Hike #1522; 12/26/22 Warrington to Doylestown with Justin Gurbisz, Jenny Tull, Professor John DiFiore, and Shane Blische
This next hike would be a point to point, and a return to the Neshaminy Creek series we started years ago.
The idea of "creeking", or following a tributary from the beginning to end, has been something I loved the idea of for years, but never saw it through completely. The Neshaminy Creek is a fascinating one, almost entirely within Bucks County PA, with a mix of both urban, suburban, and rural characteristics along the way.
The Neshaminy is particularly appealing because it has not only a lot of official trail segments, but a lot of informal stuff as well that make for a more interesting trip.
We had followed the tributary from its confluence with the Delaware River all the way up to Peace Valley Park and Lake Galena. There's not much farther one can go on the main branch than there, but there are also many great little tributaries, and we've followed several.
The most interesting of these was probably the Little Neshaminy Creek, which breaks off of the main creek at Rushland.
We had done a couple of hikes tracing this route; one covered a bit from the confluence at Rushland on out to the west a bit, and another started in Warrington and headed east toward the confluence and other stuff.
I had plotted out some potential hikes heading west of there along the Neshaminy, but never got around to doing them because the pandemic happened, and other stuff happened, becoming a father happened, and so I was looking at more secluded stuff for the group, and then less complicated stuff for the kid.
I have started to plan all hikes to be stroller friendly, and so revisiting the maps for this one allowed me to come up with a good stroller friendly route that would be a sort of backwards "C", an almost-loop. I figured I had something really interesting this time, and I could make it more complicated with different exploring if for some reason my son Ev couldn't come.
It ended up having a high temp of only thirty degrees for the day, so Ev's mom didn't want me bringing him. I was upset about it, but tried not to dwell on it and instead decided I would do the more complicated version of the hike.
The Little Neshaminy has so much good land along it, there could really very easily be a greenway trail following its course, which would tie well into the regional trail system.
I figure one of these days maybe someone might review journals like this one and figure out how such a trail could take shape. Maybe.
We met in the Central Park just south of Doylestown, which we had passed through before along the main course of the Neshaminy. We parked over near the disc golf course. I picked up Shane on my way out there since it was right on my way to get to his house.
From the meeting point, Jenny shuttled us to the start point, which would be Eastern Mountain Sports down in Warrington. Historic maps show this area being "Warrington Square", while modern maps only show the municipal land with "Warrington" being labeled a bit further to the north of this location. It seems that the original Warrington settlement was around the shopping center we parked in.
We had begun hiking from here before, and there are a few pedestrian paths that make their way through the mall complex and out of it to the south, but I wanted to try something a bit more adventurous this time. Of course, if a formal trail were to go through, it probably wouldn't follow exactly what we did, but some sort of side path could do so. It made it a bit more interesting.
We started by following Valley Square Blvd just to the right and north of where we parked. There was a sidewalk on the north side that we followed to a point just past the intersection with Main Street on the left.
This main street is just a sort of middle road through the center of the shopping center, which is kind of odd because it doesn't seem like a town main street.
The sidewalk, and most every trail we were on throughout the day, was at times a sheet of ice and easy to slip on. I intentionally didn't wear my bowling shoes I'd been wearing on both the hikes and to work recently because the bottoms are like bologna skins and not exactly the best for hiking in during slippery conditions.
This time, I wore a pair of hand me down hiking boots I had been given from Tina Chen a few weeks back. She gave me a very nice new pair of shoes as well, and these hand me downs were size twelve and had belonged to her son, so they were a bit too tight. I'd worn them to work a bit to try to break them in, and this would be the first time I wore them on a hike. I think they're Merrells, which are pretty good.
I started off with them doing very well, and they were overall pretty comfortable despite being tight.
I wear out shoes like crazy, so I wanted to wear out the least comfortable, smaller ones first, especially in the Winter. I'll eventually use them all up. I also wear them until they literally won't even go on my feet anymore.
We only stayed on the sidewalk a bit, and then cut into the woods to the left. It looked like there was a slight animal path to the north, which we followed into a woodland swath with some wet, icy trenches in them. We weaved back and forth through this, carefully not to get our clothing stuck on briars.
Shane and I had both worn long coats on this one. I had gotten out a nice beige overcoat for last week's hike and kept it out for this one. It might have been a poor decision for some of the places we went, because it was so close to the color of a deer during deer season, and I had forgotten it was a Monday rather than Sunday since Sunday was Christmas.
Things went well anyway; we continued through these woods to a clearing on the other side, which was that of the St. Joseph and St. Robert Catholic School land.
There was a chain link fence around a retention pond area, which of course didn't show up on aerial images when I was planning the route.
Fortunately, there was a hole in the fence, and we were able to head on in and walk around the pond area. There was barely any water in it, but it had previously been fuller which left a layer of thin ice we could have fun crunching through on the surface.
We weaved to the left out of the retention pond and through an opening in a gate on the south side of the nearest school building. We went along the west side and then north side of the school along a parking lot, past a playground, and then onto a foot path that cut through a line of trees toward the Meridian Valley Square development. We skirted a sloped hill adjacent to a sort of club house building associated with the development, and then followed the edge of some evergreen trees planted along the top of the slopes, sometimes weaving back and forth around the trees.
