January 15, 2021 - West Bridgewater

Welcome to Susan's Bay Circuit Diary! This blog follows my adventures with my dog Sulu hiking the Bay Circuit Trail.  To get new posts in your inbox, please subscribe (see the little "subscribe" oval above). The rest of the past posts can be found using the little menu on the left.  If you are curious how this all started, go here.

From the red asterisk to the P at Reynolds Landing

After the grim road walking in West Bridgewater last time finding this lovely riverside trail, the Haseotes Mass Wildlife Trail, feels like a miracle. The trail is on a sort of berm with the Town River on my left and marshes on the right. I immediately let Sulu off lead and he enjoyed sniffing and wandering down the trail. Looking at the map, the Town River has a braided path as it wends through the Hockomock Swamp. To the wilderness-schooled eye, the trail is actually kind of dumpy. It looks like it was badly overgrown and a crew came through with chainsaws.  There are stumpy ends everywhere. But there are no roads in sight, nature on both sides of me, and no people, so it's very welcome. It's a relatively new segment of the BCT.

Born to run

“The historical Nunckatessett River, known today as Town River, originates in the largest freshwater wetland system in Massachusetts, the Hockomock Swamp, a protected area of Critical Environmental Concern. The 12 mile Town River corridor is one of the earliest areas of colonial settlement with the first church built in 1651, and the very first inland sawmill and grist mill founded in 1654. The Town and Matfield Rivers converge to form the Wild and Scenic Taunton River, federally protected under the National Park Service.” - Nunckatessett Greenway website

Skim Milk Bridge

One especially charming feature of this .6 trail segment is the Skim Milk Bridge. This website describes it as “dry stone constructed”, but that sells it short.  It’s constructed from slabs of stone. It reminds me of a clapper bridge we saw in Dartmoor in the UK: 

By User:SeanMcTex - Own work, Public Domain, 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=269375

We came off the trail through a suburban backyard, as stated in the guide, and set off onto Forest Street, a newly paved road with the Hockomock on one side and sparsely settled with houses on the other. 

Soon after leaving the woods we came upon the so-called Solitude Stone. I stared and stared at the stone but could not see any writing. Has the stone worn? Was the lighting bad? Am I old? It’s a mystery.

No picture of the actual stone since I didn't realize
what it was until I got home and looked it up.

Although there was no sidewalk on Forest Street there’s very little traffic and it was an easy road walk.

Despite his shaved ears and tail Sulu is easily recognizable as a poodle. A man I passed working on his car said “I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

This section of the trail is sparsely blazed, but there are marks in key places. 

Forest Street turned out to be favorable for seeing birds. I saw a bluebird fly out of someone’s yard onto a telephone wire. That’s a change from the chickadees that I’m accustomed to seeing on the trail. On the way back, I noticed a lot of bird activity by the Town River on Forest Street. I’m terrible at identifying bird calls but they were at least three different species, all non-chickadees. I also a saw a small woodpecker.

It was both sunnier and warmer than I expected today. I wasn’t wearing a middle layer, and wore a baseball cap instead of a warm hat.

1662 Rev. James Keith House

I definitely saw a nicer side of West Bridgewater today. As I came to the junction of Fore Street with the main road I came into a sort of historic district of charming colonial homes.

Canoe Club

The trail guide pointed out the Canoe Club Ballroom on the right and I duly took a picture.  In its heyday, performers like Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller graced its stage. Now it's a wedding venue.

There is also a legacy agricultural district with cattle, goats, and chickens.  On my way home in the car I stopped by and bought some eggs, and said hi to the steer.

A Little Free Library (Ash Street) reassures me that my kind of people live here

An Eagle Scout project is in process here and they
may be responsible for the shiny new sign

I turned around at Reynolds Landing and headed back to the car after a little over three and a half miles.

Larry and Ted. Or possibly Ted and Larry (sorry, guys)

On the way back to the car I met some fellow BCT hikers, Larry and Ted from Arlington. We stopped for a couple of minutes to compare routes and strategies. I could tell they enjoyed meeting a fellow traveler. They have a blog too, but they haven’t updated it lately. From time to time I see someone who I think is a BCT hiker, but these were the first I stopped to ask. They were surprised that I identified them, but it’s not really normal to see people dressed as hikers on suburban streets. One topic I missed was electric cars.  I believe theirs was the Chevy Bolt parked at Reynolds Landing when I turned around.

I took a couple of minutes on my return  trip to explore the War Memorial Park in West Bridgewater on my way back. Although there are war memorials, much of the park is devoted to historic industry in the town. The water flow through the park is incredibly complicated. I think there’s a fish ladder for the herring in there but I couldn’t identify it.

Supposed to be an outstanding feature of the park but congested with debris

Part of a divided spillway

The Town River at Forest Street

Now that I'm a connoisseur of split levels... this is a "side split",
where the split is not visible from the front

This old guy was in his paddock on my way back

I think I surprised a grebe on the wooded trail trail back to the car. At first I couldn’t figure out if it was a bird or a mammal in the water. It was quite shy, zigzagging across the river. I startled it three times from one section of river to the next. It didn’t have a duck profile; the neck was longer and with the head had sort of a little white cresty thing. Then the river bent away from the berm that the trail is on and I couldn’t follow it anymore. Naturally it didn’t match any grebe in the book, but I’m pretty confident about the silhouette.

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