While on our way for a weekend in NYC, we decided to stop off in Princeton, NJ to bike a portion of the 70-mile Delaware & Raritan Canal Trail. If your only exposure to New Jersey has been a stressful and decidedly UN-scenic drive along the Turnpike, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this picturesque waterside trail.
This is our home trail. We’ve been riding it together for 36 years and boy, are we sick of it!
Just kidding. Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park is a 45-mile long rail-to-trail that runs through Northern Virginia from Arlington (across the Potomac River from DC) to Purcellville (in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains). It could also be called the Dominion Energy Utility Poles Trail since power lines loom overhead for most of it (and can sometimes be heard crackling with electricity if you stop to listen).
We were excited to explore the American Tobacco Trail, formerly the New Hope Valley Railroad, that runs through North Carolina’s Durham and Chatham counties. It sounded historic and romantic, and we anticipated cycling past old fashioned general stores with carved Indian statues and former tobacco farms and barns.
Not quite.
Twenty miles south of the dead center of Virginia is Farmville, population slightly over 8,000. Its quaint downtown is dominated by the Green Front Furniture company and Longwood College, when, in session, adds another 5,000 to the population. Both times we’ve been here, school has been out, so it has been very quiet.
We’ve ridden the High Bridge Trail twice in the past month, which is surprising since it’s three hours from our home, but it fell along the route of our travels both times. The trail is 31 miles long, with its eponymous bridge spanning 2,400 feet in length and 125 feet above the Appomattox River, making it the longest recreational bridge in Virginia and among the longest in America. (Well, there you go!)
