I went out this morning and finally tackled the Patapsco Heritage Trail--it's the bike route they've mapped out from Ellicott City to the BWI trail, going through Patapsco State Park and then Elkridge. BWI, of course, has a nice bike trail going around it (nearly entirely devoid of random people walking dogs on retractable leashes) that is just about exactly ten miles, so it's great for training. Today I only did the route there and back, taking a slightly different route home than out. My total mileage was 21, so if I start adding on the BWI trail, it'll be a great training route for the metric century. I can even add on the spur down to Annapolis if I get bored (that's about 30 miles round trip, so one loop around BWI, the path down to Annapolis and back, and the trip there and home is just about a perfect metric century).
I was a bit worried about the route through Elkridge--that's an ugly part of the world in general, all built up with huge car parks, tattoo parlors, motorcycle repair shops, chain hotels, railroads, and all of the interstates converging on the area. But the bike route is really nice--all of the traffic stays on the ugly big roads, and this bike route takes a couple of roads that are tree lined and beautiful, at least until you're in the immediate vicinity of the airport. It was a really pleasant ride, in spite of barely making it up the two hills on the route (that's the other good thing about this--it's generally flat!).
1 comment:
Hooray! Lucky you! I'm jealous. I'm going to take my bike out tomorrow, but I won't have anything like as nice of a trail to ride. We crossed over the Silver Comet Trail and followed alongside it for a long while when we were driving back from Georgia to Alabama last week. It was VERY nice -- not a lot of people on it once you get outside Atlanta, fully paved, and 100 miles end-to-end when you count the connecting Chief Ladiga trail in Alabama. I wish I had THAT in my backyard!
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