Mount Greylock and Northern Berkshires

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Williamstown

   Williamstown is the kind of New England college town that looks as if somebody drew it for a calendar: a white-steepled church, a village green, red-brick college halls, and a ring of wooded hills all round. Williams College, founded in 1793, is the heart of it, and the Clark Art Institute, with a fine collection of Impressionist paintings, makes a good rainy-day stop. The town sits in the north-west corner of Massachusetts, a short hop from the Vermont and New York borders, and it is where the Berkshires begin to climb in earnest.

   Read the complete Williamstown write-up.

2. 2. Adams

3. 3. Pittsfield

   Pittsfield is the biggest town in the Berkshires, and for a rider it is mostly a useful hinge: an old mill and manufacturing city of forty-odd thousand people sitting in the broad Housatonic valley, with the hills of the Berkshire plateau pressing in on both sides. General Electric once ran its transformer works here and gave the town its working-class backbone, and the downtown still has the long brick blocks and the wide Park Square to prove it. For a motorcyclist, that means fuel stations on every approach, plenty of places to eat, and no fuss.

   Read the complete Pittsfield write-up.

4. 4. Back to Williamstown

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Williamstown write-up.