Cycling on the Beltline

Saturday 28 October
Jen had signed the four of us up for a group cycle ride on the BeltLine, organized by Atlanta BeltLine Partnership, which engages the public through tours, health and fitness programs and special events. Today’s tour was North west BeltLine trails and Parks bike tour. There were about 20 on the tour, with four volunteers, guiding or bringing up the rear. We stopped in various places and the volunteers would tell us about the organization or the neighbourhood we were in. My photos aren’t that exciting, since I could only take photos when the group stopped, which wasn’t necessarily where I’d have liked to stop for photos! The park shown in the top right photo is in Historic Vine City, an area which served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, and was once home to Martin Luther King. This park is a relatively new development, after the area suffered terrible flooding some years ago, partly due to the dramatic increases in impervious surfaces in surrounding areas. Cook Park is designed to seamlessly integrate functional engineering within a programmed park space. The area provides a large playground, splash pad, aeration fountain and a great lawn, along with multi purpose courts and an amphitheater stage. At this location, we had quite a long talk from one of the local residents who has been an activist for the area and deeply involved in its development. My top left photo is one of the entrances to West Side Reservoir Park, which contains a reservoir in a former quarry, and affords views of the downtown area. Our total journey was about 11 miles, but did contain several hills, which I don’t do so well with, since our local bike trail which we use so often only has long gentler gradients. So I had to get off and walk several times, to my embarrassment, but the volunteers bringing up the rear were very patient and encouraging!
After our mornings exercise, we treated ourselves to some tacos for lunch at a lovely outdoor location- this was partly with Laura in mind, since she says she can’t get good Mexican food up in Wisconsin!
We weren’t finished with exercise for the day however! We then did some hiking on the Sope Creek trail to the ruins of a Civil War era Paper Mill on the banks of the rocky creek. (See extra)
After an 11 mile bike ride and an almost 3 mile hike, I felt pretty worn out!
Step count: 12,295