Friday 24 August: Biking tour of Nantucket.
Beautiful bright morning today, looks like a great day for our planned cycle ride. After breakfast in the cockpit we venture ashore with the dinghy full of bikes, backpacks and rubbish to dispose of. It was a little tricky offloading everything when the dinghies are again 2-3 deep on the dock.
Once the bikes are put together we head off in the warm morning sun towards the east end of the island. There is a good network of bike paths across the island. It’s nice not to be cycling in the traffic. That said, the cars are extremely bike and pedestrian conscious. You only have to look like you are crossing the junction and they all stop and give you safe passage. Clearly running down cyclists is not considered such a sport here, as it is in Europe!
Soon we head north on a smaller road up to Polpis. We expect to find a village there, but it’s just more of the usual: shingle clad private homes set in landscaped gardens. Some spectacular to look at. At Quidnet we find 2 beaches. One inland on a pond and the other a long sand beach out to the Atlantic with steep sand dunes behind. Very picturesque on this lovely day.
Then we head to see the Sankaty light house which was recently moved further inland from its original 1850 site. This move was made in 2007 due to coastal erosion. Apparently they have lost over 250m in the last 100 years. And it’s not stopping. Some houses are already precariously near to the cliff edge.
At Siasconset we find a goods store and a cafe, and lots of bikes in the parking. Very popular little place. Since the coffee wasn’t to our liking, we have our mid-day break at The Summer House Beachside Bistro, a very cool venue with a restaurant, swimming pool, sun-lounges, and good vibes. We sit at the bar where we indulge into local Cisco beer, and meet Matt, a New Yorker who owns a property here on the island. During the entertaining chat, he mentions which are the areas with the nicest cocktails bars in New York, which Oana eagerly takes notes of.
We continue our cycle along Ocean Avenue, and feels like we are cycling through postcards. The gardens, lawns and hedges are perfectly trimmed, and the houses are all in the same shingle clad style. Gardening pickups are parked on the driveway of most such houses and we wonder just how big the garden and property maintenance business is in these islands, where clearly most of the owners wouldn’t know one end of a lawn mower from the other!
Also here Glen’s bike stops changing gears, he is stuck in first gear. Electronically, the bike changes gears, the failure is somewhere mechanically, from what we could figure. He is rather frustrated, getting the feeling that everything we own on the boat is failing one after another.
Our route continues on Milestone Road, then on the Airport Road which takes us to Surfside Beach. Another very popular spot. The beach is the usual wild sand dunes and the surf crashing onto the beach with post card scenery.
It is very annoying to cycle in only one gear, and Glen gets so fed up that he actually uses the “go electric” button. Back to Nantucket town, we head straight to Cloudy Bay, where the aft deck becomes a “take the Gocycle apart workshop”. Unsuccessful mission though, as we need a special tool to remove the peddle so we can get at the gears. Hopefully we can get that done from one of the many bike rental shops in town.
After a full day in fresh air, we spend the rest of the evening onboard. We splashed out and bought some internet, which kept us busy bees on google research, emails, YouTube. Calm ending to a fun actioned packed day.
Nantucket photo album