This was a trip to France without getting on a plane. We biked less than 150 miles over four days along Canada’s Route Verte in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and Monteregie sections.
The one-word summary: Amazing.
The longer summary: This was a trip to France without getting on a plane.
Continue reading “3 1/2 days biking along Quebec’s Route Verte”This is the start of a five-day bike ride from St. Albans, Vermont, through the Champlain islands, onto Canada’s Route Verte in Quebec and back to the U.S. and the Missisquoi rail-trail to St. Albans.
We’re kicking off a two-nation bike loop with a day along the water.
Vermont’s Champlain Islands, which string through Lake Champlain, are a lovely area to bike in, with quiet roads even in July. We generally stayed off U.S. 2, the main road, reconnecting with it shortly before the causeways that let us hop from island to island. The flip side of that is we didn’t see much in the way of services, beginning with easy places to grab a bite, North Hero excepted, as well as our B&B that has a restaurant. And a supermarket? Didn’t see one. Continue reading “Biking Vermont’s Champlain Islands from St. Albans to Alburgh”
We head to a section of the Delaware & Lehigh Trail to test out our new equipment ahead of a five-day trip to Vermont and Canada.
We’re planning a five-day ride in Vermont and Canada. The route is picked out, the hotels booked — yes, this is credit-card touring. But there’s no support crew … no one to haul our bags from place to place. And I want to bring my carbon-fiber road bike, which can’t handle a rack and panniers. What to do?
A bikepacking class at REI led to buying a bikepacking bag that attaches to the seat and seatpost. My favorite local bike shop suggested some slightly wider tires that can handle trails, rather than my slick road tires. But I still needed to make sure it would all work. And Clive’s new toy is a carbon “gravel-grinder” bike that can handle a rack and panniers, but not unlimited weight.
Time to test out or new setups. A section of the D&L Trail — from Morrisville, opposite Trenton, to Bristol Borough — seemed perfect. It’s a new ride for us, and I’ve been wanting to check out Bristol ever since I binge-watched Hulu’s Small Business Revolution show.
Continue reading “A shakedown ride on the D&L Trail from Morrisville to Bristol, Pennsylvania”Sometimes you just suck it up.
Sometimes you just have to suck it up and ride hills.
We had decided we wanted to ride Bike New York’s annual Discover Hudson Valley Ride. And while we came to our senses and opted out of the 75-miler (with 4,000+ feet of climbing!), the 55-mile route still came advertised with 2,900 feet of climbing.
Time to try something other than our usual. Continue reading “Hills and more hills with Bike New York’s Discover the Hudson Valley bike ride”
I spent part of National Trails Day — June 2 — on the Middlesex Greenway, a 3 1/2-mile trail going through Metuchen, Edison and Woodbridge. Part of it doubles as the East Coast Greenway. It was amazing how many people were using the trail early on a Saturday morning. What a great community amenity— and it’s within blocks of the train station, new condos, downtown and a new supermarket, so really useful for transportation and running errands too.
A group of enthusiastic trail advocates are trying to extend it at either end. This is at the Metuchen end: rails still in place on one side with a rail-free section next to it perfect for a trail. But making that happen means getting Conrail and two rail operators to sit down and talk, and then say yes. One day…
Duke Farms has 7 miles of paved trails plus additional gravel miles open to bikes.
Here’s a family-friendly place to ride a bike that you might not expect: Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ.
This is the estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke, and it was opened to the public in 2012 (before that, it was only open for tours). Not only does it have 7 miles of paved trails (plus more miles that are gravel) that go past ruins of the foundation for the grand mansion that was never built, man-made lakes, the one-time horse barn that comes with a clocktower and much more, but it also has a bike-share system!
It has 80 bikes — a mix of cruisers (with a few gears), adult tricycles, even bikes for kids. So even if you don’t know how to bike, there’s a solution for you. Cost is $5 for two hours, though they hardly seem to be timing the rental.
Note that although it’s called Duke Farms, it’s not a working farm. Nor is it a traditional garden. It’s certainly a lovely place to ride! You can read my take on it here.
Now to find a route that will let me bike there from home. Perhaps the D&R Canal towpath (and East Coast Greenway segment) for much of the way?
UPDATE: We tested out a couple of routes! Read about it here.
This 9-mile trail goes from one end of Monmouth County to the other.
This is my latest New Jersey trail discovery. Well, kind of. I knew the Union Transportation Trail existed, but it was disjointed for several years while being built. The last segment was finished early last year, however, and now it’s a 9-mile stone-dust trail in Monmouth County stretching from the Mercer County line to the Ocean County line.
