Exploring Litchfield

I'm on a Litchfield County kick.

The northwest corner of Connecticut has loads of dirt roads. Loads. I've poked around a bunch of them in western Litchfield towns - the ones most easily reached from Metro North's Harlem line - New Milford, Kent, Sharon, Salisbury.

On Wednesday, I took my first stab at the towns further east - Roxbury, Washington, Morris, and the town of Litchfield. Much goodness.

I started out in Brewster, NY. 8:15 am, 25F... coldest day of the fall so far! Headed east into CT. Eventually... East Flag Swamp Rd - yeah! Transylvania Rd - double yeah! Old Mt Tom Rd... need I say more?

I made my way north to the first possible folly of the day: Old Forge Hollow Rd, in Litchfield town. My paper map showed a dotted line (ie unimproved road) connecting through - to more unimproved roads, of course! Google Maps showed a dead end. Should be interesting...

Lo and behold, Old Forge Hollow Rd does continue north, but in truly unimproved fashion!

I was riding the Red Bike with 'cross tires, but didn't have time budgeted to see this adventure through.

I headed south to explore my next potential folly: Tunnel Rd in Roxbury... through the Steep Rock Reservation. Same result: lovely dirt road that gets wild after a couple miles. Back I went.

Last folly of the ride was unforeseen. I bounced down Battle Swamp Rd to Judd's Bridge, which crosses the Shepaug River... or used to.

Uh oh. 

I peeked through the construction gear - it didn't look good. As I was taking out my map to find a detour, a construction worker appeared.

"Can you balance?" he asked. "Sure!"

He threw my bike over his shoulder & proceeded across one of the beams spanning the river. I put on my cleat covers & followed. 

Balancing was not hard. The tricky part was, you got a little bounce with each step. The beams were not bolted down.

Back on the bike, it was 20 more glorious hilly (mostly paved - boo!) miles to my train ride home from Pawling, NY.

Roxbury & Washington are my new favorite towns. I'll be back!