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CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE

Southern Berkshires Forest Loop

Plan this ride

Recorded distance
97 km
Riding-time estimate
2 h 01
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.

Open this ride in CurveScout

Why this ride

Quiet forest bends, small towns and lake stops south of Pittsfield. The road: MA-23, MA-8 and local roads. 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. Great Barrington

    Great Barrington is the southern doorway to the Berkshires, a town of low brick buildings on the Housatonic River with a tall church steeple, a cluster of galleries and cafés, and mountains close on all sides. Its permanent population is small, but weekenders from New York and Boston swell it every summer and autumn, so that restaurants fill and the main street hums. The Berkshires themselves are not high, a worn-down range of old rounded hills, but they have a quiet grandeur, especially when mist hangs in the valleys at dawn.

    Read the complete Great Barrington write-up.

  2. 2. Otis

  3. 3. Becket

  4. 4. Lenox

    Lenox is a small town with a famous summer name. Tucked into the hills of the southern Berkshires, it grew in the nineteenth century into the place wealthy New Yorkers and Bostonians went to build enormous summer cottages, which they called cottages with a straight face. Edith Wharton built The Mount here in 1902, and wrote some of her best-known work while living on that hilltop. The big estates are mostly schools, inns and arts venues now, and the village centre is neat, white-steepled and a bit self-conscious, which is part of the charm.

    Read the complete Lenox write-up.

  5. 5. Back to Great Barrington

    Return visit. Read the place description above.

    Read the complete Great Barrington write-up.

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