Plainfield, Groton, Marshfield
7/30/23
23 miles / 1,622 elevation
Wow, what a ride! This was our hardest ride to date. It was supposed to be a fun and relatively easy 20 mile, 2 hour ride with nothing but downhill for miles and miles at the end. It turned out to be a grueling slog in washed out terrain through severe flood damaged forests and roads that took more than 4 hours.
Because of the Flooding of 2023, most of the more backwoods sections of this ride through Groton State Park were totally washed out, with the roads completely destroyed, forcing us to carry our bikes through deep gorges where culverts had been, or over boulder fields that had, until recently, been relatively smooth gravel roads.
Once these washouts are fully fixed, this will be THE lovely ride we imagined and we will try to come back in a few years to see, but wouldn’t recommend this ride right now. We will keep you posted.
This route starts in downtown Plainfield. We parked at the Food Coop, but on the way out of town we rode past a commuter lot that would have served nicely for parking as well.
From the co-op drive we turned left and headed up a hill, and out of Plainfield to the northeast. This early riding is on a public town road and smooth as a baby’s bottom with little signs of washout. The roads had a lot of loose sand on them – a lot more than normal, it seemed. It was scenic, residential, and a bit of a climb. Soon we turned left on Holt, getting more rural with each mile- ending up on the Class 4 connection to Groton State Forest.
The end of this road showed evidence of severe flood damage, but also had been rather quickly repaired by a solid man on his Kaboda tractor. He had incentive, he said, since his was the last house on the left. While challenging riding, because of the loose gravel and stone, it was still easily bikeable.
We stopped and chatted with the Kaboda tractor guy for a bit, and tried to get a read on the road situation ahead. Surprisingly, he hadn’t heard anything about the almost complete devastation just a little ways through the forest from him. So recent!
Next we came to a beaver dam and we had to walk our bikes along the rim of the dam while trying to not get our feet completely drenched. We saw lots of flood silt and flattened grass in the field just below the dam’s rim, more evidence of flooding.
The road started out ok, but then got very bad and mostly not rideable. Because of the flooding, all the topsoil was gone and what used to be pristine forest trails had eroded down to stone sublayer. There was no riding on it. This went on for quite a distance – trying to ride the tiny rim next to these completely washed out roads, then getting off to walk through boulders, then finding a surviving grassy track to ride for a few feet, then walking again. On and on like this in a very slow pace through very damaged terrain.
However, neither of us were prepared for the boulder field at the end of this road. We did a ton lot of what Chris likes to call, “hike a bike.” Walking alongside it, wheeling it along, while you try to pick out some footing. Or sometimes picking it up and carrying it while scrambling over rocks. It’s always an accident lurking to happen, for sure.
Anyway, after exiting that terrible, horrible, no good road, we crossed 132 to a mucky woods trail that connected us quickly to the Cross VT Trail – taking a left onto the trail, a wide and smooth gravel pathway through an old RR bed cut-through, overlooking lake Groton at times. The Cross VT Trail, where it was mostly smooth sailing for biking (but sometimes not- because the XVT was also severely damaged as well) back to Plainfield.
We arrived late, dirty and hungry so it was a perfect time to end our day at Positive Pie in Plainfield, where we had a great vegetarian pizza!
