Philadelphia to Bucks County?

[Hilltopwalters]

Hey Philly/PA Paceliners, I am thinking about seeing my extended family down in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. I live in NJ/NYC area and will probably take the train down but I was wondering if anyone had any routes that went from Philly out to Bucks County where they live? I know Bucks has a number of great rail trails and gravel stuff.

Thanks in advance.

[bob_in_pa]

Originally Posted by Hilltopwalters

Hey Philly/PA Paceliners, I am thinking about seeing my extended family down in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. I live in NJ/NYC area and will probably take the train down but I was wondering if anyone had any routes that went from Philly out to Bucks County where they live? I know Bucks has a number of great rail trails and gravel stuff.

Thanks in advance.

If you’re looking for a route from downtown (Amtrak/30th street station) to bucks co, I’m not sure there’s any “good” options. I wouldn’t want to make that ride. You could take regional rail out of the city but it depends where specifically you’re headed.
Have you considered NJ Transit to Trenton? From Trenton you cross a bridge and are in bucks. Depending on where your family is in the county, this will likely provide better options.

Feel free to PM with details and I’ll try to help you with a route.

-Bob

[dmitrik4]

Where are you headed in Bucks County?

Philly to Bucks might be tough. The Schuykill River Trail goes a loooong way northwest from Center City but won’t get you to Bucks. The Delaware & Lehigh Canal trail (PA side) will take you through Bucks along the river but doesn’t go all the way to the city. If you train it to Trenton or Hamilton Station you can pick up the Delaware & Raritan trail (on the NJ side of the river) to Washington Crossing and head over to PA.

[-holiday76]

Yardley pa / Bucks County-er here. Former Trenton to nyc commuter. Philly guy (go Eagles!). Temple grad. Bike rider (duh).

Depends where you want to go but I’d suggest just putting your bike on njtransit from Penn and taking it to Trenton and riding into bucks from there.

If you really want to experience the same bike ride you’d be taking from 30th street to say, Levittown Pa, just stay in Trenton for a while and take in the sights.

Also, If you’re really intent on riding to bucks then just ride to bucks from NYC. Most of it is on the Raritan canal path.

[Dude]

Philly along the drives to manayunk, Lincoln drive path, forbidden, northwestern ave…continue north and you’ve got a stew goin baby.

I don’t know your tolerance, or the type of tires you’ll have but there are some very nice routes out of the city.

Depends where in Bucks you’re going but it’s not bad riding.

[rooney]

I would hop on the Pennypack Trail and take it north to Bristol Road, which puts you just over the line, into Bucks. But that may not be super helpful if you're trying to get to Quakertown or Ottsville. The Delaware Canal Towpath would be close enough to where the PPT ends that if you're going somewhere along the river, you could connect the two without too much hassle.

I used to live around Willow Grove and would go through Glenside and Wyndmoor to link up to Wissahickon Valley Park, which spit you out around East Falls, but I don't think that would be a better route.

[vespasianus]

Originally Posted by Hilltopwalters

Hey Philly/PA Paceliners, I am thinking about seeing my extended family down in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. I live in NJ/NYC area and will probably take the train down but I was wondering if anyone had any routes that went from Philly out to Bucks County where they live? I know Bucks has a number of great rail trails and gravel stuff.

Thanks in advance.

Bucks is a big county. What area are you looking at. If it is central bucks, I have done it in the past- from 30th street station to Doylestown. I did it during work hours and it was about 50 miles.

You basically come out of the train station and hit the path next to Kelly drive, to the wissahickon park. At that point you take the forbidden drive through the park to get to Chestnut hill. Go north from there - will have to be on a big road - Papermill road - for a bit but you can go north from there - some park paths and other small roads to get to the 202 bypass. This has a nice bike path next to it and it will take you right into Doylestown.

From Doylestown you can go anywhere on great small roads. Great place to ride a bike. If you want, I can try to put together a ridewithGPS of what I did in the past.

[Pinned]

Just my two cents as someone who recently moved to Philly: the first 30 minutes of any ride starting in Philly are literal junk miles. After that it's fine and is the same riding you'd find anywhere else in the Northeast outside of cities / in older suburbs. It's not particularly aspirational stuff but the roads are decent enough from 10mi out.

I'd also start from Trenton like others are suggesting, it's a whole lot closer to Bucks County. Unless you want a long and relatively boring ride. But Bucks County is much more pleasant riding than everything between Philadelphia and Bucks. So I'd lean towards spending as much of my ride as possible on pleasant and calmer roads.

[Davist]

I was going to mention Pennypack trail as well, gets you up here (I'm just North of Bristol Rd) quickly. From the end of it very easy to get to quiet roads quickly, but Bucks is big so depends on where you're going..

[ridethecliche]

There's some gravel you can do in philly area and honestly road cycling in philly is pretty awesome.

If you want some philly road routes, let me know.

Re: getting to bucks from philly.

I'd recommend taking the train down. It might be a bit sucky getting to where you want to start riding, but the train is pretty accessible.

If you're open to going west instead, I'd check out the brandywine rides.

https://graveltraveldirt.com/index.p...dywine-valley/

[mickey.d]

How about riding from Philly to Easton then taking the canal down?
I stayed on the side of the canal in Bucks County for two weeks a few years ago while doing work on The Boxers Trail in Fairmont Park, my driving route from the river to the city had nice off-street multi use paths most of the way.

[efuentes]

This thread bring back memories, Go CB West!!!!

That was a fun couple of years some 45 years ago

[echappist]

Two friends and I rode from NYC to Philly back in 2011.

Some of the road names seem to ring a bell, and I think the route was:

Washington Crossings (can't remember if we rode across or walked) --> Wrightstown Road, which turns into Worthington Mill --> Second Street Pike, which turns into Huntingdon Pike --> Welsh Road --> Valley Road --> Washington Lane --> Germantown Ave, followed by whichever way we could find to get us down to the Schuylkill.

General planned map here, but as you can see, we deviated a bit as original plan was to cross at the Delaware at New Hope, but we crossed the river further downstream.

This was also the time before Google implemented bike routing layer and Strava had heat maps, so some of the choices were less than optimal.

If I were doing this today, I'd keep to the general alignment (that is to say sufficiently west of U.S. 1), but trying to link up roads more suitable for bikes.