Jaffrey sits at the foot of Mount Monadnock, the bare granite dome that rises from the forest of southwestern New Hampshire and has a claim to being among the most climbed mountains in the world. At 3,165 feet it is not tall, but it stands alone above the plain, and the name has even become a geological term for any isolated hill left standing by erosion. From the road, as you approach from Jaffrey Center or from the south, it looks bigger than it is, a grey dome sitting above the trees.
The town has two characters. Jaffrey proper is a working mill town of a few thousand people, with a small downtown and the services you want. Jaffrey Center, a mile or two away, is a classic white-church New England village with a meetinghouse and a burying ground where the novelist Willa Cather is buried. She spent time writing in a cabin near here, and had asked to be buried in the village, which tells you how she felt about the view. Route 124 and Route 202 pass through town, and the roads between Jaffrey, Rindge and Peterborough are good quiet riding: rolling and wooded, sometimes with long views across fields to the mountain.
Nature here is of the granite-and-hardwood sort. Monadnock State Park offers hiking to the summit on well-worn trails, and thousands do it each year, including on warm autumn weekends when the lot fills early. The mountain has been bare of trees since fires that followed early settlement, and the exposed rock gives a feeling of being much higher up. Poets and writers from Emerson to Thoreau climbed it, and Thoreau wrote about it in his journals.
On a motorcycle, the thing to remember is that this is a quiet corner, and the roads around Monadnock reward a relaxed pace. Frost heaves can be large, particularly after winter, and the wildlife, mainly deer and the occasional moose, appears at dusk. Rindge, seven kilometres away, is larger and has more shops and fuel, while Jaffrey itself has a gas station or two and a few places for a sandwich. Early morning in June, when the mist lies in the low fields, or any clear afternoon in autumn, is the best time to be here. By January the roads are snowy and the mountain is white, and the sensible riders have put their bikes away.