PEDALLING ALONG THE HUDSON RIVER
Four days of cycling — a soulful self-propelled journey to Manhattan
Life may be about the journey — unless you’re on a bicycle trip to New York City, in which case the destination is pretty interesting, too.
Our journey took us through rolling hills and waterfront villages along the historic Hudson River, a waterway staked out by early British and Dutch settlers, celebrated by painters and writers, and once an important shipping link between the Great Lakes and the East Coast.
It was also a forgotten river. As big industry took root in upstate New York, the Hudson became its convenient sewer. Only in the past 40 years has there been a crackdown and a cleanup of PCBs and other pollutants, after activists such as the late folksinger Pete Seeger brought the river back into the public imagination.
Today, the Hudson is a playground for boaters, and the once-grim waterfronts of many small cities and towns are now home to restaurants, cafés and boutiques.
The lower Hudson Valley, between Albany and New York City, is a popular getaway for the urban crowd in Manhattan, whose spending helps propel the dining and shopping scene, and keeps more than a few richly appointed B&Bs in business.
This, we decided, would make for a comfortable itinerary on the road to the Big Apple: Cycle for a few hours a day along the scenic country roads, then relax with a good meal and a sleepover in a restored, grand home at night.
We’d leave our car at the train station in the city of Hudson, south of Albany, and bike right up to the door of our hotel in midtown Manhattan, about 225 kilometres away. Four days of modest pedalling.
Impromptu stops are part of the fun when you’re on a bike. On our first day cycling, en route to Rhinebeck, we stopped for a bathroom break at New York’s first public school, built in 1791 and now a church, in the town of Clermont.
Later that afternoon, we happened upon Bernard Greenwald, a retired art professor, painting by the side of the road. It’s Greenwald’s favourite spot to paint.
“I like the juxtaposition of technology and the pastoral. Usually, there are sheep, and a dog barking. I love the road and the cars zooming by,” he said.
When, at the end of our first day of cycling, we arrived at the Looking Glass B&B in Rhinebeck, we were happy to ditch our bicycles on the wraparound porch and go by foot to explore the village’s historic downtown.
Cari Meltzer has seen an increase in the number of cyclists who’ve come to stay since she took over the B&B in 2005. Most are from Manhattan.
“But they all do what you did. They park their bikes and walk to town — similar to what they’d do if they came by car,” she said.
After breakfast the next morning, we set off for Fishkill, about 55 kilometres farther down Bike Route 9, the designated cycling route we were following on the trip.
The sun was stronger and the terrain hillier, making for a challenging ride. After passing through Hyde Park, and right by the famed Culinary Institute of America (reservations strongly recommended), we stopped for lunch in downtown Poughkeepsie.
Because we got an early start the next morning, we took a detour into picturesque Cold Spring. There’s a long descent into town — which meant a long ascent on our way out. But there was a big reward coming up: the view of the Hudson River as we crossed Bear Mountain Bridge.
Built in 1924, the bridge was, for nearly two years, the world’s largest suspension bridge — until Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge stole the record. We were now 67 kilometres north of Manhattan.
Of course, when we were admiring the view, we had no idea that the most demanding part of our bike trip was just ahead.
As we left the Bear Mountain region, Bike Route 9 began to narrow; there was virtually no shoulder for cyclists. The Bike Route 9 sign directed us off the road and onto a path through the woods. As the path became bumpier and overgrown, we wondered if we had made a mistake. But after several kilometres of this, the path led us back onto a paved roadway, with the familiar Bike Route 9 signs.
It was only a few more kilometres to Haverstraw, our destination for that day. Despite its proximity to the Hudson, Haverstraw remains a working town that is only beginning to shows signs of gentrification.
One sign is the Bricktown Inn, where we stayed. This red-brick mansion dates back to 1868, when it was the home of a wealthy brickyard owner. We were tempted to linger over breakfast at the Bricktown Inn, but we had places to go: Manhattan was 45 kilometres away. According to our map, this was going to be our toughest day of hills.
We did a lot of uphill pedalling to reach Nyack where we stopped for a break at the Runcible Spoon, not realizing it was a cyclists’ hangout. All the sandwiches on the café’s “hubwich” menu are named for bicycles. The Schwinn has sausage, egg and cheese; the Bianchi, bacon, egg and cheese.
Before the terrain turned seriously hilly (and we had to walk uphill), the road that took us out of Nyack was one of the prettiest of our trip. On one side was the Tappan Zee Bridge, crossing a broad swath of the Hudson; on the other, lavish homes with lavish gardens.
As we left New York State, we climbed nearly 170 metres onto the New Jersey Palisades. Soon, we saw signs for the George Washington Bridge, now 15 kilometres away along a flat, fast road.
And by the time we took the tunnel that led us onto the pathway on the bridge reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, we forgot all the hills we’d sweated over during the last four days. We even forgot that detour through the woods near Bear Mountain.
I felt as proud as an Olympic medallist when I biked over the bridge. And though we’d seen the Manhattan skyline before, it looked especially striking off in the distance.
Those skyscrapers were still well south of us, along with our hotel on 36th St.
Thank goodness for the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, a 51-kilometre path around the island of Manhattan for cyclists and pedestrians.
We biked another 15 kilometres along the river before exiting the Greenway at 33rd St. Because traffic was heavy and there were road repairs going on, we walked our bikes the last few blocks to the hotel.
But pulling up with our bicycles in front of a Manhattan hotel was almost as satisfying as arriving at the George Washington Bridge.
We spent the next two days being typical tourists — visiting the Metropolitan Museum, jogging along the elevated High Line park on the West Side, checking out the Chelsea Market and lining up for frozen yogurt and creme-brulée doughnuts.
Two mornings later, we packed our bikes into the hotel elevator and biked over to Grand Central Station, where we purchased bicycle permits that allowed us to take our bicycles on the Metro-North commuter railroad as far as Poughkeepsie. Because Amtrak does not allow passengers to bring their bicycles on board, we parked our bikes in Poughkeepsie, took Amtrak to Hudson, collected our car and returned to Poughkeepsie for our bikes.