Conway is a hill town, one of those small Massachusetts communities on the western edge of the Connecticut River valley where the land begins to fold into the Berkshires. It has under two thousand people, a white-steepled centre, a tiny library and a scatter of farms that tilt across the hillsides, and it feels remarkably far from anywhere. The South River runs through it, and the countryside is a mix of woods, meadows, orchards and old stone walls that were built by farmers clearing the fields.
Not far off is Mount Sugarloaf, a red sandstone butte that rises abruptly from the valley floor near South Deerfield and has a road to the summit, with a viewing tower that gives a long, flat panorama of the Connecticut River winding through its fields. The valley below is some of the best farmland in New England, and the tobacco barns, with their long slatted sides, are the signature of the landscape, a reminder that tobacco, of all things, was a major crop here. Dinosaur footprints, left in the mud of an ancient lake bed about two hundred million years ago, have been found in the sandstone around the valley, and are on display at the Dinosaur Footprints Reservation in nearby Holyoke.
The roads through Conway are small, gentle and a pleasure. They rise and fall through hills and across streams, with long views from the ridges, and they pass iron truss bridges, farm stands and sugar houses, where maple syrup is boiled in March. The best of them, such as Route 116 as it climbs toward Ashfield, wind in broad, easy bends under maples, and are so quiet on a weekday that you may meet more tractors than cars. The surface is variable, with the usual frost damage in spring, and the narrowest lanes have no centre line at all.
Greenfield, twelve kilometres away, is the nearest town of any size, with fuel, groceries and a lively main street, and the smaller villages of Ashfield and South Deerfield have a store or two and a cafe. Conway itself has little for a visitor beyond its quiet, so plan your meals. October is the high season for colour, and the sugaring season in March brings its own pleasures, though the roads can be muddy then.