Since first discovering the old New England Riders website many years ago, I’ve grown only more impressed with the quality of the route planning (mostly) by NER routemaster Ed Conde throughout our little corner of the country and down through the Appalachians. It’s now a matter of fact to me (and most NER members) that any time we’re looking for a great day on the bike, I can simply sync up any of the NER day-rides into my GPS and take off for the start location, trusting that the roads will be fun/scenic and mostly isolated, away from busy commercial areas. There will be adequate rest/fuel stops scheduled in, good views or attractions to enjoy, and usually a great lunch spot.

Being a working stiff and still limited by how much time other life commitments allow for riding and recreation, I’ve built up a good number of short riding routes crisscrossing my local area in southeastern Massachusetts. It will never be a motorcycle mecca, but you make do with what you have time for. Riding two hours to the start of an all day ride in western MA or Vermont usually means a similar commute back home at the end of the ride, which isn’t always feasible. Having a similar taste in roads and dislike for traffic as Ed, I’ve worked on finding roads and route segments that provide the same “NER experience”, even if there are more cars and fewer curves.

Ed wanted to fill in the gaps in the areas covered by day-rides on the NER website, to help riders living in those locales have something closer to enjoy, so I was happy to take on the challenge of putting something together for the roads in my back yard.

Picking roads for great rides in the northeast can be challenging when compared to many western states, for example. Out west, many major state or county highways will lead you out into isolated and beautiful scenic country, with mountains, deserts, and curves. “Following your fender” in such places can easily lead to great rides, as the congested areas are few and far in between. In New England, if you want to avoid sitting in traffic and keep moving, it behooves us to scout out (often multiple times) different combinations of side roads, narrow residential streets, and rural sections of state highways to string together. We must carefully manipulate the GPS routes with many waypoints and shaping points to lead riders onto the exact roads and through many turns to avoid the slow areas with strip malls, traffic lights, and congestion whenever possible.

Here are some of the key considerations I’ve picked up for crafting a fun ride for other riders to enjoy, based on conversations with Ed and other NER riders over the years, as well as my own observations of what I like about the NER route plans.

1. Time vs distance. It’s actually more about moving time and total time than mileage, since terrain, speed limits, and time at stops vary so much. For many riders looking to enjoy a day on back roads, an eight hour day is pretty satisfying, which often equates to 5.5 – 6.5 hours ride time, not including stops.
2. Avoid congestion. Nobody wants to be stuck riding through endless traffic lights and mall traffic, holding in their clutch lever. Good routes take the rider away from busy roads and areas whenever possible. Where possible, smart use of right turns  to get through unavoidable congested areas can maintain the flow of the ride and keep the rider engaged.
3. Purpose. Is the route focused primarily on engaging with the bike on curvy roads, seeing attractions, or about taking in beautiful scenery? Often the best rides include combinations of these things, so scheduling key stops in the route can help keep the rider focused on the road while moving. Not every stop has to be taken every time through the route.
4. Fuel/restroom stops. Placed strategically to allow for scheduled stops for bikes with different fuel capacities (or riders with different bladder capacities). Scheduling these into the ride means nobody has to feel like they are holding up a group when they need to make a stop, since the time has already been budgeted.
5. Lunch. There is nothing like a good lunch stop at the right time during the ride to make a good riding day into a great one. The restaurant should be riding apparel-friendly and have easily accessible parking for bikes.
6. Waypoint accuracy. Placing the GPS way points, via points, and shaping points accurately and in sufficient quantity is paramount for ensuring riders end up riding the intended route, especially as GPX route files can be imported onto a variety of devices with different map sets and routing algorithms. Placing points for stops right on the roadway is a good way to allow riders the option of easily skipping the stops they don’t want to make, without having to hit the waypoint or find the skip feature to “shut up the GPS”.

I worked on some different route ideas in my area on and off for a year and a half in my spare time. I’d go out scouting different roads I spotted on the map little by little, trying to string together good combinations of state highways, local roads, and side streets into a flow that would avoid congestion and provide several hours of fun riding with logical stopping points. The new Wampanoag Walkabout ride is the result of a couple of these ideas I had, further inspired by a good route pattern posted by fellow NER member, Jeff Jones that happened to align. It’s a day-long tour that covers a large area of southeastern Massachusetts, with a decent mix of representative road types, vegetation zones, and  topography while avoiding big population centers.

