Wednesday 21 May 2025--An escarpment is a cliff or steep slope separating two level landscapes of differing elevations. The Niagara Escarpment runs some 650 miles, from Rochester, New York, west along the south shore of Lake Ontario, then northward, forming the spine of the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, west across Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and south into Wisconsin. I meander down along the peninsula today, passing through a number of charming small towns that make me think this area would reward a more thorough exploration. Here we have a good view of the escarpment from the vicinity of Wiarton. At Owen Sound, I stop to visit the Tom Thomson Art Gallery. I'm an admirer of Thomson's work; he inspired a generation of Canadian landscape artists.

I'm staying in a small town called Meaford this evening. Dinner is at the Dam Pub Gastropub & Whisky Bar, which has a wall of whisky that would be impressive anywhere, never mind in small-town Ontario. I'm absolutely astonished to see that they have a bottle of Rare Malts Rosebank, a twenty-year-old bottle of twenty-two-year-old whisky from a distillery that closed forty years ago. It's a steal at C$148 a dram, compared to the Port Ellen 4th Release, which goes for C$660. Nevertheless out of my range...I have a bottle of Rosebank tucked away somewhere at home.