Tarrytown Croton Reservoir Roads + Hawk’s Nest and Upper Delaware

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Fuel stop in Garden City

   Planning note

   Tarrytown Croton Reservoir Roads is where the day begins. Next is Food stop in North Stamford.

2. 2. Food stop in North Stamford

   Planning note

   Food stop in North Stamford is where this day stops to eat. Next is High point near Sleepy Hollow.

3. 3. High point near Sleepy Hollow

   Planning note

   This is where the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch in Parsippany.

4. 4. Scenic stretch in Parsippany

   Parsippany-Troy Hills is suburban New Jersey at its most typical: office parks, shopping centres and the enormous junction of Interstate 80 and Interstate 287, one of the busiest crossroads in the state. Nobody comes here for the scenery, but it is a useful launch point, because the good roads of northern New Jersey begin just beyond the town limits.

   Read the complete Fuel stop in Parsippany write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Scenic stretch in Parsippany, early in the day. Next is New York / Hudson Valley rides return.

5. 5. Near Califon, on the way back

   This is the valley of the South Branch of the Raritan River, a trout stream that runs clear enough over its stones to keep fly fishermen loyal for generations. Califon itself is a tiny place, barely a thousand people, with an old railroad right-of-way now used as a rail trail and a main street you will cross before you notice it. Long Valley sits a few kilometres to the north, and the hills on its far side belong to Schooley's Mountain, the first stretch of real ridge you meet when riding in from the east.

   Read the complete Near Califon, on the way back write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   New York / Hudson Valley rides return sits at 222 km, early in the day. Next is Photo stop near Yorketown.

6. 6. Photo stop near Yorketown

   Planning note

   Photo stop near Yorketown comes up about 312 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tarrytown Croton Reservoir Roads checkpoint 8.

7. 7. Ridgefield

   Before Hollywood, there was Fort Lee. In the early 1900s the cliffs and towns along this stretch of the Hudson were the centre of American film-making, with studios turning out westerns, serials and melodramas, and serial heroines were filmed dangling from the very cliffs you ride above. The industry moved west for the sunshine, but the story is a good one to carry into the last miles of a ride.

   Read the complete Ridgefield write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Tarrytown Croton Reservoir Roads checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Tarrytown Croton.

8. 8. Back to Tarrytown Croton

   Garden City and Hempstead sit on Long Island's flat middle, far from the Croton reservoirs, in what was once a huge natural prairie called the Hempstead Plains. This was the only true prairie in the east, a grassland of tall grasses and wildflowers that stretched for miles, and nearly all of it has been covered by houses, shops and roads, with only small patches protected. It is a strange thing to ride across a landscape you know used to look like Kansas.

   Read the complete Tarrytown Croton write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

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

9. 9. Fuel stop in Kings Point

   Planning note

   Next is Food stop in New City.

10. 10. Food stop in New City

    Planning note

    Food stop in New City is where this day stops to eat. Next is High point in Montvale.

11. 11. High point in Montvale

    Planning note

    High point in Montvale is the summit of this stretch. Next is Scenic stretch in Fanwood.

12. 12. Scenic stretch in Fanwood

    Fanwood is one of those small, tidy New Jersey boroughs built around a railway station, with a compact centre, tree-lined streets and commuters heading for Manhattan each morning. On its own it offers little for a rider beyond a quiet road and a coffee, but its position at the foot of the Watchung Mountains makes it a useful starting point.

    Read the complete Scenic stretch in Fanwood write-up.

    Recorded stop-planning note

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

    Planning note

    Scenic stretch in Fanwood, late in the day.

13. 13. Near Manville, on the way back

    Manville takes its name from a factory. In the early twentieth century, the Johns-Manville company built a huge plant here in central New Jersey, producing asbestos building materials, and a town grew around it to house the workers, many of them immigrants from Eastern Europe. The plant closed in the 1980s after asbestos was found to be deadly, and the company was bankrupted by lawsuits. Today Manville is a modest working-class borough of small houses and shops, sitting where the Raritan and Millstone rivers meet.

    Read the complete Near Manville, on the way back write-up.

    Recorded stop-planning note

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

    Planning note

    New York / Hudson Valley rides return sits at 666 km, late in the day. Next is Photo stop near Little Silver.

14. 14. 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 comes up about 697 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hawk’s Nest and Upper Delaware checkpoint 8.

15. 15. 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

    The route ends here after 833 km. Next is Back to Hawk’s Nest.

16. 16. 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

    Back to Hawk’s Nest closes the day.