Hi there,
European here, sorry in advance for any weird misconceptions, tightfitting lycra and bright colors in this post (and on the road). I have found the information that you guys provide here super helpful. Please excuse me for picking up this thread again and milking you for more information. Also, apologies for the length of this post.
I am looking for a bike route from Sherbrooke, Quebec (about 100 miles east of Montreal) to New York. We're going to go North to South, but planning-wise, I am trying to patch together a route from NYC up north...
It's going to be my wife, our ten year old son and me. We have about three weeks. We are used to multi-week travelling by bike, but we are not a very fast crew. On a mostly flat profile, we would comfortably do around 50 miles per day. We can ride harder, but if I schedule 70 miles of hilly terrain for several weeks, my wife might dispose of me in a New England lake (with a bicycle tied to my feet...). We much prefer rail trails, bike paths and quiet country roads and are willing to take quite some detours to avoid busy roads. and to find a brewery. As a family, we try to avoid riding on the shoulder of more or less busy highways. We can do some altitude, if we have to, but again...several days of intense altitude and the lake&bike treatment beckons... We can handle gravel very well. Single track is ok, as long as it is not too steep/technical.
When researching the route between NYC and Montreal, you invariably stumble upon the Empire State Trail -
https://empiretrail.ny.gov/map. Going south-north, that trail seems to fit our ticket quite well between NYC and Albany - Yorktown Heights, Brewster, Hopewell Junction, Poughkeepsie, New Paltz, Kingston... that seems to be mostly on dedicated trails/ bike paths. Between Kingston and Albany, the route seems to be on-road mostly, but still ok. North of Albany, the Empire Trail doesn't look that great...from Mechanicville to Hudson Falls it seems to be mostly on Highway 4. Going north from Ticonderoga, the route seems to stick to 9N, which, from the looks of street view , does also not look like a road that fits our preferred mode of cycling.
Also, sticking to Lake Champlain makes sense for a straight shot to/from Montreal, but we are set to start in the vicinity of Sherbrooke, so further east...
Thanks to mdxix, I have found the information on the Western New England Greenway (
https://wnegreenway.org/) the Vermont section (sticking to the eastern side of Lake Champlain) seems preferable to the Empire State Trail sticking to the western side of Lake Champlain. Stll, there seem to be some more or less busy roads. And again, this is north-south and ideal for Montreal-NYC, but we might enter Vermont somewhere around Newport....
I have also found the "VTX" gravel route on bikepacking.com (
https://bikepacking.com/routes/vtxl/), which, by crossing Vermont from the northeast to the southwest, would fit quite nicely directions-wise...and it seems super scenic and nicely off-the-highways, but a total of 30k feet of climbing would again...yes, probably pond and bicycle. Honestly, that route leads over Stratton Mountain and I don't need that. If there were a slightly tuned-down version of this route....
So, I'm a bit lost and maybe you guys can help me. I have some questions but feel free to pitch in with some general observations as well:
1) Is my assessment of the stretch from NYC to Albany correct or too rosy? BikealiciousBabe seems to imply that Poughkeepsie is "not nice" - but maybe that doesn't refer to the trail I am talking about?
2) MDXIX recommends taking the Western New England Greenway from Norwalk, CT, up north. as the more scenic route. More scenic than 9W, I guess, but with the Empire State Trail having been improved in the last couple of years, wouldn't the stretch from NYC to Albany also be quite scenic? I mean, it seems that sticking roughly to the Hudson, there seems to be quite a lot to see and do... wrong assumption? I guess for an avid road biker who doesn't mind sticking to the shoulder of a not-super-busy highway, other options might prevail over the Empire State Trail, but with the abovementioned family set-up...
3) Any good recommendations for a bunch of quiet backroads which try not to accumulate as much altitude as the VTXL between Albany, NY, and Newport, VT?
4) How about cycling up the Hoosic river from Mechanicville/Stiwllater to Pownal/ Bennington? From there on I could decide whether to follow (a) the Western New England Greenway to, say, Burlington, thus skipping some bits of HW 4 (but paying in altitude) or (b) trying (parts of) the VTXL / bushwacking our way through Vermont....
5) The Missiquoi trail from St. Albans to Richford (
https://www.traillink.com/trail/missisquoi-valley-rail-trail/) might also be an option to cut east/west from Lake Champlain in the direction of Sherbrooke. Anybody any experience how well that trail links up to Sherbrooke or Newport?
OK, as you can see, I'm spending way too much time with planning this trip. Many thanks in advance for any help and guidance from your side.
Cheers
John