Over the last year,
the Bike to the Sea people were reporting progress in upgrading and completing the Northern Strand Community Trail, including paving the Revere and Saugus sections and bridge replacement in the Saugus and Lynn sections. This is great, although a practical side effect of all this road work has been that the Revere, Saugus, and Lynn sections have been intermittently unavailable in whole or in part while the work proceeds. Thursday afternoon, I decided to take advantage of the nice riding weather to do a little reconnaissance on the GT Karakoram, to see for myself what the conditions are.
The first big change I encountered was the paving of the Revere section, at Rumney Marsh. This had been coarse gravel, and while my bikes generally had the tires for it, it was putting off substantial subsets of the user community, e.g., roadies and parents with strollers, two groups not generally thought of in an equivalence class.
Look Ma, no gravel!
Zipping under the Route 1 overpass on fresh pavement; the owls are not what they seem..
Rumney Marsh at low tide, mostly mudflats.
I continued on into the Saugus section of the trail, and was pleased to discover that it has retained its charm as a cool, green tunnel, but with the stone dust surface replaced with pavement.
As before, the urban forest gives way to the flats of the Saugus River estuary, now served by a paved path.
The old bridge over the Saugus River has been replaced, but is not yet open. Two inquisitive kids explore it anyway. When work is finished, this will open the way to the Lynn section of the trail.
Everybody's riding to see the new bridge. When they arrive, detours are discussed.
Meanwhile, in Revere, tidal inflow recharged the Rumney Marsh.
This is a good year. Multiple rail trails are getting there. The riding environment should evolve considerably over the next six months.
rod