BCT - Strawberry Hill Road forever

Sunday November 24, 2013

Wheeler lane Acton to Old North Bridge, Concord, 8.5 miles

Started hiking around 10AM finished around 2PM.  Too cold to stop for more than a minute.

Hikers Ted and Larry

Most of this segments photos are from Larry.

Weather was sunny in the low to mid 20's, 20 MPH winds with gusts to 40 MPH

After todays hike total BCT miles completed: 19.3 out of a total of 180. ( I know I was saying it was 250 miles total but if you skip the proposed sections and the alternate sections then 180 miles total seems to be the a better estimate of the real distance. Anyway this way we are more than 10% done. )

We hiked from the upper left corner to the lower right

We started with breakfast at the Trails End Restaurant in Concord with Reges and Sheila. We then left the downstream car at the Old North Bridge. Reges and Sheila drove Larry and I to the start of todays segment on Wheeler Lane, Acton.  On the way to the start we passed one end of Strawberry Hill road.

This segment starts next to this old cellar hole.

The trail runs South West along one side of Nashoba Brook before crossing and then going back the other direction.

We passed by this tunnel in the side of the hill which led back to a small room, there was a sign with info.

Here is todays old machinery photo: a turbine and perhaps a millstone from an old mill site along the trail.

Old Machinery Picture of the Day

After 3.5 miles in the woods we came out on Strawberry Hill Road again.

After a mile and a half on the road we got to walk in the woods some more as the trail went through the Stoneymeade Conservation land.

Coming out of the woods we were back on Strawberry Hill road.  Then it was down College road, to Barretts Mill road. After a while we passed by the other end of Strawberry Hill Road.  A few more miles of road walking past farmland, beautiful old houses and impressive barns.

Along College road Larry spotted some fungus which we had fun stepping on.

Much of the road walking was along the route the Acton Minutemen took on their way to the Old North Bridge where we finished todays segment.

BCT - Old North Bridge to Walden Pond, Concord

Saturday November 9, 2013

Distance from the bridge to Thoreau's Walden Pond house site was about 4 miles then maybe another mile around the pond and back to the car.

Started hiking around 9:30, finished around noon.

Hikers Ted and Larry

Weather started sunny and got cloudy and colder, temp in the high 30's low 40's

Total BCT miles completed: 10.8 out of 250

We hiked from the upper left to the lower right

After a breakfast of homemade Apple Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal we drove to Concord where we dropped the downstream car at the Walden Pond and then headed to Old North Bridge where we parked the upstream car.   The trail then ran across the Old North Bridge.  On the other side we stopped and chatted with a redcoat british soldier re-enactor type about the accuracy of his rifle, "Can't hit anything past 35 yards." was his opinion.

the old north bridge near where we started

After a bit on old railroad bed 'Reformatory Branch Rail Trail" The BCT came out on the road and ran through Concord center.  We just avoided getting hit by a car while jaywalking and continued without stopping for coffee. The trail soon joined the Emerson - Thoreau Amble at the Heywood Meadow.

At one point the trail ran down the driveway of the Concord Ice Company.  This piece of equipment looks like it could have been set up to score pond ice into different sizes.  It now sits on the side of the trail.

Old Machinery Picture of the Day

"To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers ,came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these,being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons,which was the yield of about one acre." 

Henry David Thoreau - Walden - Ch 16 - The pond in winter

The trail passes through the Hapgood-Wright town forest where we passed Fairyland Pond.

The Amble was very well marked. No unplanned trail detours for us today.

Here is the Thoreau House site where we connected up with the part of the BCT we hiked several weeks ago.  That flat slab on the ground behind the marker alleges to be where he built his chimney.

"When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks, being second-hand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them."

Henry David Thoreau - Walden - Ch 13 - House Warming

 View of Walden pond from the house site.