Walking Westford - back on the road!

Yes! We're baaaaack! Apparently some of you have missed the Walking Westford blog, so to you (few) I apologize humbly for the vast delay in posts and promise to make this walking season generously more fruitful than the last. With a little luck, who knows, maybe we'll finish it this year! Still a bit of a pipe dream, but stranger things have happened (have you seen this Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY ).

Today was the first truly gorgeous, warm day of 2009 and since I was a slug and didn't make it to my 5:45 am Power Class (sorry Tara, without your inspiration it's not as enticing!), we decided to kick off the 2009 Walking Westford season. So Mom, Lily and I headed first for St. Catherines to leave a car, and then on to the Harde's house as they generously agreed to allow us to park the other one there.

We started the walk off with a bang as Mom took a header off the sidewalk right into the west-bound lane of Main St. She was merely scraped, no real harm (thanks to those Power classes!), and a very nice lady pulled over to ask if she was ok and if we needed a ride anywhere. We thanked her and told her we were walking Westford, though so far, not very successfully.

And off we went... down Graniteville Rd - which SOME of you might know was recently mentioned MORE THAN ONCE on Fringe, a really good new show on Fox Network. Seriously, it went something like "Agent Duhnam's vehicle was found on Graniteville Rd in Westford." HAHHAH! SO COOL! In another episode Agent Dunham pointed to a map of Westford talking about some place called Little Hill Field (which is fictional) but SHE POINTED TO MY HOUSE! NO JOKE! You can watch it on fox.com, and you darn-well should. It's not often that Westford is mentioned in a nationally broadcast TV show!

anyhow.... We picked up Randolph Circle, getting a spectacular view of the back of the old Abbott estate... man that's a fantastic house and property. From here we headed down the hill and caught Patriot Lane, where a kid called Eric Anderson used to live - Hi Eric. We passed the Blanchard Farms condos (with all their friendly "PRIVATE PROPERTY DO NOT ENTER NO TRESPASSING GO AWAY WE WONT SHARE OUR ROADS WITH YOU LOT!" signs... nice.

We found a utility knife on the Rd. near the intersection of Graniteville and Cold Spring. I was going to chuck it but Mom said it was worth $15 and in perfectly good shape, which it was. So if you can prove it's yours my mom has it.

When we reached Graniteville village area, we turned left on Bridge St... there are kind of scary looking old foundry type buildings back, lots of asbestos, rust... ugly... but well hidden and right next to the tracks, so no big loss I guess.

We took Bridge to North Main St and picked up Hillside on the way back to the church. It's aptly named... SERIOUS hill... older neighborhood. We met a very nice gentleman who explained his lawn to us. You see, it looked entirely and uniformly dead... a smooth tan color, very soft in appearance. We asked him what happened to his lawn and he said, nothing it was fine and would green up by mid-June or so. He showed it to us more closely and explained that it was some strange type of grass that he knew not the name of, apparently his wife does though she wasn't there so we couldn't ask her. It's kind of a weed really but it's soft and thickly carpeted, appears like a fine lawn. He said it spreads and take over everything but no weeds grow in it. He doesn't use any fertilizer or herbicides on it, but he does have to trim it back a few times a year or it will overtake the walkways. Anyone have any ideas on what it is? We plan to go back and check out in June when its green.

Then it was back to St. Catherines to get the car. All in all a very nice walk. Felt good to be out there again. We will try to pick up speed on the walks as the weather continues to improve.

Hope someone out there reads this!

Roads walked: Graniteville Rd, Randolph Circle, Patriot Lane, Hillside Avenue, and a bit of North Main St.



CommunityWalk Map - Walking Westford