You Are Here: Knights Hill Nature Park

After a big day yesterday, I was looking for something smaller today, so I decided to check out Knights Hill Nature Park in New London. Double whammy for redlining AMC South as well as the New London Conservation Commission Trails. This area is maintained by New London Outing Club. It was far more rustic than I had originally anticipated, but was well marked and I imagine once Spring really hits, will be well maintained. There was quite a bit of blowdown/debris on the trails, but that is to be expected coming out of Winter. The park is made up of 4 loops, and I recommend grabbing one of the paper maps available at the kiosk to keep yourself right side up. I had to use the maps a lot to make sure I was going in the right direction in order to cover all the loops! I started on Fern Loop which is just a quarter mile and has lots of little markers for trees and plants along the way. Of course right now, nothing is green so I wasn't really able to tell what was what. The loop ended in a field with a field house. Here I crossed the field and did Moore's Loop, another short loop that was sometimes in open field and sometimes through the woods. All was good to this point. Next was C.O.R.E Loop. There was a short spur with a bench overlooking a little pond. Then things started getting rustic. A roughly 1 mile loop, it was very wet and muddy in places, and appeared to be an old road. The maps show a little off shoot loop, which I didn't see at all at first. There was a lot of debris on this trail, which I just chalked up to Winter debris. A lot of the bridges are also rough, but I'm sure will get fixed once cleanup begins. The trail is well marked though, so even in areas where the footbed was covered in leaves, it was easy enough to follow. Once I realized I had missed the smaller loop, I decided to go back around and see if I could see it. The map showed a Summer House, which is a little enclosed bench and the smaller loop not too far past that. I tried using the topo lines on the map along with my digital map to figure out where it was, and did end up seeing it. It was not marked (save one very faded red blaze a little ways in) and a tree had fallen where the trail started.. I followed the best I could, it definitely seemed this section has been abandoned (my path upload looks like I got it pretty well though). Towards the outer point on the loop there was a bench overlooking a little stream. My final loop was Glen Loop, which had the most snow/ice on it for the day, though thankfully avoidable for the most part. There was a large blowdown at the intersection with the short connector to Lyon Brook Trail, which if you weren't looking for it, might miss it until the blowdown is cleared away. There was also another bench overlooking a vernal pool. NLCC loves their benches, and I love them for it! This completed my loop-de-loop at Knights Hill Nature Park. I imagine it's much prettier and more pleasant in the Summer, but I enjoyed my adventure all the same.

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