Happy New Year! New year, new project.. after 4 years of pretty consistently heading out every weekend, I took a couple months off.. and now it's Winter and I honestly don't have any great desire for crazy Winter hiking. So I'm starting a low key project, close to home and on much shorter, easier trails. Perfect for the season. The town of Barrington has a patch program for hiking the trails covered by the Conservation Commission. I've previously hiked at Stonehouse Pond, but other than that these will all be new to me. To start off, Laura and I explored the A Harlan Calef Isinglass Preserve off Town Farm Road. This is considered the west side of the preserve. There is a parking area about halfway down Town Farm Road with a kiosk. The network consists of 2 trails connected by an old logging road. We were getting a light snowstorm, so everything was covered with a pretty dusting. The Calef Trail starts right behind the kiosk and weaves over to the old logging road. Take a right on the old road and follow that until you reach Beaver Dam Loop off to the left. We took a couple of spurs off the old road which went down to the river. One was marked with a sign but was not on the map, so probably a newer trail, even had a bench at the end to sit and enjoy the view. Beaver Loop was a short trail passing by a marsh/pond area that I imagine has beaver activity in the Spring/Summer hence the name. We followed the logging road to a gate and backtracked. We stopped and explored an old cemetery on our way back. The map references some other points of interest, but we didn't take the time to locate any of those, just enjoyed our first ramble in the woods in a couple of months. Great little network, everything seemed well maintained and we ended up with exactly 4 miles!
Strava Activity
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| New spur trail to the bench at the river |
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| bench along the Beaver Dam Loop |
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| our turnaround point on the old logging road |
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| cemetery along the old road |
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| another spur trail to this pretty view |
