March 22, 2021 - Old Town Hill, Newbury

March 22, 2021

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.

The greater Boston area is broadly divided into North Shore and South Shore. Technically, there is also MetroWest, but unless you live right on the Mass Pike, your community is probably more North Shore or more South Shore culturally. When I first moved here I landed in Medford, and from there to Somerville, so my affiliation is to the North Shore. I suppose it’s the inconvenience of traveling through Boston itself to go somewhere.

Of the over seventy walks I’ve completed in pursuit of the BCT, I’ve only ever had company other than Walter on one, and that was in Andover (October 14, 2020), which is North Shore aligned.

Today was our second walk since we left the Southern arm of the trail and started south from Newbury (Walter and I did the first leg this on June 22, bikejoring with Sulu). Along with Walter, I had three guests and three guest dogs!

Our destination was the Trustees of Reservations' Old Town Hill in Newbury. This is one of the few reservations that allows dogs off leash, though only offseason.

Walter and I got there a few minutes early to walk down to my turnaround point from the previous time with Sulu and Benny. This is some rare mileage when Benny’s feet were actually touching the ground. Benny waited in the car during our hike as it was not stroller-friendly.

The others met us in the parking lot, all with their pandemic puppies. Sulu was a model of deportment compared with these youngsters. I decided I would rather show my guests a good time than stick strictly to the BCT, which would lead to road walking. Old Town Hill has a great loop trail that we followed, including an extension that overlooks the marshes.

The trail was muddy in places, with a great boardwalk in the worst spot. I had the property map on my phone but I hadn’t studied it, so we were taken by surprise when we got to the top of Old Town Hill. It’s only 130 feet high, but Plum Island was straight ahead of us, and we could see all the way to the Seabrook nuclear power plant.

At the top of the hill there was also a great photo spot, a mature deciduous tree surrounded by a ring of boulders.

Even though the parking area was 3/4 full, most of the visitors seemed to take the trail on the parking side of the road and we encountered a few hikers and no dogs on the loop trail side.