Best Bike Rides: Many Ways to Go

Here’s a 30-mile, figure-8-shaped ride through Connecticut’s beloved Litchfield Hills, featuring orchards, farms, fields, forests, nature conservancies and lake views. You can find the details, and the details of dozens of other routes, easy and difficult, through the state, at Connecticut Bike Routes, a must-have resource for anyone interested in biking here.

Straight and True

One of the prime suggestions from traillink.com is the ride through Air Line State Park Trail, a 22-mile glide from East Hampton to Colchester and back again through an old train line first laid out in 1873. You’ll pass waterfalls, cross viaducts and get a good idea of how the trail got its name – it was part of a straight section of rail between Boston and New York.

All the Way Up

If you get your kicks (and your exercise) from peddling uphill, this guide will help you find fantastic hills and routes from Litchfield to Collinsville and more.

On the Bridle Trail

Several Top 10 lists of rides in Connecticut include the 10.3-mile Larkin State Park Trail that runs between the western Connecticut towns of Middlebury and Southbury, passing small horse farms, ponds, wetlands and streams. You may have to share the passage with a rider on horseback or two, but the feeling is quite isolated and woodsy for the most part.

The Path Less Traveled

If you want to get up by the Massachusetts border and well away from the crowds, you might try a path through Route 20 between Barkhamsted and Hartland, skirting the northern end of Barkhamsted Reservoir and running through Tunxis State Forest, which also offers mountain biking for a faster pace.

Quiet Corner

One of our own favorites happens in the state’s so-called northeast Quiet Corner. Once you’ve been to this part of Connecticut, and specifically in the area defined by the Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers, you’ll understand why it’s been designated as The Last Green Valley. What’s even better is that a nonprofit stewardship organization called The Last Green Valley has come up with a terrific series of biking trips that will take you through the region, with many suggestions for things to see and places to eat and stay as well. One such trip, a 25-mile Canterbury/Scotland Loop, takes you past fields and streams, stone walls and grazing cows, with a stop for refreshments at the Scotland General Store.