AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Tucked into the curve of the Otonabee River in Peterborough, the Trent University Nature Areas are a sprawling, free-to-wander wilderness stitched straight into a working university campus. Roughly 1,400 acres of forest, drumlins, meadows and wetland are laced with more than 30 kilometres of nature trails, making this one of the most strikingly scenic campuses in Canada and a favourite outdoor escape for locals as well as students.↗
Eleven separate nature areas connect across the Symonds Campus and along both banks of the river, with routes that link up to the Rotary Greenway Trail toward Lakefield and back through Lock 22 at the Trent Canal. Hiking, snowshoeing, birdwatching and cross-country skiing all happen here; benches look out over the water in every season; and the river itself is the unbroken thread that gives the whole landscape its character.↗↗↗
A university built around a river, not the other way around
When Trent University was founded in 1964, the planners made a deliberate choice: keep most of the land wild. Today about 60% of the university's holdings are protected as natural and green space, and the Nature Areas are the public face of that commitment. Visitors quickly feel the difference between this and an ordinary campus park — the trails sink into mature maple-beech forest, climb low glacial drumlins, skirt beaver-influenced wetlands and run right down to the river's edge, with the academic buildings only glimpsed through the trees.
