Hey folks,
After riding one of the prepared routes at EOM this year, I decided to try and replicate the New Hampshire Covered bridges ride that was organised and led by Nice Rumble last fall at this time. I collected some notes on the ride and was able to download a POI file that had almost all of the bridges in New Hampshire. From that I was able to reconstruct a very close proximity to the NH Covered bridges tour.
This tour is only ~150 miles long, but even the GPS says it will take you 4 1/2 hours (without any stops). If you stop for the scheduled lunch at Diamond Pizza, and at a few bridges for the photo ops, you can easily make a full day ride out of this. The route goes over some state roads, many back roads and even a smattering of well packed dirt road riding just for some adventure.
I just ran the route last Saturday to de-bug it and make sure there were no big surprises. It was quite fun, and the color was beginning to build, so any of the next few weekends should be fabulous.
I am making the route available for download in 2 formats, the files are:
Bridges_1.gpx - Garmin GPX format
and
Bridges_1.gdb - Garmin GDB v3 format
[Edit] Here are some links to a slightly modified version of the above route. In this one I have cut out some of the rougher paved roads and moved some of the VIA points for better GPS flow (so the announcement of via poitns doesn't interfere with turn announcements). This will be the route that we run this year (2008):
2008 NH Bridges Tour.gdb
2008 NH Bridges Tour.gpx
Just right click the above link and save File to your hard drive. Hopefully you will know how to load the files into your GPS already. If anyone needs the route in a different format let me know and I will try and accomodate.
Included in the above files are the POI's I found for the 52 covered bridges in New Hamopshire, so you could build your own Covered Bridges routes if you were so inclined. I'm also going to be building a "Bridges 2" route soon that catches most of the missed bridges up in the northern part of the state, so stay tuned...
[Edit] Adding some teaser pics from my recon mission. This is what you can expect:
This is where it all starts. The Fiddlehead Inn (Cafe) in lovely Hancock, New Hampshire. (I highly recomend the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on toast. They make it on home made bread and the slices are slabs. Yumm-O!! Good cuppa Joe here too.
When you're done foolin' around, head this way down Main Street:
There's a gas stop programmed into the beginning of the route. If you stop there you're guaranteed to be able to finish with out stopping again (assuming you are riding an FJR. If you're riding anything else, you're on your own).
Here's a look at the Carlton Bridge, the 1st on the route:
Bridge #6 (time for a rest)
Onward toward the north... Pavement? Pavement? We don' need no steenking pavement!!
Here' one of the few "Drive By's" on the route. Mostly they are Drive Throughs...
And, the finale... The last bridge:
So here's the deal. You'll drive through or past 12 covered bridges in ~140 miles of back-roads, side-roads and a few dirt-roads (no highways!!) There's even a lunch stop programmed at Diamond Pizza in Walpole, NH. I recommend the Toasted Meatball Parmesan Grinder (sub sam'wich for you non-native New Englanders). You could cover this route in as little as 3.5 to 4 hours if you wanted to hump it. I'd take my time, take some pictures, look around, enjoy the foliage, if I was you. Cause that is exactly what I did...
Enjoy!!
After riding one of the prepared routes at EOM this year, I decided to try and replicate the New Hampshire Covered bridges ride that was organised and led by Nice Rumble last fall at this time. I collected some notes on the ride and was able to download a POI file that had almost all of the bridges in New Hampshire. From that I was able to reconstruct a very close proximity to the NH Covered bridges tour.
This tour is only ~150 miles long, but even the GPS says it will take you 4 1/2 hours (without any stops). If you stop for the scheduled lunch at Diamond Pizza, and at a few bridges for the photo ops, you can easily make a full day ride out of this. The route goes over some state roads, many back roads and even a smattering of well packed dirt road riding just for some adventure.
I just ran the route last Saturday to de-bug it and make sure there were no big surprises. It was quite fun, and the color was beginning to build, so any of the next few weekends should be fabulous.
I am making the route available for download in 2 formats, the files are:
Bridges_1.gpx - Garmin GPX format
and
Bridges_1.gdb - Garmin GDB v3 format
[Edit] Here are some links to a slightly modified version of the above route. In this one I have cut out some of the rougher paved roads and moved some of the VIA points for better GPS flow (so the announcement of via poitns doesn't interfere with turn announcements). This will be the route that we run this year (2008):
2008 NH Bridges Tour.gdb
2008 NH Bridges Tour.gpx
Just right click the above link and save File to your hard drive. Hopefully you will know how to load the files into your GPS already. If anyone needs the route in a different format let me know and I will try and accomodate.
Included in the above files are the POI's I found for the 52 covered bridges in New Hamopshire, so you could build your own Covered Bridges routes if you were so inclined. I'm also going to be building a "Bridges 2" route soon that catches most of the missed bridges up in the northern part of the state, so stay tuned...
[Edit] Adding some teaser pics from my recon mission. This is what you can expect:
This is where it all starts. The Fiddlehead Inn (Cafe) in lovely Hancock, New Hampshire. (I highly recomend the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on toast. They make it on home made bread and the slices are slabs. Yumm-O!! Good cuppa Joe here too.
When you're done foolin' around, head this way down Main Street:
There's a gas stop programmed into the beginning of the route. If you stop there you're guaranteed to be able to finish with out stopping again (assuming you are riding an FJR. If you're riding anything else, you're on your own).
Here's a look at the Carlton Bridge, the 1st on the route:
Bridge #6 (time for a rest)
Onward toward the north... Pavement? Pavement? We don' need no steenking pavement!!
Here' one of the few "Drive By's" on the route. Mostly they are Drive Throughs...
And, the finale... The last bridge:
So here's the deal. You'll drive through or past 12 covered bridges in ~140 miles of back-roads, side-roads and a few dirt-roads (no highways!!) There's even a lunch stop programmed at Diamond Pizza in Walpole, NH. I recommend the Toasted Meatball Parmesan Grinder (sub sam'wich for you non-native New Englanders). You could cover this route in as little as 3.5 to 4 hours if you wanted to hump it. I'd take my time, take some pictures, look around, enjoy the foliage, if I was you. Cause that is exactly what I did...
Enjoy!!
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