Bikepacking Vermontshire: Part 6
October 01, 2024
For this year's bike tour, Meg and I rode our ATBs from Littleton, New Hampshire, in a loop around Vermont, and back to New Hampshire. Along the way, we checked out some new spots, and visited some old favourites. We connected it all with a collection of class 4 roads, singletrack, dirt roads, and -- occasional -- pavement.
On the sixth day of our journey, it rained again.
Despite our dry equipment under the lean-to, spirits were low. Given the intensity and length of the rain, we rerouted from our original sprawling dirt-and-class-4-road plans to instead use the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. When it's insanely wet out, better to stick with the maintained options. Better yet, stick with the option that includes a coffee shop that makes some of the best pastries in Vermont.
So we headed downhill to the rail trail. Unfortunately, Meg soon realised that her front brake pad had finally worn down far enough, thanks to the grit and water of the past 24 hours, that it had lost almost all of its stopping power. Unfortunately, over the past few days, we had already done most of the adjustments that we could reasonably do with our multitool. Anything else would be really difficult (and not at all fun) in the rain. So we proceeded along the rail trail, Meg limping along with a single usable brake.
Several soggy miles later, we rolled into the village of Hardwick. Fortunately, on our way into town, we spotted a brand new bike shop: Riverside Cycles. We opted to skip the bike shop for the time being, preferring to warm up at Front Seat Coffee first. A few pastries and some espresso later, I took Meg's bike over to Riverside for a brake tune-up with some proper tools (and a roof). I am happy to report that they were incredibly friendly and capable. Despite not stocking compatible pads for Meg's weird Japanese brakes, they were able to dial the brakes in.
After successfully warming ourselves with pastries and coffee at Hardwick, we took the rail trail up to Greensboro Bend. It remained extremely rainy, but fortunately the rail trail makes the miles go by quickly.
At Greensboro Bend, we headed up a paved, but very quiet road to Greensboro. There, we stopped at the general store for some lunch, and headed down the road to our final Vermont Brewery: Hill Farmstead.
We relaxed at Hill for several hours, people watching and enjoying the vibes. Before long, the rain stopped. We grabbed some noms from the food truck (a lobster roll truck, of all things!).
At closing time, we picked up a four-pack of one of their many excellent beers, and headed over to our HipCamp: Broadfork Farmstead, for our third stay with Carol in the last five years.
We had an excellent chat with Carol when we arrived, special thanks to Carol for sharing all the insider details about the ongoing Greensboro Town Hall debate (in summary: certain folks in town don't want to use the old Town Hall for anything, let alone turn it into housing for middle class people; we all collectively felt that if you don't want the middle class to live in Town Hall, you should probably fix the zoning laws to allow people to live on less than twenty acres next to the town limits). We each took a refreshing outdoor hot shower, cleaned the worst of the muck off the bikes, petted some cows and goats, started a campfire, and relaxed in the last bits of -- get this! -- sun (!!) that peeked out from the clouds as the day waned.
We enjoyed our remaining snacks and Hill beers over the fire as darkness fell over the farm. The geese quieted their honks. The cows stopped mooing. The goats stopped being weirdos who stare at people from elevated surfaces.
We crawled into our tent and conked out, enjoying being dry, well fed, and warm, and even moreso looking forward to the promise of no rain in the next day's forecast.
Curious about the epic conclusion of the story? You can now find it in part 7.