Mass Central Rail Trail. Waltham MA

After leaving off in Belmont, the Central Massachusetts Railroad remnant picks up at Beaver Street in Waltham where Beaver Brook threads through it at several points.

If the Somerville and Cambridge segments are showcases for state of the art linear park sections, the Waltham portions are more mysterious.

Charles River Link Trail Medfield MA.

The southern end of the Charles River Link Trail meets the Bay Circuit Trail after passing through wilds around the grounds of the decommissioned Medfield State Hospital now gradually becoming part of Medfield State Forest.

The trailhead on the eastern side is in Dover just to the north of the Dover-Sherborn Regional High School.

Mass Central Rail Trail : Somerville and Cambridge.

The Massachusetts Central Rail Trail is easily the most elaborate one of the various spoke trail projects underway.

The Central Massachusetts Railroad was a line that aimed to compete as a way to Albany NY. It was discontinued in 1971.

A part of it already is proposed as a segment of the Bay Circuit in the Wayland and 
Sudbury area.

Charles River Link Trail Wellesley MA The Sudbury Aqueduct Part 1.

The Sudbury Aqueduct is a defining feature of the land between its origin in Southborough and its arrival at the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.

The Charles River Link Trail meets it south of Longfellow Pond in Wellesley.

Mystic Link Trail: Medford MA. Medford Square to Lower Mystic Lake.

The Mystic River Watershed curls neatly through the long flow of my memory since birth.

I almost see the ghost footsteps of those who went before me, and my own as a toddler.

Charles River Link Trail: Riverside T Station to Wellesley Hills.

This spoke trail is a close counterpart to Minuteman Bikeway in terms of easy public transportation proximity to great hike options.


It is a subtler thing, though. It's mainly a shanks mare adventure. Wellesley has an exceptional conservation land system. 

The northern trail head is a 20 minute walk from the Riverside T Station along Grove St. in Newton Lower Falls, a sub-village of Newton. The entrance is a charming footbridge. 

On the southerly bank lies Wellesley, a town invented by a banker during the gilded age at the end of the 19th century.

I followed it for a few miles and soon came to a single track segment through a floodplain forest along the Charles before it veers away from the river near Ouellet Playground.

From there, it is a fairly short street traverse before you reach the northern entrance to Wellesley Town Forest.

The forest is particularly well equipped with eskers. This array includes the tallest one I've run across yet at 160 feet.

From the southern end at the Longfellow Pond parking lot, it is a fairly short walk to the Wellesley Hills commuter rail station.

The Charles River Link Trail is an outstanding community effort and runs all the way to Medfield.

Longfellow Pond, Wellesley MA

Bay Circuit Trail: Spoke Trails.

In addition to a fairly outstanding public transportation system to most of the Bay Circuit, there are a number of spoke trail systems either in existence, in various phases of creation or under discussion.

Most seek ways to recycle dormant rail lines into bikeways. Right of way law tends to favor existing holders and many are reluctant to relinquish use potential. A nullified right of way reverts to the original abutting land parcels that gave it substance.  

Despite this, there is considerable interest in turning rails to trails.

In general, I’m discovering that the bicycle constituency is the most focused on the potential to create a trail system that is robust at scale and a counterpart to the road grid.

It makes sense too as bicycles can either serve recreation or join the mode mix in the daily commute. Their increasing popularity in the urban core already makes extensive use of a system that has barely begun to accommodate them.

To this end, any efforts to expedite expansion of the bikeway system are sound infrastructure allocations despite whatever right wing derision may ensue.

It thus follows that Mass Bike has the one of the best and most coherent aggregations of trail way resources out there.

Following the outer arc of the Bay Circuit wheel from north to south, you will find a number of these spoke trails and considerable enthusiasm is applied to them.

Border To Boston begins up in the Amesbury and Salisbury shoulder of the Merrimack River mouth and aims to follow an old rail line through to Boston.

The Mystic Link Trail runs from Boston Harbor to Wilmington in various forms where it nudges the headwaters of the Ipswich and a bit of the Shawsheen.  

                           

Minuteman Bikeway may well the most popular bikeway and is the most direct point of access to the Bay Circuit at a mere 11 miles. It then ties to Bay Circuit segments heading north and west.

The Mass Central Rail Trail passes through Wayland and Sudbury with significant activity underway in Waltham. It begins In Northampton and has been augmented significantly along the Wachusett section in addition to its initial Norwottuck section.

The Charles River Link Trail might be best characterized as part a system rising from the remnants of the old MDC infrastructure with several major focal zones from Watertown to Holliston as befits its meandering wanders. It has a further counterpart in the Upper Charles Trail reaching all the way to Milford.

The Warner Trail heads due south west to Rhode Island while efforts are underway to join it in the east with the Neponset trail system to its mouth in Dorchester.

This growing array of ways to the Bay Circuit provide plenty of options for exploration from the urban core.