Bay Circuit Trail: Rowley MA The Rural Rowley Role.

Rowley has a smaller population than its counterparts to the north and south and it has evinced a bit less enthusiasm for the Bay Circuit Trail than might be hoped.

When I visited on a crisp and bright September day on the heels of a newborn Autumn, I was intercepted by a stern but gracious town law officer, who evidently got a call from some other inhabitant about the suspicions spun of me wandering with a camera. 

I waved my print out Bay Circuit crap map kit at him and he scoffed... "Bay Circuit... never heard of it..." while probably weighing my hazard value on whatever scale they use. It was pretty funny considering I was standing on it.

Bay Circuit Trail: Newbury MA The Road to Rowley

Many great basic day hikes for the Bay Circuit Trail are adapted to commuter rail and the southward course of the trail at Joppa Flats works well with the locations of the Newburyport and Rowley stations.

The trail soon meets the Spencer Peirce Little farmhouse, one of the Commonwealth's oldest structures and a fairly unique one in its design.

Bay Circuit Trail: At the Plum Island Beginning, Newbury MA.

The Plum Island trail head in the North at Newbury, Massachusetts is a perfect contrast to its counterpart in Duxbury down South.

The latter is a quiet and sheltered salt marsh cove while Plum Island is one of the more exposed and pounded stretches of strand along the whole Commonwealth coast.