Concord is a town where history is on every corner, and where the great American stories of revolution and literature happen to share a few square kilometres. On the morning of 19 April 1775, colonial militia met British regulars at the North Bridge, an arched wooden footbridge over the Concord River, and fired what Ralph Waldo Emerson later called the shot heard round the world. The bridge, rebuilt, still stands in a quiet park, with a statue of a minuteman, and walking across it on a calm morning is oddly moving. About seventeen thousand people live in the town, with West Concord, a lively village with its own shops and cafes, a short ride away.
For a rider it is a charming, slow stop. The road from Boston follows the old Battle Road through Lexington and Lincoln, with a national park along much of the route, and the surface is generally good, with gentle bends, stone walls and old houses close to the pavement. Traffic is heavy on the main roads and thin on the backroads, and the town centre is busy and parking is restricted. Early mornings and weekdays are the best times, and autumn brings glorious colour on the maples along the river. Fuel and food are easy to find, with cafes and bakeries around the centre.
Concord was also a literary capital. In the nineteenth century, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott all lived here, and the town became the centre of Transcendentalism, a movement that prized nature and independence. Thoreau built a cabin at Walden Pond in 1845 and lived there for two years, and the pond, a deep, clear glacial lake in the woods, is still a place to swim and walk, though car parking is limited and fills early in summer. Orchard House, where Alcott wrote Little Women, is open to visitors, and the writers lie in the hillside Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, on a path known as Authors Ridge. The Concord grape, a sweet purple variety, was developed in a garden here in the 1840s.
The town's natural setting is gentle. The Concord River winds through meadows and marshes, with herons, turtles and dragonflies, and the Great Meadows wildlife refuge is a haven for migrating birds. In autumn the maples around the river turn crimson, and the air smells of leaves, damp earth and woodsmoke. In winter, snow quietens everything.
Bring a layer for the morning chill and allow time to stop on foot. The bridge, the pond and the cemetery each deserve a few unhurried minutes.