Saturday 15 September: Sag Harbor – cycle to Bridgehampton, Southampton, North Sea and Noyak.
Sunny morning and it will be a nice day again. Over breakfast, despite our still-sore bums, we decide to take the bikes out again, for another tour. This time west, towards Bridgehampton. On the condition that today we’ll take it easy. Ha-ha, as if we ever do! We generally only have 2 speeds: peddle-to-the-metal, or asleep!
Before leaving Sag Harbor, we stop at ACE to buy more of the toilet roll holders, to have them as spares. As we cycle on the Main Street, a lady driving is giving us ugly looks and shouts “bikes are not allowed on the Main Street”. Yeah right, we think, as we haven’t seen any sign in that respect. As a result, we cycle the street once more, to capture it on video. Then we are ready to head out of town. Beautiful road again, with lawns and tall trees along both sides, and despite the cars driving passed us, it is a very enjoyable ride.
Soon we arrive in a Bridgehampton, where we park the bikes and walk the town. It is quite small, with a main street home to several boutiques, real estate offices and cafes. Very pretty, and we certainly feel the weekend atmosphere here, as lots of people are crowded on the terraces. We sit for a coffee, but we don’t enjoy it fully. Wasps are buzzing us, landing on our cups. So it is quite an adventure to sip our coffee. Oana ends up spilling hers, over Glen’s phone. Which gets rescued and hopefully will still work fine.
Out of Bridgehampton town, we head for Sagaponack Pond where we fly the drone over the creek. Some amazing properties on the water’s edge. And cycling through that area is particularly pleasant, with yet more gardens and lawns on both sides of the road. It is all so neat and tidy.
We head on Ocean Road towards Ocean Road Beach. Same as yesterday’s beaches on the Atlantic side, the surf is crashing onto the beach. There are people on the beach, but it is far from crowded. We walk along it, to soak in the views and the feel of this place. And we like it so much that we decide to fly the drone again, along the beach, just above the surf, exposing it to the salt spray which is everywhere in the air. But the view we get from up there is more than rewarding.
We cycle back inland to Water Mill, which is again a small village, with the same shops along the main road. Here we find a couple of farms which are having large displays of pumpkins, ready for Halloween. Quite a sight! Some of the pumpkins are almost a metre in diameter, just enormous!
From there, Southampton is a short cycle away along the busy main road that runs the length of Long Island. There is actually a traffic jam. We imagine all these cars must’ve drove in for the weekend. In Southampton we park the bikes and walk the main two roads. It’s a bigger village then all the previous ones we’ve seen, and a very nice feel to it. Certainly a lot more populated. And even more high end shops. To cool off we have an ice cream, while we watch the world go by. Posh cars, poshly dressed people, posh accents. A different league. And here we are, with our feet still covered in sand, sweaty from so much cycling, licking an ice cream in front of the art center. What a sight we must be 🙂 For more cool off and more giggles, we go to Southampton Public House across the road, where we have a beer and watch yet more of the world go by.
It is getting a bit late by now, so we resume our cycling, this time northwards, up to North Sea. More beautiful roads with yet more beautiful and perfectly manicured properties among mature trees.
Which then leads us on Noyac Road. Somehow, although these roads are so busy with cars, it feels more relaxing than yesterday’s cycle, when we were cycling through the pretty woods of the National Park. It is definitely easier to cycle, a lot less hills. We arrive at the Noyac Bay, where the calm sea and peaceful beach make us wonder out loud: now that we got so used with calm flat waters, how are we going to feel when we’ll go back into the Atlantic and it’s big swell. Let’s not think about that just now!
And on that note, we cycle back to Sag Harbor. Quick stop at the market for fresh fruits and then we are definitely ready to return to Cloudy Bay for dinner and shower! We synchronize our dinner with the sunset, again. After which we potter with the usual post-cycling routine: wash bikes, charge them, pack away. It is a bit of an effort to take them out and put them away afterwards, but after days like these, we feel it is certainly worth the trouble.
So ends another action packed day. Maybe we slow down and relax for a couple days! Pfff, or maybe not 🙂