It has been a couple of years since I have finished my Best Bike Rides Philadelphia book. Since then I try to do a couple of rides a year in or around Philly. It is one of the more bikeable cities there is and has a lot of good trails and bike lanes. One of the rides that didn't make the book was a long ride from north east Philly to Center City and back. I tried to do this ride two times last year but got rained out both times. Because of traffic I will only do this ride on certain weekends when I know the traffic won't be bad. So this year I scheduled the ride again for the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.
Although the weather wasn't perfect it looked like the rain would hold off so we went for it. I had 5 people besides myself. Laura, Ron Ken, Dave H, and winter Larry. We started from Pennypack park and did this route. The first scenic stop was Bryn Athyn Cathedral before continuing our way towards center city. We wound our way through Jenkinstown and through some of the nicer neighborhoods eventually reaching the Valley Green Inn in Wissahickon Park. The Valley Green Inn was built before Revolutionary war and is still in use today for parties and weddings. This is a pretty area and was our second scenic stop.
From here we climbed uphill to get out of the Wissahickon valley then dove our way into Manayunk. This is a busy area so we had to deal with traffic. Once a year there is a bike race in Philly and one of the main features of the course is the Manayunk Wall. It is a steep climb that maxes out at an 18% grade but it is very short. So while we were in Manayunk we went up the wall. It's really not that tough a climb because it is short. There are much harder climbs out of Frenchtown but it was cool to say we road up the wall.
We stopped for a break in Manyunk although it took us a couple stops to find a good place. From Manayunk we headed into center city and road along the Schuylkill river. They have a good trail along the river but what is even better is that they close the road to traffic on Saturday and Sunday so we road along the wide open road.
For a scenic view of the city I took the group up to Belmont Plateau where you get a good view of the Philadelphia skyline although it was that great because of the overcast skies rolling in. Our next scenic stop was the steps of the Art Museum before heading past the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. There was a lot of traffic here but the bike lanes make it passable. Part of 6th street was closed so I had to take everybody down a one way street the wrong way but luckily there wasn't a lot of on coming traffic.
Our last scenic stop was Penn's Landing for a view of the Ben Franklin bridge and the Battleship New Jersey. From hear we headed back north along Aramingo and Torresdale avenues for most of the way back. These are busy roads through some of the more blue collar and industrial neighborhoods. It wasn't pretty or interesting but the dedicated bike lanes made it a quick safe way back. The only problem was by this time my bike had developed a gear problem. The chain would skip every 3 or 4 strokes. I tried a few adjustments but nothing seemed to help. I was still able to ride so and shift so we kept riding although is was really annoying. After I got home I traced the problem to a stuck link on a chain I just had replace so I will be bringing back in for a new chain.
The last 9 miles of the ride was along the Pennypack creek. The creek is surrounded by a beautiful park and has a well maintained paved bike trail. There were a couple of puddles and left over mud from storms of the previous week but it was a nice way to end to ride. It was a real contrast to the busy streets we had just been on.
The final distance was 55 miles and although there were no real tough climbs we had climbed over 3000 feet of little rolling hills. This isn't a ride I would do a lot but it was a nice change of pace.
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