Today’s weather — warm and sunny — is finally a sign that spring is coming. A great reason to get out and finally ride it from end to end. And back of course. Continue reading “New Jersey’s Union Transportation Trail: A cross-county bike ride”
We explore the Mount Rose section of the Lawrence-Hopewell Trail, sandwiched between two gaps. With a lot of luck, one of those gaps might be closed this year.
Slowly but surely, the 22-mile Lawrence-Hopewell Trail is being built. My understanding is that the section from Bristol-Myers Squibb on Carter Road to a 90-degree bend on Cleveland Road will be built this year, taking the trail off a main thoroughfare that has no shoulder and can be unpleasant, especially if you don’t like riding with traffic. (SEE UPDATE BELOW) Right now, though, there’s only a small section on BMS property before you hit a “trail ends” sign (and then it becomes a private trail to the BMS entrance).
But what’s on the other side of Carter Road?
We recently had a chance to explore it, building on our exploration last fall of a “secret” section in the Mount Rose Preserve. Continue reading “Exploring another section of New Jersey’s Lawrence Hopewell Trail”
It’s easy to spend a weekend biking in the Princeton area.
Time to put some my knowledge about this area in one place. And for those who don’t want to just bike, there’s kayaking/canoeing and walking too.
Princeton, halfway between New York and Philadelphia, is more than the home of an Ivy League university. George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Princeton on Jan. 3, 1777 kept the American Revolution alive. Alexander Hamilton was alongside him, and Aaron Burr is buried in town.
Continue reading “A weekend bike tour around Princeton NJ: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr”Some 320 miles later, another WAY tour is in the books.
We biked a final 56 miles on the East Coast Greenway on Friday and crossed one state line (an unmarked spot between South Carolina and Georgia) to reach Savannah.
The day started with a ride to the end of the delightful (and expanding?) Spanish Moss Trail in Beaufort and ended with — what else — a rain shower while we were grabbing lunch in Savannah.
The route included a stretch on a no-name side path of a trail along the Okatie Highway (maybe SC 170). Nothing scenic but definitely utilitarian, and we encountered plenty of cyclists going the other way. Hey South Carolina, that’s a sign of hidden demand. How about a bit more?
Alligator Alley has a scary name, but in the end I found it not that fearsome. No alligators sighted, for one. Traffic didn’t seem horrible, or maybe that’s because we had a support vehicle behind us. The road surface, though, was pretty awful, and of course there was no shoulder. Let’s see … lowest gas taxes in the nation, so little cash + road where poor people live = low on the priority list?
We continued our habit of riding in packs, sometimes splitting into a faster group and everyone else, in part to make it easier for motorists to pass. In this group, I can qualify as fast. The slower group got a police “escort” for a few miles once we hit Georgia, though from what we heard, he was pretty far in front.
So where did that crazy smell like rotten bananas come from? Is it somehow related to the paper mill we passed in Port Wentworth? The sugar refinery? And wow, those shipping containers piled seven high or more as we passed the port. But sorry, pack riding means skipping the photo ops.
But it means we took the back entrance into Savannah and didn’t really see its beauty. Next year?
Final tally: 320 or so miles in six days, plus 60 on Day 0 and my 70 or so over two days on the Virginia Capital Trail. Given the amount on crud on the shoulders — chunks of blown truck tires, nails, bolts, wood and more (plus road kill), it shouldn’t be a surprise that 13 riders — more than one in three — got flat tires, some more than one. And eight took a spill at one point, also way more than normal. Fortunately I was not in either camp.
One pleasant surprise: I saw very few Confederate flags, maybe one a day. I know we were on main roads for a lot of the time, but we did go past plenty of homes and businesses. And I saw many, many U.S. flags. Maybe times are finally changing.
I’ve now ridden the www from Newark NJ to Savannah, plus 350 or so miles in Maine and good chunks of the route in Connecticut and New York. The truth is that this was the least scenic of them all, given the need to stick with your pack, and definitely more of an assessment of the existing (mostly interim) route. There are definitely prettier places to ride. We saw two touring companies in Savannnah — Backroads and VBT — and those riders do a lot of shuttling and not much riding in their week between Charleston and Savannah. Now that sounds like a gussied-up sightseeing tour.
As for me, do I do the next two rides and reach Key West?
Oh, and the excitement wasn’t over just because we boarded a bus to head back to Wilmington. A hawk hit the windshield and cracked it into hundreds of pieces. Pro tip if this ever happens to you: slow down and buy a big roll of clear tape to hold everything in place. That got us back safely.
One last thing: there was another blogger on the trip. Read her take.
Exploring by bicycle 