Westminster is a hill town with a long main road and a short memory for fuss. It sits on the high ground of north-central Massachusetts, at the foot of Wachusett Mountain, and its villages, ponds and hills have the particular New England look of a place that was farmed hard in the 1800s and has been quietly returning to woodland since. About seven thousand people live here, and the town has a proper common with a white meeting house and a library, as well as a handful of places to eat along Route 2A.
In the nineteenth century, the town and its neighbour Gardner made furniture, chairs especially, and Gardner still calls itself the Chair City, with a giant wooden chair to prove it. Westminster was less industrial and more agricultural, and the old farms, stone walls and sugar maples still shape the countryside. Nearby, the Wachusett Reservoir stores water for Boston, and the land around it is protected, so there are large areas of woodland and clean water that have escaped development. A local brewery has made a name beyond the district, and a ski area on the slopes of the mountain pulls in a crowd in winter.
For a rider, the town is a handy junction. Route 2, the long highway that becomes the Mohawk Trail farther west, runs fast and straight across the north of the town, and from it, the slower Route 140 and the back roads climb into the hills and wind down toward the lakes and farms. The roads are modest in scale but enjoyable, with moderate gradients and long, easy bends through the woods. Frost heave in spring can make the surface rough, and there is a lot of leaf litter in the autumn. Tractors and school buses are the usual obstacles.
It makes a good place to stop in the middle of a loop, for fuel, a meal and a bit of rest. The commercial strip has the gas stations and diners you would expect, serving breakfast all day and the large, sweet doughnuts that seem to be a regional obsession. Gardner, eight kilometres away, is larger, with more of everything, and worth the detour if you want a bigger menu. The best season is early October, when the maples on the common turn scarlet.