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, my wife and I took a “socially-distanced” bike ride with a couple of friends on the 8.5 mile long Peterborough Old Railroad Trail and Common Pathway. We parked at the boat access lot for Powder Mill Pond on Forest Road in Greenfield. Our ride started at the trail’s northern end, passing through the Hancock-Greenfield covered bridge over the Contoocook river.
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.
The trail follows the river closely and is very good, especially for a railroad abandoned 75 years ago (hybrid or gravel bike approved)! 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. The dedicated trail ends after about 6 miles on Summer St., where there is a parking lot.
If you’re 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. Here you’ll find the bright green Peterboro Diner, the restored depot with shops, and a used bookstore with walls covered in nature-themed murals.
Colorful murals line the walls of a used bookshop downtown.
If you explore downtown, you’ll also discover Depot Park, with the Brenner pedestrian Bridge over Nubanusit Brook. We enjoyed downtown Peterborough and a picnic lunch in Putnam Park by Nubanusit Brook.
Flower boxes on the Grove St. bridge over Nubanusit brook: in the distance is the Brenner pedestrian bridge.
https://www.traillink.com/trail/common-pathway/ and https://www.traillink.com/trail/old-railroad-trail/
For bolder riders who want to complete the full route, the Common Pathway continues south on Grove St. (see map in link). 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. Don’t 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. Peterborough’s 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. The trail runs into the shopping mall parking lot, so follow the perimeter of the lot past the car wash and to the mall’s south exit on Rt. 202. 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.
From here it continues another 0.6 miles where it ends near Cabana Dr. At the path’s 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. We turned around here and retraced our route to the car.
A privately-owned hillside rock garden at the trail’s south end was a nice surprise.
-Rich Westhoff