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Tours, Trails & Group Rides

Basil in the Berkshires

Basil and I took a trip to Williamstown, Massachusetts, recently.  We arrived earlier than expected, so we set out exploring.  Almost immediately, we encountered this building, destined (or so claimed the sign on the side) for conversion to “luxury condominiums”.   They’re “now selling”, but it didn’t look as if there was a lot of conversion action going on.

Which hardly mattered: For visceral eye-appeal, it’s hard to beat ivy on bricks.

Look at that sky!  It was like that the entire trip — just stunningly beautiful.

We took off down the two-lane highway that leads into (and out of) town, cycling next to flowing water virtually all the way.

Small rapids form as the water rushes over rocks and stones in the stream bed, which created a blissful background to the gentle clicking of Basil’s rear hub.  We arrived after Williams College’s 2013 graduation festivities, so there was little in the way of traffic or other human distraction to compete with either the burbling of the waters or the enthusiastic tweets of birds.

We crossed over the water, but not without stopping to admire the bridge, whose railings seemed very contemporary, but whose rusty girders blend organically with the surroundings.  I’m a sucker for the stones of New England, so the supports on either end were quite pleasing to my eye, too.

I’m a northern Californian at heart, but I love the ubiquitous visual pleasures  offered in so many New England landscapes.  Small stone structures, like the one above, for instance, turn up frequently, as do others like this unexpected wall, below, that doesn’t really go anywhere, or define anything but itself.

Basil waited patiently while I hopped the guardrail and snapped a few pictures.

We turned off the highway onto a smaller asphalt road, but that became packed dirt shortly thereafter, and I turned around. The area was rapidly becoming quite rural, and I was more comfortable staying closer to town in this unfamiliar geography.

Our eastern home grounds are lush, but not quite as lush as this part of the Berkshires, at least this year.

Trees are quite tall, and the mountains loom, so shadows form well before evening.

My trusty point-and-shoot was never able to capture any real sense of the scope of the landscape rising all around the area.

But it did capture this island in the stream . . .

We went on to explore town and campus, but that’s a post for another day.