Almost 200 miles Not bad for the first ride of the season. Well we wanted to see the ruins of Madame Sherris mansion in Chesterfield, so we got an early start at around 7:30, grabbed breakfest at Garys Harvest Restaruant. Traveling rest on route 9 armed with our directions from the New Hampshire Curiosities book we turned left at the NH liquor plaza just before the bridge entering Brattleboro VT onto Mountain rd, then IMMEDIATELY left onto Gulf rd. You will Gulf roads hard packed dirt road for two miles. If you did it today, you would have encountered several muddy spots along with a forboding road closed sign ( except to local traffic)
Well we travel where mere tourists fear to tread and though we were rewarded with several wonderful views of rushing water plunging off to the side of the road, there were precious few spots that afforded stopping for pics safely, but here is a nice little waterfall right on the side of the road
The nice thing is you can walk right up to this fall
About to miles up and to the right is The Madame Sherri Forest. It is now a 488 acre conservation area.
Pull into the parking lot and you are greeted by this sign ( Lindas shot
Adjacent to the foot bridge is this lovely walled in pond
Follow short trail over the footbridge and you are greeted with the eerie stillness of what is called Madame Sherris Castle
Neat facial image in this pic
The mansion seen from the woods
You can search Madam Sherri online for more detail, suffice to say she was an "interesting" lady. Today one might call here a cougar as it is rumored that she had more then a passing interest in young men. It is also been told that in here heyday she liked to drive her Packard into town during the summer wearing her fur coat, with nothing underneath.
After we left Sherris we lazily headed home first stopping at the Stonewall farm in Chesterfield, which was very picturesque but by that time the uncharacteristic heat of the day was bearing down so we ceased from too much trail exploring
An unexpeted stop for lunch found us at the Pit Stop BBQ in Westmoreland on rte 12. Hunger was thot the reason however, I had reas about this places opening on the Pig Trip website, so I figured we'd spilt a pulled pork sandwich, something small just to truy it out.
Though Linda seemed pleased with her half I was unimpressed. Though snokey, there was little indication of rub and the meat was more chopped then pulled, I found it better suited as stock for either beans or perhaps a chilli.
On the road again, we veered from 12, and onto 123 south, through lovely downtown Drewsville ( blink and it's gone )
123 meanders through Alstead and Marlow before it joins with 9. It is an argicutrural areas so sometimes you just get stuck behind something like this
. and sometimes you will find some very unique things on the side of the road, like this
( thanks to Linda for both pictures. And you will get rustic New England shots like the one below
All told we had a great day and came up just 11 miles short of the two hundred mark
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Nice bike ride thorugh The Monadnock region
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