Allan Appel Photo
This guy got a free ride, with PB&J at the start and ice cream at the end for the energy needed.
Stops at nine city parks, from Edgewood Park in the west to Quinnipiac River Park and Criscuolo Park on the east side of town; about two and a half hours of leisurely riding to cover approximately 12 to 14 miles, and then your reward for completing the big New Haven bike loop: 30 percent off ice cream at Ashley’s on York Street.
Those were some of the estimated stats of what bike tour leaders Paul Proulx and Laura Burrone called a “grand tour” of our city via its parks.
The two longtime leaders of Elm City Cycling, which is organizing a dozen free bike tours as part of this year’s edition of the Arts and Ideas Festival, gave that overview Wednesday in the early evening as about 25 colorfully helmeted bicyclists of all ages gathered on the Green for the start of the New Haven Parks bike tour. (Click here for the full schedule of rides.)
The free tours have drawn nice crowds thus far, with about 125 riders going on the first four tours of the festival’s first weekend, estimated Burrone.
This was the first year that the parks have become a theme of a bicycle tour, Proulx added.
Burrone said she was inspired by having experienced the full day tour of parks in West Hartford. New Haven deserved no less.
“Our parks are as beautiful,” Burrone said.
“And we have the most beautiful and the smallest,” Proulx offered, meaning Edgewood and the little Triangle Park at State and Mechanic Streets, respectively.
Proulx said he hoped riders will have a good time cycling and appreciate how the parks form a thread connecting the neighborhoods of our town.
As the Meyer family — parents Joanna and Spencer, brothers Silas in his seat, and Andrew on his tag-along — prepared for the cycling labors ahead with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches carefully rationed into fourths by mom, both the leaders said they hadn’t been able to determine the exact number of parks in the city.
“Does anybody know how many parks are in the city?” someone asked.
No one knew. But a rider in the throng called out that in a city of 21.2 square miles, 17 percent of that area is dedicated to green spaces, or about 3.5 square miles of parkland. (Click here for the official Parks, Recreation & Trees Department page, where that stat comes from; its list of parks includes only the larger ones and is woefully incomplete.)
It was clear Wednesday’s two-and-a-half hour bicycle promenade would be hitting only a sampling. The projected course did not include a good number of them, including biggies like Lighthouse Point Park. Those are part of other Arts and Ideas bike tours, such as the Parks and Waterways jaunt being led by Paul Chambers at 9 a.m. on Saturday, June 27.
Riders at stop light on Chapel. Behind them Monitor Square in West River, one of many green spaces too numerous for the tour to stop at.
With a few explanatory words about another great park — the Green, on which we stood, was sized to hold the Biblically prophesied chosen 144,000 souls to be saved at the Puritan conception of the Second Coming — the riders were off along Chapel Street to Edgewood Park.
That park was definitely designed not for Judgement Day, but for everyday pleasures.
It was created by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. (of New York City’s Central Park and Prospect Park fame), Burrone explained to riders who paused at the colorfully graffiti-decorated skate park.
We exited Edgewood and crossed Whalley Avenue.
Proulx suggested we walk bikes along the shrubbery-overgrown connecting path (pictured) lest handlebars get caught in the fence about the quietly flowing West River.
We remounted on Springside Avenue, turned left at Farnham Avenue, and crossed the campus of Southern Connecticut State University, angling across Fitch Street toward Beaver Pond Park.
There long-time gardener and conservation advocate Nan Bartow (pictured) and her gardening crew greeted us.
The leaders had arranged where possible for speakers, such as Bartow, to offer thumbnail sketches of the glories of the parks they particularly love, and provide background and updates.
Background: There are no beavers in Beaver Pond park due to the critters’ popularity among the Puritans. The surviving wildlife include lots of water birds, woodchucks, deer, and the occasional coyote.
The update: Bartow asked aesthetic forgiveness for the temporary plastic construction fences that lined the dirt road onto which we had biked. They were there because the trucks removing contaminants and other junk from the restoration of Hillhouse High School’s Bowen Field were angling a little too much off the roadway, Bartow said.
Riders cross Starr Street and proceed along the Canal Trail.
After a pleasant jaunt along the Farmington Canal bike trail we arrived at Scantlebury Park, where we encountered what was, for some of us, a revelation: the first wave of city-installed public bike fix stations, complete with a pump for air and tools dangling from cords so you can make your repair.
Burrone said she believed Scantlebury’s “fixstation” was among the first installed.
There’s one at College Woods Park in East Rock, another near the Edgewood Park ranger station, and one at Union Station, with more coming.
“They’re very popular,” she added.
Next stop was what Proulx called “poet’s park,” a small green space on a former house lot on Nash Street. Riders checked out a pergola amid a romantically kept lotscape.
There were two more brief stops as the tour angled toward Fair Haven. The first was at the vest pocket Triangle Park at State and Mechanic Streets.
The park, hardly more than a fenced island in the intersection (pictured) historically held memorial plaques to the neighborhood’s World War II servicemen. Over the years they had deteriorated and then disappeared. A more lasting granite memorial was re-dedicated by local vets and officials in 2013.
With a quick ride past Jocelyn Park at East and Humphrey Streets — named after the white abolitionist Simeon Jocelyn and where intense basketball games were under way — the tour headed down Humphrey toward the Quinnipiac River.
“There are parks everywhere,” said Burrone. In future tours, to capture more of the city’s parks on a single ride, the ride would have to be scheduled for a weekend, allowing at least half a day.
As riders single-filed down Front Street and across Grand Avenue, coming to a stop at Quinnipiac River Park, Burrone took out a New Haven picture history volume and displayed an old photo of the junkyard that hardly more than 20 years ago filled up the now beautiful riverine setting.
“You can reclaim things,” she said as she walked among the riders.
They were catching a little air before the ride resumed down Chapel to Wooster Square and from there, to the long-promised end of the ride: ice cream at Ashley’s.
A few of the riders had broken off from the pack at various points on the tour to go home or to keep appointments.
They included the Meyer family, who had peeled away at Orange Street and Humphrey and headed towards Ashley’s early. The boys had been promised their ice cream: chocolate for Silas and chocolate mint for Andrew.
A reporter peeled away and went to his nearby home near the Q, and so I cannot report on what transpired at Ashley’s: whether, for example, those who had not completed the full ride could still claim the full offered discount.