Woodworking Mastiff Page Database and Website Design
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The best staging area is the Sandwich Maple Swamp parking lot. There is no good parking in Barnstable for horse trailers. The Maple Swamp is on the Mid-Cape Highway, Route 6, Service Road between exits 3 and 4. Exit 3 is Quaker Meeting House Road and Exit 4 is Chase Road. From Quaker Meeting House Road take the Service Road south past Round Hill Golf Club, the parking lot is marked with a large sign. From Chase Road go north past Jacobs Farm to the Maple Swamp sign. If you are confused about where this is, Hyannis is exit 6. Ain't ever been to Hyannis?, can't help you then. (Route 6 is the longest numbered highway in the continental United States. It goes from Provincetown, MA to San Diego, CA. There's some trivia you can amaze your friends with.) From there we ride out through this interesting area and eventually cross the border into Barnstable and ride the Barnstable Conservation Area. With some private trails thrown in the area covered is about 2,000 acres. The terrain is gravel roads that can tend to be a little rocky in places. There are several high (for the Cape, about 175 feet above sea level) hills with views of the Bay and Sound. Except for the pitch pine trees you would never know you were on Cape Cod. The trails are very nice and wind through the pine forests and up and down some reasonably steep hills. I'll even throw in a narrative of how the land came to be the way it is and show you some interesting features. The thing about the Cape is there are way fewer bugs in the summer. When it's impossible to enjoy a ride here (Middleboro) you can just go down to the Cape and enjoy cooler temperatures and WAY FEWER BUGS. The Maple Swamp itself is only about 2 acres and you can't even get close to it, not like up home here where the dirt is a couple acres and the swamp prevails. |
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I have NEVER spent more than 10 minutes in traffic when riding on the Cape and coming home. The trick is to take Route 6A, which is more scenic and interesting, and then Sandwich Road on the Cape side to the Bourne Bridge. |