The remainder of this post includes some of my notes and photos of the final couple scouting rides before publishing the “final” version of the Wampanoag Walkabout ride on the NER website in May 2023. Then a brief report on riding it with a small group of spirited-pace NER folks.

---

Scouting ride
Sat Mar 18, 2023
(~142 miles)

Having just a few hours to kill riding today with beautiful weather for mid-March, I decided to do some scouting on the back half of the new SE Mass day-ride I’m planning. I’m still checking on good gas stops and needing to confirm a solid lunch venue as well. I’d been trying for a while to shoehorn one of the Kinfolks BBQ restaurants into the ride, but the Taunton location is take-out only after Covid, and they permanently closed the Easton location for good (after a recent re-opening). It seems they’ve had problems with staffing and food supplies from day one, like many restaurants lately.

Leaving home around 11:30, I zipped south on I-495 to US 44 in Middleborough, to survey the look of the gas station and Dunkin Donuts located there. There’s usually a lot of traffic churning through this large rotary, even on a weekend, and the roads leading to it are straight and boring. I hope to route around this part in my next revision.

I headed north on MA 18 to pick up Plymouth Street heading west. This is a nice long back road without a lot of intersections that parallels US 44 for several miles toward Cape Cod Bay. Before I’ve gone even a couple miles, I come across one of the many cranberry bogs of the region and feel obligated to stop for a photo or two under the steel-gray clouds.

Shortly after, I cross busy US 44 at one of the traffic lights and immediately pull into the big gravel lot of Oliver Mill Park. My intent is to scout out the herring ladder there as a possible stop and stretch break for the ride. I pulled into the big gravel lot and was caught by the beauty of the Nemasket River flowing under an old stone bridge, with remains of an old mill building on a small island reachable by a short footbridge.

This is apparently the largest herring run in the state and seems a great scenic spot to relax and enjoy the sound of the water flowing down in several channels over the ladder tiers. Riders bringing a picnic lunch could have a bite over on the grass or on one of the few benches stationed long the river below the ladder. There were no fish running the rapids yet, but April through June should provide a bit of a show here.

After a nice break, I continued east on Plymouth Rd, which is a fast road with a low speed limit. 😉 Passing is almost a requirement if you come up on any traffic and don’t want to add a half hour to your ride time. So it was a nice smooth and quick ride out to the town of Carver, where I explored threading the needle on residential roads to avoid the major intersections. Finally turning onto Black Cat Road, the real excitement lay just ahead in the form of twisties and whoop-de-whoops galore along the run through Myles Standish State Forest. This early in the season on a cloudy day, I had the place to myself, and made the most of it!

Emerging in South Carver by MA 58, I stopped by the Little Red Smokehouse restaurant, a former go-to BBQ place for this area that is now apparently closed for good. Well drat, there goes that lunch option! Oh well, the word is that they’d been going downhill for a while and my last meal there during Covid had been less than memorable. Still, I will miss that cranberry cornbread.

Proceeding south, I left the state highway for the quieter Wareham Road, leading me under I-495 and through West Wareham to pick up the lovely backwoods Blackmore Pond Road, which parallels I-195 and I’d noticed by chance when first working on routes in this are. There’s one very sharp bend in this road as it crosses Cohackett Brook over a narrow bridge with a lovely framing of long marsh reeds.

Emerging back onto route 58 for a half mile, I dipped south on MA 105 to the next and most likely lunch stop candidate, Brew Fish Bar & Eatery. I’d stopped in here for a meal of delicious fish tacos once before on an earlier scouting run and was impressed with the place, however today they were closed for a kitchen renovation. Signs indicated they’d be opening back up on the 29th, so I’ll have to come back to verify the restaurant still merits inclusion on this ride.

From here I headed west back toward Bristol County, enjoying the roads and water scenery through Rochester, Lakeville, East Freetown, Dighton, and Somerset. In Swansea, both ice cream shacks I’d targeted for the route were still closed for the season. Feeling a bit cheated, I made a short detour south on MA 136 to pick up a pie at Johnson’s Farm Stand, but alas they were also still closed until April… ah well.

More familiar curvy riding north through Rehoboth and Attleboro, making one more failed attempt to secure some dessert (🥧) at Flaky Crust Pies, which had already closed down for the day. 😢  Then it was home after a nice four hour scouting trip – the roads had been pretty clear of sand and salt, and while any riding day in March in New England is a gift, the weather had been perfect for riding, in the 60s.

