Berkshire Cycling Classic Cyclosportif: 100K Route

64 miles          Challenging         Paved Roads

Start: Lenox
Towns: Lenox, Stockbridge, Lee, Tyringham, Monterey, New Marlboro, Sheffield, Egremont, Alford, West Stockbridge






View to south from behind Tanglewood

Wind intimidates me. I don't like even to listen to it from snug inside my house. Don't like it when I'm hiking outside, or gardening, or cycling. Duly noted. Today I didn't actively dislike it, tried to note it and then let it go, but struggled with it almost the entire route of the 100K Berkshire Cyclosportif, coming up on May 6. The weather reporters tell me it was a fairly steady 20mph; I only know that I was working pretty hard to hold a cadence of 70 and it was energy-sapping.





South County landscape

The route itself is fabulous, very beautiful virtually all the time. It rolls from Lenox south, winding around the smaller towns of southern Berkshire County, passing through varied geography and offering the rider a fair sampling of the rural southern Berkshires. This is pretty terrain, frequently fairly manicured, in a prosperous New England kind of way. Further north, and in the hilltowns, there are wilder, less developed parts of the county, but this is the best known area.

Lenox, the start of the route, is home to Tanglewood, summer residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which plays a big role in driving our tourist-based economy. Though it is  the most prominent of many cultural institutions in the area, there are many more,  mostly seasonal, and the economy and population are radically different summer to winter. Right now towns and roads are still quiet, and will be until June.

View of Stockbridge Bowl from near end of ride

After passing through Stockbridge, where there are plenty of stops for food or water, the route follows the beautiful Tyringham Valley before turning south and climbing over the hill to Monterey. There is a busy section of road on Rt. 23, but it isn't long, and I quickly turned south on Corashire Road, a beautiful short link to Route 57. From there it travels west to Sheffield, before turning back north on Route 41. It is generally flat and rural most of the way, with the only two real climbs: the first  between Tyringham and Monterey, and the second at the very end, from West Stockbridge into Lenox. That one goes past two Berkshire Natural Resources Council properties. You'll see if you click the route map below.

Old barn

In the end I finished with plenty of time to spare, and a new, more specific, goal for the May 6 event. Oh yes, when I learned about the 7-hour time limit to successfully complete the course, I changed my registration from the 138K to the 100K. There is no possibility that I will ride the 138K within that time limit. The 100K, about 64 miles, about 3700 feet climbing is doable for me. Perhaps more gracefully if there's less wind on the day of the event.

Shadbush is blooming, spring is here

Sportif or not, this route is another good addition to my list of County rides, one that I will be glad to ride again. To see a map of the route and cuesheet, click here to visit Ride with GPS.



Back to Berkshire County Rides list

Berkshire Cycling: Stockbridge Loop 1

27 miles     Paved Roads
Start: Berkshire Botanical Gardens, Route 102, Stockbridge
Towns: Stockbridge, Housatonic, Great Barrington, Alford, West Stockbridge 



It's now about two weeks later than the date of my last outdoor ride in 2010, and that was later than in 2008 or 2009. Before that, who knows? This despite the scare thrown into New England cyclists by the Halloween weekend storm. Today is sunny, 50+ degrees, little wind; what more could a rider want towards the end of November? There was a skim of ice on the swamp when I left, but it warmed up quickly.



And there was other news, as good as the weather today. What does this tell you: shopping center parking lots full to overflowing, with merchants providing school buses to ferry people from distant overflow parking. Town centers crowded, with people on the sidewalks and no parking places available. Yes, it must be the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., so called black Friday. Everybody was shopping ... so, happy side effect, no one was on our rural roads ... they were emptier than I have ever seen them from a bicycle seat. I will scoff no more at my culture's love of shopping. Instead, I'll jump on the bike and be glad for open roadways.

I parked at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. This is a fabulous garden, gardens really, in Stockbridge. If you're in that town during the short Berkshire growing season, don't miss it.


Riding south on Rt. 183, I passed both the Norman Rockwell Museum and Chesterwood, a National Trust Historic Site that was home and studio to sculptor Daniel Chester French, probably best known his work on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. It is more than a museum to his work, also hosting resident sculptors and an annual juried show of contemporary sculpture.


The road follows the Housatonic River, and passes through the eponymously named town, where many of the old factories are put to use as galleries, studios, and one very good bakery, Berkshire Mountain Bakery. Worth a stop for bread, including some with chocolate, but unhappily, no coffee.



Turning south on Rt. 7, my ride went through Great Barrington, then turned west on Taconic Street. The traffic in Great Barrington was bearable, because everyone was inside shopping, their cars still on the roadside.


This year's crop of winter berries is abundant,  their bright red colors appearing in wet areas. I followed Taconic Street through Alford, using West Road to West Center, which ends back on Rt. 102, where I turned right into West Stockbridge, then continued on back to Stockbridge


Besides its historic downtown, Alford still has several working dairy farms, a happy fact in a town where development pressure must be intense, given its location in the southern Berkshires (read that: accessible to NYC, Tanglewood and Great Barrington.)


All in all, this made a very nice ride, thought not exactly what I set out to do, it was fun and I saw quite a few other cyclists on the road today.


