Wachusett and Central Hills

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Princeton

   Princeton sits high in central Massachusetts, in the hills below Mount Wachusett, and it feels farther from Boston than the forty-odd miles of the map. The town is a scattering of old farms, stone walls, white churches and woods, and at around three hundred metres it is cooler than the lowlands, with an early autumn and snow that comes sooner and stays longer. A well-known ski area and a state reservation share the mountain, and in autumn the hillsides are among the brightest in the region.

   Read the complete Princeton write-up.

2. 2. Sterling

   Sterling is the Massachusetts town where Mary had a little lamb, and the town knows it. In the early nineteenth century a girl named Mary Sawyer is said to have carried a pet lamb to school, and the poem that followed has made the village a minor place of pilgrimage, with a lamb statue standing in the centre. Beyond the nursery rhyme, Sterling is a quiet, comfortable farm and commuter town of about seven thousand people, set among rolling hills and orchards on the eastern side of the Wachusett Mountain country, with South Lancaster a short ride to the east.

   Read the complete Sterling write-up.

3. 3. Harvard

   Harvard, Massachusetts, has nothing to do with the university of the same name except that both were named for the same seventeenth-century minister, John Harvard, and this town is a very different place: a small, hilly community of orchards, stone walls and meeting houses, about an hour west of Boston, with a population of about six thousand. Boxborough, a neighbour of about five thousand, lies a short ride to the east. The town centre is a classic New England common, with a white church, a library and a general store, and on a quiet morning it feels unchanged.

   Read the complete Harvard write-up.

4. 4. Bolton

5. 5. Back to Princeton

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Princeton write-up.