Hawk’s Nest and Upper Delaware · part 3

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Photo stop near Little Silver

   Little Silver occupies a neck of land between two tidal rivers, the Navesink and the Shrewsbury, in the comfortable heart of Monmouth County. It is an old place by American standards, settled in the seventeenth century, and the river shores around it are lined with marinas, big houses and marshes where ospreys nest on platforms in summer. Red Bank, next door, is a lively small town with theatres and restaurants, and it was the birthplace of the jazz bandleader Count Basie, whose name is on the town's grand old theatre.

   Read the complete Photo stop near Little Silver write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Photo stop near Little Silver is where the day begins. Next is Hawk’s Nest and Upper Delaware checkpoint 8.

2. 2. Near Ridgefield

   You finish this ride in the flat, busy heart of Bergen County, New Jersey, between Ridgefield, Moonachie and Little Ferry, only a few miles across the Hudson from Manhattan. The landscape is the Meadowlands, a huge tidal wetland along the Hackensack River that was for decades a dumping ground for trash and industry and has slowly been cleaned up. Today it is a strange mix: warehouses, highways, rail yards and an airport, alongside reed beds, mud flats and channels full of herons, egrets and ospreys.

   Read the complete Near Ridgefield write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Hawk’s Nest and Upper Delaware checkpoint 8. That is the ride. Next is Back to Hawk’s Nest.

3. 3. Back to Hawk’s Nest

   Hawk's Nest, the cliff road along the Delaware, is a long way from here. In the early twentieth century this part of the island was the Gold Coast, where the families of bankers and industrialists built mansions with lawns that ran down to the shore, and F. Scott Fitzgerald lived at Great Neck in the 1920s and drew on the area for the world of Gatsby, with its East Egg and West Egg.

   Read the complete Hawk’s Nest write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 125 km.