Bikepacking Vermontshire: Part 7

October 02, 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 seventh day of our journey, the sun returned.

We woke up at our cosy campsite in Greensboro and breathed a sigh of relief. I know it sounds silly, but knowing we had an entire day of riding before us with sunlight and no water pouring from the sky was a huge motivator.

We packed up the campsite, and set out for our first repeat business visit of the trip: Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick.

It's just too good a coffee shop, and Carol tipped us off about a brilliant pastry that they make better than just about anyone in Vermont: the Kwisatz Haderach Lisan al Gaib Chappa'ai, no, for real it's the Kouign-amann (pronouced 'Queen Aman'). Interestingly, we discovered that we've already had one before, at, of all places, Big Dave's of Conway, NH. And we very easily might have encountered one back in Denver, a city whose pastry scene is disproportionately dominated by Kouign-amann.

Anyway, it was delicious. If you ever find yourself at Front Seat, check it out. We got a ginger one; like all of their ginger menu items, it was the perfect blend of herbal and spicy.

After stocking up on fatty pastry calories and caffeine at Front Seat, we headed south, toward our next potential campsite, or possibly just home if we felt motivated or Vermont's crappy weekend campsite reservation policy got in our way. For reference, we booked every other campsite (save the primitive ones) weeks or months in advance. But we couldn't book a campsite for this night because Vermont State Parks requires a two-day reservation for weekends. And, despite being perhaps the most popular state in the country for bikepackers and bicycle tourists (just ask anyone who lives along the Gravel Growler route), Vermont State Parks still do not provide any kind of guaranteed walk-in no-parking sites for bicycle tourists. Because apparently nobody in the entire bureaucratic State Park chain understands that sometimes weather, mechanical failures, or simple distance prohibits bicycle riders from 'just finding somewhere else to stay'. Remember: when you don't need a parking spot, you can basically set up camp anywhere on a patch of 50 square feet of flat-ish grass. Not all campers need a picnic bench, or a fire ring, or any other amenities. Some of us just want to sleep!

We followed a lovely not-quite-class-4 road south from Hardwick to Cabot, rising gradually through the trees for hundreds of feet. Suddenly, we popped out of the trees and the road flattened out to classic smooth dirt. And wow! The views were pretty incredible. From this perspective, it was easy to tell why our first two days of riding were so brutal: all of the land south of Groton is nothing but hill after hill after hill after mountains. Truly some awfully lumpy country.

We descended down the hill in the blazing sunshine, only rerouting once due to an allegedly 'closed road' (is it actually closed? we may never know; there are a lot of abandoned dead 'road closed' signs in Vermont). And soon we entered the town of Cabot. Unfortunately Cabot is a lot less exciting than you New England cheese-lovers might imagine; I'm pretty sure Cabot Cheese Factory is the only business in operation there, making 'cheese factory tour' essentially the only activity you can do there. So we rode on, past the giant Cabot cheese trucks, past some highland cows, towards the lumps in the distance.

For lunch, we swung by an old favourite: the Marshfield Country Store, home of the [The Hot, Instagrammable, FOMO, Zoomer, Calzone, nearby Meg's Favourite Waterfall. This time, we only ordered a sub, and naturally picked up a four-pack of Alchemist's Heady Topper to-go. We did have to refrigerate that sandwich, after all! An older Vermont man complimented Meg's Brooks saddle; we bonded over a mutual love of desiccated animal carcasses.

After the Marshfield Country Store, the miles sped by incredibly quickly. Here, we rejoined the XVT trail (that we took at the beginning of the first day of our trip) at a point a little deeper into Vermont. From the south end of Groton State Forest almost all the way into Montpelier, the XVT follows, not a rail trail, but an old railroad bed. Which is basically the same idea, but it dates a few decades further back than the first US rail trails, and the state of Vermont has all-but given up maintaining it, and parts of it still allow car traffic for some bizarre reason.

But all of those details are mostly immaterial. What matters is that, despite the lumpiness of the terrain, the old railroad bed keeps grades at or below 3%. So we sped along at 10mph or more, way faster than our average speed on rolling dirt roads or singletrack, let alone crazy class 4 roads.

At one point, we were astonished to find a (fit and young-looking) guy driving a BMW SUV with Massachusetts plates down the trail at about 2mph. Followed by two off-leash dogs. He didn't acknowledge us in any way, let alone give us extra space or reign in his dogs. I can only assume he lost a bet, because walking your dogs on a beautiful day via car in Vermont is truly pathetic unless you actually have some kind of handicap.

