We tested out the newly opened Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, that runs from the border of Acton/Westford, MA to Lowell. It is supposed to come through Acton and Concord, but it is estimated to maybe get there by 2020 .
Anyway, we rode about 4 miles to the beginning from our friend's house and proceeded. The trail was busy, but not too crowded. I am usually dead set against riding on these, especially at peak times like Sunday, but everyone was well behaved. The Westford/Chelmsford portion goes by some nice wetlands, a lake, a beautiful forest, although it is parallel to a main road. There are 2 weird crossings on busy, busy roads in Chelmsford. The first one wasn't bad, but the second one, which I see when I drive to my internship is a mind boggling ride up a sidewalk where the trail ends, pressing a ped. light and diagonally going across the street, getting back on a skinny little sidewalk, and rejoining the trail. It would have made sense to ride along the road and get back on the trail, but you can't do this, as there is a fence. I guess they thought most riders wouldn't go in the street, anyway. We headed on and got to the end, which is in the parking area of the Cross Point Towers on the Lowell border. This used to be the Wang Labs headquarters, where my DH worked when we moved back to MA. So weird.
Heading back, I had to use a loud voice to give slow riders and others warnings, but it worked. Everyone else thought I sounded a little mean, but the people moved over quickly and I said thank you. At the end of the trail, we rode into Carlisle, where we discovered a road that has been in horrible shape for 15 years was repaved. It was at the point where we wouldn't even drive on it! It adds more options to our local rides. From there, we rode to Kimball Farm, where we ate ice cream, since it is closing for the season next week. I shared a kiddie size (chocolate raspberry) with one of my friends, as it is unbelievably huge. Then we headed back; since our car was at our friend's house, we actually rode right past our street and kept going. I was by myself after the ice cream stop, as my DH took off with the male half of our friends and the other 2 women are much slower than me. I made very good time, but I was tired as I got to the final climb. Our ride ended up being 34 miles, which was surprising, since I thought we were just going for a little ride on the trail, which was 18 miles.