It was a beautiful spring day today -- high temps close to 70 degrees -- maybe we even made it into the 70's. (Currently, at 8:00pm, it's 60 degrees.) So, we decided to take our first bike ride of the year. We thought about throwing the bikes on the bike rack and heading out of town.... but in the end, we decided to take a ride around Boxford instead. Glad we did!
To start, we headed down Herrick Road to Glen Forest Road. Glen Forest isn't a through street, but a neighbor who lives on Glen Forest pointed out to me that there's a right-of-way that goes across the small piece of woodland that separates Glen Forest from Balmoral Road. In typical Boxford style, the right-of-way lands you in the middle of someone's driveway. We took Balmoral Road to Old Farm Road and back out on to Herrick. Then we took the next right onto Sheffield Road; took Sheffield to Main, and turning left on Main, found our way to "The Lane":
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| The Lane |
"The Lane" is one of Boxford's many conservation areas. Like much of the open space in Boxford, this area has a long history. The land around The Lane was originally owned by the Peabody family -- Captain John Peabody being the first schoolmaster in Boxford and also a town selectman. The Lane, and the "fairy ring" that it leads to, are directly across Main Street from the summer home where the Lord family (more recent owners of some of this land) would "summer" back in the early 1900's. They would take the train up from Boston, and reside in Boxford for the duration of the summer months. Hard to imagine that now!! I recently received the most recent edition of the BTA/BOLT newsletter which included an article on some recent clean-up work that was done to this property and I wanted to check it out. I found the area transformed! In particular, the removal of brush and poison ivy allowed the beautiful old stone walls to be visible in a way they weren't before.
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| Dry Stone Wall by The Lane |
Often there are beautiful Belted Galloway cows in the Pingree field that you can see just beyond the stone wall in the photo above. There were none there today, but here's a photo I have of them from last year:
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| Belted Galloways in the Pingree Field |
From The Lane, we peddled on along Main Street to the intersection with Middleton Road. As is often the case, a flock of wild turkeys was hanging out in the Haynes Field. For some reason, they seem to love that part of town, where Main and Middleton intersect. Back in 2007, the town bought 75 acres of land behind and around the Haynes Field for $3.2 million. Most of it was to be open space, although there were also plans to build ball fields on some of the land. That plan ran into some problems when it surfaced that due to the extensive wetlands contained within the 75 acres, it's not clear how the ball fields can be accommodated. I wonder what has happened to those plans? I understand there was considerable opposition from some abutters who were concerned about the removal of up to 20 acres of trees for the ball fields, which they were concerned would increase the likelihood of flooding. There has been no flooding this spring, since we have had almost no rain in March and April, and we had an almost completely snow-less winter. Still, we decided to head to Mill Road to look at the water levels on Fish Brook. We took a right on Middleton and then, a mile or so further along, took a left onto Mill Road and stopped on the bridge at the Mill Pond.
In spring 2010, there was widespread flooding all through Boxford after we received a record 11.5 inches of rain in a single 24 hour period. Fish Brook became a raging torrent. I remember going to the mill pond around that time and water coming off the weir was completely horizontal -- there was no drop at all!
We left the Mill Pond and headed to East Boxford Village. Sometime soon I will do a post on the barns of Boxford Village. In addition to some wonderful old, historic barns, there are a couple of newly built barns right in the center of the Village that are just beautiful. Just outside the Village, took a right on Depot Road (where that train station used to be!) and then, after a mile or so, took a left on Boren Lane. Frankly, this is not one of my favorite streets in Boxford -- the houses are mostly very run-of-the-mill 80's "trophy homes". However, there is a trail that leads from Boren Lane down to Lowe Pond. Like so many trails in Boxford, this one isn't the easiest to spot -- it's just a break in the trees, right after #40 Boren Lane. There is a BTA/BOLT green arrow if you look carefully. (Pick up the BTA/BOLT trail guide for more info on finding "hidden" trails like this!)
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| Lowe Pond |
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| Beaver lodge on Lowe Pond |
Perhaps this is due to beaver activity, which was pretty obvious a various spots around the pond.
After our stop at Lowe's Pond, we headed back along Boren Lane, across Georgetown Road to High Ridge Road. This is one of my favorite streets in Boxford. Very suburban, yes, but so different in feel from a street like Boren Lane. Well-sited houses that are clearly well designed. I believe that most of the houses on High Ridge were designed by Royal Barry Wills or architects from his firm. What makes these houses "work" unlike so many more recent suburban colonial houses? Proportions I think has a lot to do with it. Wills was a stickler for good proportions. Most modern "trophy" homes see to value size over everything else. "Make those dormers bigger, even if they don't really fit the scale of the rest of the house!!" We stopped at a house on High Ridge that is currently up for sale:
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| #66 High Ridge Rd |
This isn't my favorite house on the street, but there is something likable about it. I believe this one was designed by Merton Barrows, who, like Royal Barry Wills, was an MIT educated architect. He joined the Royal Barry Wills's firm in the 30's. He designed several houses around Boxford (one of my favorite Barrow houses is 22 Herrick Road). The low-slung siting of this particular High Ridge house (#66 High Ridge) strikes me as quite unusual for New England. Its ranch-like feel seems mid-western or even Californian rather than New England. It's on the market right now -- and has been for quite a long time -- more than a year. Current asking price is $745,000. According to Zillow, in Dec 2005, this house was worth $960,000. The last time this house was sold was in 1995 when the price was $433,000. Therein lies the story of many houses in the metro Boston area!
We cycled to the end of High Ridge, catching views of Four Mile Pond through the trees, and from the intersection of High Ridge and Herrick, it was a short ride back home. Total distance cycled: about 8 miles. A very short distance for such an incredible variety of sights! If you wanted to do this bike trip for yourself but need to drive to Boxford, you could park your car at the Wildcat parking area on Herrick Road (just down from the intersection of Herrick and Ipswich Road) and take off from there.
