Albany, Craftsbury, Barton and Glover
9/31/24
This is a really beautiful ride, with farmland, mowed fields, high elevation with amazing views and patches of forest along the way.
This is one of Chris’ favorites! He says, “This is the most beautiful ride and we did it in the rain! We are definitely going back to do it again on a sunny day.”
Even though the route starts on a little side road in East Albany, it ended up that we didn’t have a good place to park, so we found good parking off the edge at the corner of Centebar Road and Barton Road, and we started the ride going northeast on Barton Rd.
We soon passed an old school house complete with a “Superior School -Vermont” license plate on it with a date of 1861! Then we found a beautiful view looking northwest. It was a rainy day, so Jay Peak was obscured in clouds.
We rode for miles in Albany with little elevation change, on Barton Road to Stevens Road. Great views along this high elevation road. At the end of Stevens Road was Lake Parker Country Store. It looked popular, but we didn’t go in.
This ride swings in along Lake Parker, located in West Glover, which is a beautiful freshwater lake that is over one mile long and about a half-mile wide.
We headed south on Parker Road past Lake Parker, and it started to rain pretty hard. Climbing up Beach road was next, through the forest, and the rain let up. Andersonville Road led to S Albany Road, which headed north in the corner of Craftsbury township.
Heading north of S. Albany, the scenary was great, good views and not too much elevation change.
In S. Albany, we saw a store named Hinterland Market. We checked that out, and found it to be a unique shop with kitchenwares, clothing and art, and “homemade” baked goods, produce, canned goods for sale. We highly recommend stopping in when you ride by, you may find what you want.
Then we came to Centerbar Road, it started out as a normal dirt road. Then it turned left and changed to a class 4 road, with quite a bit of downhill pitch. It was raining again, pretty hard. The Centerbar class 4 was a pretty good road, for a class 4, no worries about biking that class 4
We popped out on Barton Road again and headed east a short distance back to the truck. In spite of the lousy weather, it is obvious that this is a very nice ride! We will do a repeat someday.
writeup by Chris Leister