 Finally, a retraction. I've been wondering if there are any careful readers out there who noticed my writing a month or so ago of my plan to keep fit  by going to the gym on the way home from work, and thought: huh, what's that, her?  Is this the person we know? Well, there was at least one: my brother! So truth be told, no. I came to my senses, lost the illusion, and realized (happily before spending $300 that I will do much more fun things with) that there isn't a bat's chance in hell that I will stop, after work, tired, in the cold dark winter night, to work out in a gym. I don't like gyms. I like the outdoors, cycling, cross-country skiing. So this year, once I can't ride, it's back to the stationary set up. Though I'm thinking of purchasing studded snow tires for the bike, they certainly help the car get around in winter .... hmmmm. Black ice, anyone?

Roads: Rt. 183 south to Rt. 7. South to Taconic Street. West to West Road / West Center to Rt. 102. East to West Stockbridge, then Stockbridge. Click here to see the route, with map, cue sheet and climb  details, on Map My Ride.

Berkshire Cycling: Great Barrington Alford Loop 1 (part 2)

Bike travel, and its easy ability to meander, offers such a sensory experience: the smells and sounds change quickly with the specific surroundings. And it provides a better chance to look at detail than any other form of wheeled travel. Today, in many places along my ride, both the wild apples fallen on the ground and those remaining highlighted against the sky, like ornaments on naked trees are an autumn treat for the eyes and the nose, as they ferment.  I sometimes smell them first, see them second. And sometimes pick one to eat; usually they are wild apples, tart and dry, that make excellent apple butter or cider.

A road called “Crooked Hill Road” caught my eye on the map, so I doubled back to ride across it. I couldn’t spot a crooked hill, though its name is s evocative and it was fun to ride, twisting a little up and down before reaching Rt. 71. The road surfaces have been perfect to ride on, newly paved and very smooth.

 As I neared the Great Barrington airport a small, mustard yellow plane flew overhead, its flat, yellow-ish green color unusual and noticeable. It was a dull yellow, which I saw again as the plane took off when I was next to the runway. Within a hundred yards,  between the mowed cornfields and the road, there were three or four clumps of asparagus, surely left over from an old field, that had been spared the mower’s blade. Asparagus fronds can be just beautiful in the fall. These were almost the same hue as that plane, but not at all dull or flat:  in the late afternoon sunshine they were a luminous, glowing, mustard gold color.

Turning off Route 23, I rode past Wyantenuck Country Club and down towards Route 7. Avoiding Rt. 7 by crossing it and continuing to Boardman makes better riding, but by then I was worried about being late so I turned left onto Lime Kiln Road and when it reached Route 7 turned north. It’s good there is a wide shoulder, because the traffic is fairly heavy, and fast.

Roads:

Start:  Taconic Ave. & Route 7 in Great Barrington

Castle Street to Alford Rd. to Alford

Left  past the Cemetery to North Egremont Rd.

Lef:t North Egremont Rd.
Right: Green River Road

Left: Crooked Hill Rd.

Right: Rt. 71 (Green River Valley Rd.)

Left: Rte. 23

Right: W. Sheffield Rd.

Left: Lime Kiln Rd.

Left: Rt. 7 

Berkshire Rides List

Berkshire Cycling: Great Barrington Alford Loop 1 (part 1)

19 miles               Paved Roads

Towns: Great Barrington, Alford, Egremont, Sheffield, Great Barrington

Parking: Abandoned Fairgrounds, Rt. 7 Great Barrington

The riding here in the southern Housatonic River Valley is generally much flatter and the countryside more developed, with accompanying heavier traffic, than in the hilltowns or north county. This is a good ride if you're looking for something short and flat in south Berkshire County.

Leaving Great Barrington on Taconic Ave., the road climbed very gradually to the west towards Alford with its impressive old cemetery.  Today, many of the family names remain in the area. Alford is third smallest town in the Berkshires, with only about 400 people.

As I neared Alford, the architecture became quintessentially New England: white houses, red barns.  The village of Alford is pretty: its white wooden Methodist church sits on a small hill above the road, with Center Cemetery behind it. The tall, obelisk-like stones are an unusual site in graveyards in the Berkshires, where I usually see only small, simple markers.  This is the historic center of Alford; the town hall is right here also. The town, a farming community,  was settled in 1750 then  in 1769 split away from Great Barrington.  How important farming was to people’s lives here is easy to imagine by remembering the story of Aaron Kinne, a resident of Egremont and preacher in many  nearby towns. The story goes that there was a terrible drought in the early 1800s, and during a sermon he called for rain; the fields were parched, the crops dying. At the end of his prayer he added: “But after all our petitions, O God, we would not presume to dictate, but we would advise.” And actually, today it is … well, white houses, red auto garages, no longer so many red barns. Land prices here are far too high for most farmers, and even those working farms that have been in the family for generations are challenged. Berkshire County is losing its farms, and especially here in South County, which has what is probably the most fertile soil and gentlest climate in the County. At the side of the road there are many signs telling the passer-by the name of the house that sits next to the road: something-something farm, or something-something-else farm. But almost without exception these do not look like farms, or like market gardens. It is a shame to lose so many farms, and with them so much in the way of fresh local food and flavors. 

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