Cycling Around Shepherdstown

Attention cycling enthusiasts: spring is here! Its time to inflate your tires, lube your chain, and squeeze into your super tight shorts!

Cyclists in Shepherdstown are truly blessed with lovely routes and trails within striking distance of the town. For those who prefer the smooth and quick ride of a road bike, there is a plethora of lightly trafficked secondary roads surrounding the area. Just pick any of these (excluding routes 45, 480, 230, Flowing Spring Road) and you will enjoy the rolling hills with a relatively low chance of becoming road kill. If you aren't quite brave enough to ride with traffic, there are other options for your road training. Antietam National Battlefield, a five-minute's drive from Shepherdstown, offers an approximately eight-mile paved route through the historic site. The traffic here is minimal and very slow moving (you will more than likely be cruising faster than the cars), but be warned—there are some wicked hills you'll have to overcome. Another option is the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, a paved rail trail that runs from Purcellville, Virginia in Loudon Country to Arlington (45 miles). If you are motivated enough to ride the entire trail in one go, you will enjoy an interesting transition from farmland to cityscape as you roll through Loudon and Fairfax and end your ride amongst the skyscrapers of Arlington.

If you favor the rush of blazing through a forest while mounted on a rugged, fat-tired mountain bike, you are also in luck. For a flat and leisurely trail experience, be sure to take your bike across the Potomac to the C&O Canal towpath. The towpath is wide and well maintained, and it runs the entire length of the C&O Canal National Park, following the Potomac River from Cumberland, MD to Georgetown in Washington, DC (184 miles). The ride is visually stunning, especially as the trail runs through Harpers Ferry National Park. A nice way to begin your spring training would be a quick ride from the Shepherdstown access point to Harpers Ferry and back, an approximately 25 mile round-trip journey. But if you prefer your mountain biking runs to be more, well, mountainous, there is a veritable smorgasbord of state parks in Maryland to appease your demand. One of the more intense of these is in Boonsboro's Greenbrier State Park, which offers nine different trails through severely mountainous terrain. The most difficult trail Greenbrier offers is the Red Trail, a 4.5-mile loop of rugged single-track. A couple of laps on this punishingly steep trail will have your legs screaming for mercy. The other Maryland state parks offer fantastic trails as well, but be sure to check their websites before throwing your bike on the rack; some do not allow mountain biking.

Whether a road warrior or a trailblazer, the area surrounding Shepherdstown provides a diversity of roads and trails that will keep any cyclist looking forward to the next time they climb into the saddle.