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CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE

Cape Ann Granite Coast

Plan this ride

Recorded distance
32 km
Riding-time estimate
35 min
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis

The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.

Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.

Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.

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Why this ride

Granite headlands, fishing ports and compact ocean bends close to Boston. The road: MA-127 and MA-133. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

  1. 1. Gloucester

    Gloucester claims to be America's oldest seaport, settled in 1623, and the town has been pulling fish out of the Atlantic ever since. It sits on Cape Ann, the granite thumb that sticks out of Massachusetts north of Boston, where the coast is a tangle of coves, boulders and working harbours instead of the long sandy beaches farther south. The bronze fisherman at the wheel on the waterfront, put up in 1925, looks toward the sea with the words about those who go down to it in ships, and the memorial lists thousands of local names lost over the centuries. Sebastian Junger's book The Perfect Storm, set among a Gloucester swordfish crew, made that grief known to the rest of the world.

    Read the complete Gloucester write-up.

  2. 2. Essex

    Essex is a tiny town built on mud and marsh, and it has been building boats for more than three hundred and fifty years. It sits in the Great Marsh of Cape Ann, with the Essex River winding through tidal grass to the sea, and its shipyards launched hundreds of wooden fishing schooners, many of them for the Gloucester fleet just up the coast, using local oak and pine. Today it has a shipbuilding museum, a causeway lined with antique shops and clam shacks, and about fifteen hundred residents, plus a lot of weekend visitors. Manchester-by-the-Sea, a larger neighbour of about five thousand people, lies a few kilometres away.

    Read the complete Essex write-up.

  3. 3. Manchester-by-the-Sea

    Manchester-by-the-Sea is a small town on Massachusetts's North Shore, a place of about five thousand people on the southern flank of Cape Ann, and it has the look of a New England postcard. White clapboard houses, a harbour full of small boats and a stone-walled park on the waterfront give it a tidy, old-fashioned charm. The town was called Manchester until 1989, when residents added the words by-the-Sea to avoid confusion with the New Hampshire city, and the 2016 film that borrowed the name made it known around the world.

    Read the complete Manchester-by-the-Sea write-up.

  4. 4. Back to Gloucester

    Return visit. Read the place description above.

    Read the complete Gloucester write-up.

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