If your idea of a perfect Saturday involves craft beer, thick-cut bacon, and wandering a pretty Ontario town at your own pace, Stratford’s Bacon & Ale Trail is basically designed for you. It’s a self-guided culinary tour that covers pork and brewing history across 15-plus participating businesses in Stratford, St. Marys, and Shakespeare.
Here’s how it works: you buy a pass that comes with five vouchers, then choose which five stops you want to hit from the full list of participating businesses. Each stop offers something different, think local brews, beer flights, bacon-forward dishes, and bacon-inspired sweets. You redeem one voucher per stop, and the vouchers don’t expire, so you can spread the trail across multiple days if five stops in one go sounds ambitious.
The cost is $39.55 including HST for five vouchers, according to Destination Stratford. The Facebook post from Destination Stratford listed the price as $35 plus HST, so the final with-tax total lands around that $39-40 range. The trail runs year-round, which means there’s no pressure to squeeze it into summer.
You can pick up your pass in person at Destination Stratford at 47 Downie Street, open Monday through Saturday 9am to 5pm, with adjusted hours on select August Saturdays. If that location is closed, passes are also available at Bradshaws at 129 Ontario Street, Small-Mart at 119 Ontario Street, Werk-Shop at 111 Ontario Street, and The Boathouse at 30 York Street lower level. Hours vary by location and day, so it’s worth checking before you make the drive.
Groups of ten or more trails can contact Destination Stratford directly at 1-800-561-7926 or [email protected]. Gift cards for the trail are also available if you want to hand someone a very solid birthday present.
Worth noting: the trail is non-refundable and product offerings can vary at each business’s discretion, so checking the participant list and individual business hours before you go is genuinely useful, not just fine print.
The trail has been running for over 15 years according to Destination Stratford’s shop page, and it sits alongside the year-round Chocolate Trail and the seasonal Savour & Sip Trail if you want to plan a full culinary weekend out of it.
London to Stratford is under an hour. Is five stops enough, or are you buying a second pass?