Ray Boulanger got back into biking nearly 30 years ago — heart troubles at age 43 will do that to a person.
Before then, he had loved biking for most of his life, starting with childhood rides and later progressing into work commutes from Tilton to Concord as a young adult. These days, he hops on a local path, either the Northern Rail Trail or the WOW trail, several days per week.
“I like the views of the river and the quietness. You’re away from town,” he said. “I’ll often take a fly rod with me, because you can find yourself out at stretches of the river that fishermen are not excited about getting to.”
At around the same time Boulanger got back on two wheels, the Northern Rail Trail effort was born. While much of the trail has been in use for a decade, its recently-completed southern gateway stretches south onto Hannah Dustin Island and right up to Boscawen’s border with Concord.
Local trail supporters and partners with the state celebrated the milestone extension Wednesday.
“This expansion represents a shared belief in the value of outdoor recreation and community connectivity,” said Craig Rennie, trails bureau chief at the state’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. “It moves the local economy, it encourages healthy lifestyles and it preserves a piece of our region’s history, reminding us of the railroads that once moved people and goods throughout the same corridor.”
The half-mile stretch Rennie and others celebrated this week is the keystone that will unite the Northern Rail Trail’s existing 60 miles, which run from Boscawen to Lebanon, and the envisioned northern edge of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail.
The Greenway Trail is projected to run south from Hannah Dustin Park through downtown Concord and towards Pembroke. City leaders recently approved the purchase of the rail corridor between Boscawen and Horseshoe Pond.
Boulanger, who was in Concord for a bike ride anyway, stopped in to join the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
He said he mostly uses the stretch of the Northern Rail Trail between Franklin and Boscawen for recreation, but that could change.
Ray and his wife share one car. With appointments and social engagements in Concord, he said he’d happily use the trail as a way to bike into the city if the trail one day reaches that far.
“I could get there almost as quick as trying to deal with traffic,” he said.
The Northern Rail Trail is a gravel path traveled by more than 175,000 users per year. With more than 900 annual hours of volunteer work, supporters work in partnership with the New Hampshire Bureau of Trails and snowmobile groups to maintain it.
It is the backbone of the Granite State Rail Trail, an envisioned network of biking and walking paths that would run continuously from the Massachusetts border in Salem to the Vermont border in Lebanon.
With a trail running up from Salem through Derry towards Manchester and the Northern Rail Trail complete, there’s a gap in Concord and Manchester that advocates like Bob Spiegelman are eager to see closed.
The expected closing date on the city’s purchase for the Greenway Trail is February 20. With land and funding lined up, then the design process would begin.
Spiegelman, who lives in Concord, attended the celebration Wednesday, donning a biking shirt that read “You don’t stop riding when you get old, you get old when you stop riding.”
“These things take time,” he said of the rail trail development process. From land acquisition to funding to engineering, to see a project reach its goals means a lot. “It takes a while.”
