urban bicycle journeys

High Bridge Trail State Park is a thirty-one mile long east-west rail trail in rural Virginia.   The trail crosses through the town of Farmville around its midpoint.

I sold this as being “an hour had a half” straight north of Chapel Hill, but it is 120 miles and at least two and a half hours drive to Farmville, Virginia.    This area of the state is distant from any major city.  We drove our Honda with two bicycles in the trunk but did not get to downtown Farmville until about one o’clock.  And we had to have lunch.  We compromised by putting the bikes together and riding west down the trail for fifteen minutes, then turning around and riding back into town.   We would then do the other direction after lunch.  We split a sandwich at Charley’s Waterfront Cafe in Farmville’s surprisingly vibrant downtown.   The downtowns of the majority of small towns in rural America look depressing and vacant.   There is a consistent thread that makes such a downtown look healthy: the presence of a college or university; here is Farmville it is the public Longwood University.

After lunch we biked east down the rail trail.

About five miles east of Farmville the rail trail crosses the high bridge.  Built in 1852 the former rail bridge is 160 feet off the ground at it highest point above the Appomattox River on the former rail line between Petersburg and Lynchburg.  Wikipedia has a nice picture drawn in the 1850’s.

Riding across the bridge we hung out on a beautiful day and admired the view.

We biked a little further and then turned around and rode back to our car in Farmville.   On the car ride home we saw this interesting drive-in just outside of South Boston VA.