---

 

---

Final proof – NER public group ride
Sun May 7, 2023
(~200 miles)

With Ed’s blessing, the Wampanoag Walkabout ride was published on the New England Riders website for all to see and use. Wanting to get some additional rider opinions as well, I promptly scheduled another spirited-pace small group ride on the new route, for the day after the NER Meet & Greet. This time, there was some interest from a few more riders and the date was set for Sunday morning with a KSU time of 0800.

We had an absolute stunner of a day weather-wise. I was at the Alltown station well before departure to fuel up and hang out with the others a bit before we rode. I knew Matt (Indian), Jason (Harley), and Tim (BMW) from previous NER events, and we all warmly welcomed Dave (Kawasaki) to his first-ever NER ride. I love the fact that there were five different bike manufacturers represented on a small group ride – that’s the NER way!

I like to give a pre-ride talk when leading a group, but I try to keep it casual, brief and on-point. Basically, we are riding the same roads, but you are responsible for your own safety and making good decisions. In particular, riding at a quicker pace in the northeast requires a willingness to pass slower vehicles, despite the unfortunate lack of dashed-line passing zones.  It’s important that everyone in the group only make passes when it is safe for themselves, and not feel pressure to stay on the tail of the rider ahead. The group will always stop and wait at turns when and if needed, for anyone that gets stuck.

Everyone except Dave had Sena comms units, so we connected via mesh frequency to chat while we rode. Right out of the gate, the riding felt good as we curved and twisted on those back roads over through Plainville. I was able to relax and just enjoy these roads for the first time in a while without thinking about tweaking the route! It was nice to ride with a small group again and hear how everyone was feeling about the different roads and which ones they were familiar with or not. After the initial leg of the ride through Diamond Hill in Rhode Island, we pulled into the WWI park in Attleboro for a stretch and photo break.

The road closure in Foxboro that I’d hit with Ed was now open (legally even), so we enjoyed the uninterrupted riding by F Gilbert Hills SF and began the “travel portion” of the ride east. We zipped through the outskirts of Easton, Taunton, and Raynham, having a great ride and digging the sunshine, spring flowers, comfortable temperatures, and quick pace (where possible). We had another nice stretch break at the herring ladder in Middleborough, though it appears that the flow of fish migrating upstream has tapered off by now. Still a very pretty place.

We made good time on Plymouth Rd out to Carver, making a few passes as needed around the Sunday drivers. After a quick bathroom break at Cumbies on MA 58, we continued on High Street into Plymouth and zigzagged on residential roads around the business areas to Black Cat Road and thence into Myles Standish SF.

The twisty run through Myles Standish was new to a couple of our group. They got their money’s worth for this ride, with hardly any traffic or pedestrians encountered on our spirited run through the hilly woods.

We arrived an hour early for our lunch reservation at Brew Fish, but they had no problem finding us a table. Looks like the patio dining area is all set up for the coming summer season as well. They were still serving the Sunday brunch menu, so one of our party ordered the Maple Cornbread Skillet to share around and we all raved at how delicious it was. Many food photos were taken and posted. My burger and steak fries hit the spot as well.

So far everyone was very happy with the roads we’d been riding and enjoying the quick tempo of the day. The restaurant also earned thumbs-up all around. Shortly after lunch, Tim split off from the group to head home and attend to family responsibilities, while the rest of us continued west through Freetown, Dighton, and down along the Taunton River. We pulled in for a quick break at the Broad Cove view and chatted with a two-up Harley couple who had also pulled in for a stroll.

Simcock Farms, an alternate ice cream venue that I wanted to try, was still closed for the season so we hit the now-familiar Ice Cream Barn for our dessert stop. A great day like today called for chocolate.

While we ate, someone asked if the ride was over now. Oh no, we still have some nice riding ahead to finish out the day, my friends! After enjoying our ice cream, we lit off to finish the day off via curvy back roads in Rehoboth and Attleboro, cutting through Mansfield to our final gas stop in Plainville on route 152. We arrived right about 1600, some eight hours after our departure from Wrentham this morning. The riders seemed well-pleased with the day’s route and experience, which was all I’d hoped for in putting it all together. Let’s see, what’s next?

 

Special thanks again to NERd Jeff Jones for his contribution to this route and of course to Ed Conde for all his work, and being so enthusiastic and unselfish with sharing his routing expertise.

If you are local to MA and end up trying out this route, please let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for improvements!