This Department is conducted in the interest of Bicyclers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject. Our maps and tours contain many valuable data kindly supplied from the official maps and road-books of the League of American Wheelmen. Recognizing the value of the work being done by the L.A.W., the Editor will be pleased to furnish subscribers with membership blanks and information so far as possible.
Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers.
It is advisable at this point to leave Connecticut and Massachusetts and describe one of the best—and practically the only—ways of going on a wheel from the Hudson River to the Berkshire Hills. We have already given in former numbers of Harper's Round Table the route from New York city to Hudson, on the Hudson River. For any one making the trip from New York city to the Berkshire Hills, the best route is to follow this already described, and at Hudson to take the following trip to Pittsfield.
Leave Hudson by Warren Street, and run along the trolley-line to the Boston-Albany railroad tracks, and then make for what is called the Columbia turnpike by turning to the left around the park, and still keeping to the left into Green Street. Continuing along this road, you will run into Claverack, four miles away. The road is good, but begins to be hilly towards the last. Claverack is then left, the rider moving eastward and taking the right turn, which carries him by the Red Mills. Then comes a long ascent, and at the end of three miles Hollowville is passed. The road runs clearly, and is practically unmistakable to Martindale, and with the exception of the few hills, it is capital bicycling. Four miles further on, Craryville is reached, the hills becoming a little more frequent, but the road-bed is in such good condition that all are rideable. Three miles further on you pass through Hillsdale, and then run into South Egremont, and then, keeping to the right on leaving South Egremont, climb a long hill with a long coast on the other side, and by Maple Avenue run into Great Barrington. From Great Barrington the road to Pittsfield, through Stockbridge, is along the railroad track through Van Densenville to Housatonic, thence through Glendale to Curtisville, through Stockbridge, and leaving Stockbridge Bowl on the right, up West Street to Lenox. To go from Lenox take Main Street and run direct into the town of Pittsfield itself.