the vehicle's.

The Cambridge Mill and the Preston Springs

The Cambridge Mill is the reason for a couple's booking: the 1840s mill on the Grand restored as a restaurant and event venue with terraces over the river, a Sunday brunch that fills, and a wedding calendar that makes it one of the region's venues — the wedding page covers the bridal-party run from Vaughan, and a Premium Sedan covers the anniversary lunch. Langdon Hall, the country-house hotel and restaurant on the city's western edge with its spa and gardens, is the other reason: a couple's overnight in a sedan, the drive home Sunday, and one of the province's dining rooms.

The film locations

Galt's Main Street has stood in for Victorian London, 1950s America and a dozen invented towns; the city's tourism office publishes a self-guided walk of the locations, and Vaughan families whose teenagers know the productions book the walk as the afternoon. The Cambridge tourism site has the walk and the season's filming notices, which close streets and are the reason the chauffeur checks the day before.

The Butterfly Conservatory and the children's day

The Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory on the city's north side is a glass house of tropical plants and thousands of butterflies with an insect gallery and a garden — an hour and a half for a family with children between three and ten, and the reason a Luxury SUV from Maple books a Cambridge day with the market in the morning, the Conservatory at noon and the river trail after; the African Lion Safari, fifteen minutes south, is its own post and the other half of a two-attraction day.

The corporate run

Cambridge is a manufacturing city — the Toyota plant, the aerospace and automotive suppliers, the technology firms that spread from Waterloo — and the corporate account version of this trip is a black car or a Sprinter from a Vaughan office to a plant visit, a supplier meeting or the region's conference hotels, with the black car page covering the point-to-point terms and the vehicle waiting through the meeting.

The route

The 407 west to the 401, the 401 west past Milton to Cambridge's exits — Highway 8 for Preston and Hespeler, Highway 24 for Galt's downtown — an hour from Woodbridge or Kleinburg, an hour and ten from Thornhill. The routing estimate's hour twenty is the no-toll version; the fare includes the 407 and the 401 west of Milton is the one stretch of the day that can slow on a Friday afternoon.

Which vehicle

An SUV for a family's Conservatory-and-market day with boosters at $25 each; a Sprinter for a group with bicycles on the rail trail, or for a corporate delegation; a Premium Sedan for the Mill's lunch or Langdon Hall's overnight.

What the chauffeur replaces

The market morning's lots, the Mill's wine, the rail trail's shuttle — the vehicle at the Paris end when the bicycles arrive — and the corporate visit's rental car. The fare is one number in the booking engine and for a family of four it is a comfort purchase the site prices plainly; for a Sprinter of eight with bicycles it undercuts two cars and a bike rack, and for the corporate run it is an invoice line.

Seasons

Saturday mornings all year for the market; May to October for the river trail and the Mill's terraces; the Conservatory is year-round and the winter's tropical house is the reason a January family day exists; September for the city's Rock the Mill and the Grand's colour. Christmas in Galt's stone streets is a December Saturday's lights.

Pairing it

Cambridge pairs with the African Lion Safari for a children's day, with Guelph twenty minutes north, with St. Jacobs for a Waterloo Region market day, and with Paris and Brantford down the Grand for a river day that ends at the Brantford casino, which is a group's evening.

A Saturday, in order, for a family of five

The Luxury SUV from Maple at 8:15 with boosters; the 407 and 401 to the Highway 24 exit, Galt's market building at 9:20 with the drop at Dickson Street's door; the market's Saturday — the bakery, the cheese, the Mennonite sausage, the children's honey sticks — until 10:30; the Butterfly Conservatory at eleven on the north side, the glass house's heat and the butterflies landing on the children until 12:30; lunch back in Galt on Main Street at one; the Grand's riverside trail from the Mill's bridge south for forty minutes with the river's herons; the Sculpture Garden and the Main Street film-location walk with the teenagers' phones out until 3:30; the SUV at the market building at four; home by five. Nine hours of hourly hire, one number in the booking engine, and the market's Saturday lots never entered.

The rail trail, worked through

The Cambridge-to-Paris Rail Trail begins at Galt's downtown and follows the Grand's east bank south for nineteen kilometres on the old Lake Erie and Northern line — flat, paved, shaded, with the river beside it the whole way and the town of Paris's stone downtown at the end. A family from Thornhill with four bicycles books the Sprinter: the bicycles in the bay, the drop at Galt's trailhead at ten, the family's two hours to Paris with a stop at Glen Morris, and the Sprinter at Paris's trailhead lot at noon with lunch in Paris's downtown after — the shuttle that makes a one-way trail a family ride. The Grand River Conservation Authority's site has the trail's map; the return on the trail is the fit family's option and the Sprinter is the rest's.

Preston and Hespeler

The city's other two towns are ten minutes from Galt and each has its half-hour: Preston's Riverside Park on the Speed with the miniature train and the Preston Springs' history; Hespeler's mill village on the Speed's falls with the Ellacott lookout, the old Forbes mill and the Silknit building's shops — the walk that a family adds to a Galt morning. The Speed and the Grand meet at Preston, and the Linear Trail along the Speed connects the three towns for a cyclist.

Langdon Hall, for a couple

Langdon Hall on Blair Road is a 1902 country house on two hundred acres of forest and gardens on the city's western edge, a Relais & Châteaux hotel with a dining room that is one of the province's and a spa — a couple's overnight from Kleinburg in a Premium Sedan: Friday afternoon's drive, the forecourt, dinner, the gardens on Saturday, the spa, the Mill's Sunday brunch in Galt before the drive home. A return pair, one number, and the hotel's site for the room.

Pickup notes

The 407 and 401 from every Vaughan community; a Woodbridge or Kleinburg pickup joins the 407 at Weston Road and a Thornhill one at Bathurst. Give us the market, the Conservatory, the Mill's reservation, the bicycles and the trail's direction, the seats, and whether Preston or Hespeler is wanted; the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

What the day costs, in shape

A family of five driving to Galt for a Saturday pays fuel, the 407 if taken, three lots' parking and a parent's day at the wheel; the chauffeured hourly day is one number in the booking engine with the toll inside it, and for the family it is a comfort purchase the site prices plainly. For a Sprinter of eight with bicycles on the rail trail it undercuts two cars and a bike rack, and it is the only version in which the family rides one way and lunches in Paris without a second driver. For the couple at Langdon Hall the return pair is the price of arriving at a country house as guests rather than drivers.

The Grand, from Galt to Paris and Brantford

South of Cambridge the Grand widens through Paris — the town at the forks of the Grand and the Nith with its cobblestone houses and its stone downtown — and Brantford, the city of Bell's homestead and the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre, with the casino on its edge that a Vaughan group's Sprinter reaches for an evening after a river day; the Grand River Conservation Authority runs the river's parks along the way, and a chauffeured day that follows the river from Galt to Brantford is the region's version of a parkway drive.

Booking it

Book an hourly day from your Vaughan address with the market, the Conservatory, the Mill's reservation or the trail in the notes; a return pair for Langdon Hall; a black car or Sprinter for the corporate visit; tell us the seats and the bicycles, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Cambridge day