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A view of the trail looking north with the Contoocook River running north along the east side. Here the trail is hard pack dirt but we found it easy going. Photo: Paula Bedard.<\/p><\/div>\n
The trail follows the river closely and is very good, especially for a railroad abandoned 75 years ago (hybrid or gravel bike approved)!\u00a0 <\/span>The surface is mostly hardpack with some pavement nearer to Peterborough, but the trail is flat (30-40 ft elevation change over 6+ miles), so the riding feels like downhill both ways.\u00a0 <\/span>The dedicated trail ends after about 6 miles on Summer St., where there is a parking lot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re willing to do some riding on low traffic roads, you can continue 1.4 miles down Summer St. which runs into Depot St. and School St. in downtown Peterborough.\u00a0 <\/span>Here you\u2019ll find the bright green Peterboro Diner, the restored depot with shops, and a used bookstore with walls covered in nature-themed murals.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Colorful murals line the walls of a used bookshop downtown.<\/p><\/div>\n If you explore downtown, you\u2019ll also discover Depot Park, with the Brenner pedestrian Bridge over Nubanusit Brook.\u00a0 <\/span>We enjoyed downtown Peterborough and a picnic lunch in Putnam Park by Nubanusit Brook.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Flower boxes on the Grove St. bridge over Nubanusit brook: in the distance is the Brenner pedestrian bridge.<\/p><\/div>\n https:\/\/www.traillink.com\/trail\/common-pathway\/<\/a> \u00a0 <\/span>and \u00a0 <\/span>https:\/\/www.traillink.com\/trail\/old-railroad-trail\/<\/a><\/p>\n For bolder riders who want to complete the full route, the Common Pathway continues south on Grove St. (see map in link).\u00a0 <\/span>Since traffic can be heavier on this narrow street, you may want to walk your bikes on the sidewalk for three-tenths of a mile south from Brenner Bridge parking lot to where Grove St. crosses Rt. 101.\u00a0 <\/span>Don\u2019t cross, but turn left and follow the bike\/pedestrian pathway around behind the gas station and under the bridge on which 101 crosses the Contoocook river.\u00a0 <\/span>Peterborough\u2019s Common Path Committee has built a very good bike path to take riders safely under Rt. 101, but it requires some patience to follow it.\u00a0 <\/span>The trail runs into the shopping mall parking lot, so follow the perimeter of the lot past the car wash and to the mall\u2019s south exit on Rt. 202.\u00a0 <\/span>Just there you turn left onto the path again running on the railroad bed parallel to Route 202, with a nice tree barrier that isolates the path from the road.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n From here it continues another 0.6 miles where it ends near Cabana Dr. \u00a0 <\/span>At the path\u2019s end, across the street is a privately-owned, beautifully landscaped hillside, with noteworthy stonework. This area is called Noone Falls, and if you follow the parking lot around to the south side, you can catch a view of them before you return.\u00a0 <\/span>We turned around here and retraced our route to the car.<\/p>\n A privately-owned hillside rock garden at the trail’s south end was a nice surprise.<\/p><\/div>\n -Rich Westhoff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We parked at Powdermill Pond 389 Forest Rd, Greenfield, NH, rode west through the Hancock-Greenfield covered bridge over the Contoocook and turned left onto the trail. In early June,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-exploring-nhs-rail-trails"},"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3471"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3560,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3471\/revisions\/3560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nhrtc.org\/nhrtc-core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/20200607_122438-300x225.jpg\")
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