Had another foray to the North Shore today,
73 miles through Arlington, Medford, Malden, Revere, Saugus, Lynn, Swampscott, Marblehead, Salem, Beverly, Wenham, Hamilton, Ipswich, Essex, Danvers, Peabody, Lynnfield, Wakefield, Stoneham, and Winchester. This is an instance of a template that has emerged over the summer: ride the
Bike to the Sea route (Northern Strand Community Trail) outbound, meander up the coast to Wenham, where my daughter has recently moved, fool around riding in some of the adjacent towns with her in the afternoon, then high-tail it back to Arlingon on the Danvers Rail Trail and an odd lot of roads in The Sprawl That Route 128 Built. There are two catches: 1) I seem to be physically unable to start a Saturday ride much before 10, and 2) the days are getting shorter. So some of this took place at night.
Today's ride, templated as indicated, had a few novel features:
1) A brief spiritual pilgrimage to the Medford Stupa; I had a little business of that sort to transact.
2) A preview ride of the not-yet-complete
Revere section of the Northern Strand Community Path, skirting Rumney Marsh. It is quite beautiful, even though the work-in-progress trail surface was challenging to ride. I got my Gravel Grinding merit badge, so that's something.
3) A detour to the
Saugus Iron Works, which turns out to be only a few blocks North of the Saugus section of the Northern Strand Community Trail; once upon a time, antimonysarah (whose systematic research on bicycle routes to the North Shore has been inspirational) had complained about not finding a satisfactory route to the
Iron Works; this one is ok, provided you're running at least 28mm tires to accommodate the crunchy crusty crushed asphalt surface that Saugus put on its segment of the trail.
