Spend some of Mother's Day with some of your best friends!
The Best of Ipswich ride features wonderful cycling roads and beautiful views from downtown Ipswich with a great mix of historic sites, state forests, cycling along the Ipswich River, farm lands and scenic ocean vistas. It's also a great early spring ride offering many distance options that fit wherever you are at in your mileage training and great for new riders.
HERE ARE THE ROUTE DESCRIPTIONS:
EXTRA SHORT (19 miles) heads west to go through Bradley Palmer State Park, rides around Appleton Farms on Highland, Goodhue, Waldingfield and County Rd (Rte. 1A), nice local roads of Hamilton, over to Argilla Road before returning through the historic district of Ipswich.
SHORT (26 miles) adds the Great Neck loop to the "extra short"
MEDIUM (39 miles) PROVIDES A TOUR OF IPSWICH INCLUDING URL LINKS has a quick in and out at Bradley Palmer to see the estate (that you can choose to skip) and by-passes going through Bradley Palmer by staying on scenic Asbury Road to pass the Patton Homestead (yes, General Patton), adds a short trip to Essex, then off to the Crane Estate (and Crane Beach if you wish) before continuing back to Argilla Road, you have a chance to stop at Russell Orchards twice then off to Great Neck then back through the Ipswich historic district.
LONG (50 miles) is the "medium" plus about 13 scenic miles through Topsfield including Perkins Row, past Mass Audubon's Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, the Topsfield Linear Common rail trail and Linebrook Rd. After re-crossing Rte. 1 it takes a right on Brookside then a left on Perkins (avoiding a tough part of Ipswich Rd) before heading back to join the medium on Asbury Road.
EXTRA-LONG (60+ miles) adds 10 miles to the "long" in Topsfield. With a left turn onto Rte. 97 this by-passes the rail trail for a solid climb to begin about six miles in the Topsfield hills including incredible farm views then through town for a nice loop before returning to the other routes.
