While the trail is said to be the most heavily used bikeway in America, we pedaled easily around the bikeshare-riding tourists and occasional rollerbladers as we passed Chelsea Pier, the new Little Island, the Intrepid aircraft carrier, and other well-known tourist attractions. The busy Westside Highway separates the trail from the residential towers and commercial warehouses, and when we crossed it, the sound of horns and rumbling trucks seemed to be absorbed by the river.
The Hudson River Greenway starts at the bottom of Manhattan in Battery Park, meandering among the promenades of tall apartment buildings with spectacular views of the river and the steep embankments of New Jersey. After biking through city traffic from the brewery where we parked and, of course, later patronized, to the shores of the Hudson River (not for the faint-hearted, but not that scary, really), we began our trek north on the two-lane, almost 13-mile, paved trail. We loved this trail! The combination of parks and water views on one side and the vibrancy of New York City on the other made this one of our favorite rides. Who knew? We headed into Princeton after our ride to visit NJ’s first brewery. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” and New Jersey was once the telecom capital of the country as home to Thomas Edison, Bell Atlantic and shortwave radio farms during the World Wars). (Cheers to this org for advocating for trail access and safety on behalf of users!) We rode and chatted with them for a few miles, learning interesting facts about the area (e.g., in 1938, Orson Welles based the landing of space aliens in a nearby farm during his infamous radio broadcast of H.G. When we erroneously thought we’d reached the end of the trail, a delightful pair of bikers corrected us, one of whom was a Brit who serves as a trustee on the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance. Heading south, where the trail was slightly more rustic and grass grew between the two crushed gravel lanes, we came across a number of families canoeing on the canal. At many of the locks, the water rushed through, but on the long stretches in between, the water was placid and only the sound of wildlife could be heard. We initially headed about ten miles north passing canal locks, stone tender houses, cobblestone spillways (that required us to walk out bikes over), a tunnel, and several wooden bridges. In some places, however, both had been worn away and it appeared to have rained recently, so there were occasional puddles and deep muddy ruts left by bikers before us. Like a lot of canal trails (maybe all of them on the East Coast?), the D&R was unpaved with varying degrees of gray cinder or yellow pea gravel surfaces.
So, there were several stretches where we had water views on both sides. The lake actually seemed more like a wide river that bordered the trail on the left as we headed north, while the canal flowed on our right. We decided to “put in” just outside of Princeton we parked at a Homewood Suites a super-short ride from the Canal at the southern tip of Carnegie Lake. If your only exposure to New Jersey has been a stressful and decidedly UN-scenic drive along the Turnpike, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by this picturesque waterside trail.
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