A few miles into the old railroad bed ride, we stopped at a beautiful spot in the woods to split the first half of our lunch sandwich.

At this point, we agreed; instead of fighting Vermont's bureaucracy over staying in a campsite for only one night, we could just push on the remaining 40 miles into New Hampshire and sleep in our own bed. Even better, we didn't have a good option for dinner in Groton (it is a state forest, after all), so if we made it home, we could have dinner in our town, which actually has restaurants.

And so the race was on. We rolled along the old railroad bed at blistering, record speeds, determined to make it home to a warm bed before dark.

The rest of the old railroad bed in Groton was kind of weird. A couple of miles after our lunch spot, the flood damage was quite serious. It became immediately obvious why we didn't see any other bicycles on this trail: the ruts created by flooding were just too deep for most bikes. Fortunately our rigs are set up for class 4 roads, so we mostly rolled right through the damage. But in a few spots, even we had to walk or carry the bikes over several foot deep cracks in the earth. Crazy to see the difference from just two years ago, when the trail was full of people riding normal bicycles, including even a baby in a trailer pulled behind a bike.

We were even more intrigued when we came to a road crossing, and saw a 'trail closed' sign draped along the gate that blocks cars from using the trail. The sign faced opposite us, but we never saw any 'trail closed' sign when we entered the trail from the North end. So we kept cruising along the trail; if the state can't even bother to mark every entrance, and we're fully capable of riding down the trail, and we don't plan on suing the state if we get hurt, who cares?

We met only one other person on the whole trail: the guy who complimented Meg's Brooks saddle at the Marshfield Country Store! Turns out, his name is Jay (like the peak), he lives up in Burke, and he's a great conversationalist. We exchanged diner recommendations, and he got a hearty chuckle out of our name for the big-box store side of Littleton (Biggleton, if you're wondering). Jay, if you ever come across this post, I hope you had a lovely vintage boat ride down on Winnipesaukee. We hope to see you at the Coffee Pot in Littleton some random day; maybe we can convert you from the Littleton Diner.

After parting ways with Jay, we soon came to yet another camping area in Groton. This one actually uses the Old Railroad Bed as a road connector between campsite culs-de-sac, which has the pleasant side effect of ensuring repairs to the railroad bed from flood damage. We took advantage of the campsite bathroom, conveniently located right alongside the old railroad bed, and sped on, heading for the half-railroad-bed half-paved-road hybrid section of the XVT.

I feel ambivalent about this section. On one hand, the old railroad bed sections are really nice, and make up the majority of the ride. On the other hand: 302 is a truly awful road experience. The speed limit is 50, which means most cars go 60 in VT. The shoulder is large, but has a lot of random debris on it. And worst of all, it's loud as hell, because everyone drives huge trucks with poorly maintained mufflers. Fortunately, heading South on this section makes most of your ride downhill, toward the Connecticut River (which divides Vermont and New Hampshire). So at least we moved quickly.

We crossed into New Hampshire with the sun still high above the horizon. Only a few cars tried to murder us in the half mile of road between the border and the Ammonoosuc Rail Trail, so I consider us lucky. And then we found ourselves on a (vaguely uphill) 20 mile rail trail ride home. We didn't see any other bicyclists -- just a side-by-side (twice) and a father-daughter duo riding an ATV. We took one quick stop to eat the other half of our sandwich. We met a guy in Bath with a really cool house in an old rail station along the trail, who informed us that his pet caboose was celebrating its 100 year birthday this year.

Just as the sun slipped behind the mountains, we saw the lights of Biggleton and knew we were home. We cruised along the last couple of miles to Littleton, guided by our ever-present motion-powered dynamo lights, and immediately bumped into some friends crossing the pedestrian covered bridge into town.

A stop at Wildbloom, the best damn brewery in New Hampshire, followed by Schilling, the former best damn brewery in New Hampshire (but they have food), rounded out our trip, making this officially the Vermontshire Bicycle Beerpacking Route. The beer and food were well-deserved after a 60+ mile day with thousands of vertical feet of climbing, but catching up with our local friends was priceless.

Did you think the trip was over? Not quite! Check out part 8 for the epic epilogue to our tale.