Eli Whitney was born in Westborough in 1765, on a farm that still has a roadside marker, and the boy who liked taking things apart grew up to patent the cotton gin. That is the town's grandest connection, and it is a fitting one, because Westborough has always been a place where people made things and then moved on to bigger stages. Today it is a tidy, prosperous town of about four thousand at the heart of the Route 9 corridor, with Chauncey Lake on the western side and the Assabet River slipping past to the north.
The centre has a handsome common, a few old brick buildings, some good independent shops and a church that anchors the view. Nearby is the old Lyman School, the first state reform school for boys in the country, now a cluster of historic buildings, and the sprawling grounds of what used to be a state hospital, now partly redeveloped. The town sits where the Boston metropolitan area frays out into farmland and woodland, and you can feel the landscape changing as you ride west from Hopkinton toward Worcester.
The lanes around Westborough are the sort that connect villages and orchards, rather than ones that go anywhere in particular. They rise over low hills, dip through wet woods, cross brooks on stone bridges and pass the occasional farm stand selling apples in the fall. The surface is mostly good but variable, with tar-snake repairs and the odd pothole, and the roads are narrow enough that you should slow for blind corners. Route 9 and the Mass Pike are busy and fast, and it is better to be off them and on the quiet backroads, particularly on a weekday morning.
Westborough has everything a rider needs: fuel on the main roads, supermarkets, diners and a number of more serious restaurants, and a bakery or two on the common. Northborough, six kilometres to the north, is a similar town with a lovely old centre. The best time is autumn, when the apple orchards are busy and the leaves are turning, or late spring, when the dogwoods bloom and the roads are dry and empty.