There was a paved path down below in a short distance, along the edge of the development, which I would have been on if I had brought my son with me in the stroller, but without him, I chose to remain futher up the slope. We were able to get behind the evergreen trees, on the slope to the north of the development, which was a bit more private walking. Some people use it, and their footpaths coming in from neighboring streets on the left.
Pretty soon, the paved trail came in from the right, and we were able to follow it ahead for a bit. There was a "no trespassing" sign facing back toward the main development area, so it was good to be on it in this area.
The trail went around the east side of another slope with evergreens planted on the top, invisible to the development on the other side which made for a nicer walk.
When the trail started weaving to the right out toward the Wegmans store, we continued straight, through some more hilltop tree plantings, and then down to a grassy lowland behind yet another tree lined slope, with residential area to the left of us.
This area was like a nice, mowed greenway trail, and there was evidence of some pedestrian traffic on it.
We could follow this along the edge of the entire Valley Square Shopping Mall area, but we decided to go up and over to visit a liquor store that was nearby.
We went up the slope and around the first building to find out that the store only sold wine. I was hoping for a selection of strong craft beer, but there was nothing, so we just went back to the slope, climbed over at a utility box of some sort, and then continued along the grassy swath behind the hill to the south.
We reached a paved trail past the Bed Bath and Beyond place, which we had followed the previous time out there, and followed it out to Route 132, Street Road.
When traffic passed, we dashed straight across and up a grassy hill on the other side, which had a wooden cutout of the Sasquatch or Yeti on the top of the other side. I decided this would probably be the best group shot opportunity of the hike.
We continued across the hilltop, down and up through a swale, and then down to Paul Valley Road where there was a good sidewalk that took us across the Little Neshaminy Creek for the first time.
At this intersection, we had had previously reached the creek at the Shank Tot Lot just to the southeast. This was our first view of it upstream for this hike.
We crossed, then turned to the left along the back side of a retention pond associated with a Lowes Home Improvement Center.
I was loving this hike already; planning it as well as hiking it felt a lot like the night hikes I always used to plan, because there was such much weird stuff along the way, not only parks but non-park grassy public common areas that no one would ever consider doing a hike through.
Along the back of the retention pond, we came across a sort of bed thing leaning on its side, with a sleeping bag next to it.
I opened it up, laid on it, and Justin placed the sleeping bag over me. This must have been some homeless person's sleeping area in warmer times, although we also joked that it might have been the penance bed used by store managers for late or truant employees.
We continued to the north side of the retention pond, turned left, and then continued through the parking lot along the back of the store. There were tons of wood and other product on pallets that could so easily be stolen out there, it was kind of a shock it was all left unattended there.
We skirted the right side of the parking lot heading west, and there was some sort of concrete ruin down in the woods to the right. We headed off the edge of the parking lot at the far side and passed through the lot of another business. We then headed up slope to Rt 611, Easton Road.
Once up, we dashed across to the other side, turned right, and crossed the Little Neshaminy again on the road bridge. It was only a short distance north on the road to the Wawa, so we took a side trip to that. I was pretty hungry and had been thinking about one of their quesadillas for a while.
When I got into the Wawa, I decided I was going to have a customized breakfast burrito when I saw it on the menu, and I was quite happy with it. Sausage, scrambled eggs, extra cheese, some veggies with hash browns, and salsa. It was hot, and it steamed the entire time I tried to eat it after getting outside, but I wolfed it down. I also grabbed a Reeces bar to go with my Double Dog 18 I was drinking. The bottle fit perfectly into my inside pocket, so I was able to carry it very easily.
We walked back to the south through the parking lots and to the intersection with Garden Avenue. At that corner, there was a fenced substation or ejector building or something, and then a path down along the right side to the Little Neshaminy. It was a nice spot with a chair.
We paused for a bit, and Justin tried to bust the ice by throwing a cinder block into it. It kind of bounced off and left a hole. I grabbed a really big branch and threw it in to beat the ice too.
It wasn't all that thick, but just thick enough that it wouldn't so readily break.
We started walking along the creek a bit, but there wasn't really a good way through. We then walked along the creek side of a town house type of development following the creek upstream. We came out to a parking pavilion and then out to Kansas Road where we turned left. We then crossed the Little Neshaminy on the road bridge.
Park Creek breaks away from the Little Neshaminy in this area. Park Creek was the original name for it, then around 1900 it was changed to Pine Creek, but today appears to be Park Creek again. I have a plan on hiking along some of this to the west on a future hike in this series.
Almost immediately, we turned right onto the grass in another development known as Bluestone Creek Community. My plan had my son been with me would have been to follow a paved path that goes through this development parallel with the road, but since he wasn't, we headed to the back of the development and skirted the grassy areas.
Behind the houses, there was a retention pond with a grassy mowed path around the north side of it, which at first didn't look like anything because of a tree fallen over it. We stepped over and followed a more pleasant bit, but had no trail back to the creek itself.
We continued along the back of the development, around the corner of one of the parking lots, and then around another sort of retention area.
I saw some deep path type stuff entering the woods, but I didn't want to chance trying to follow it in case it led nowhere.
There was what was shown as a dead-end trail from the Bradford Reservoir just to the northwest of where we were, and I figured either it went through, or it didn't, and if we didn't see anything that was well traveled, we probably didn't want to take a chance.
We just remained around the outside of the development until we came to the paved path on the other side of it again, close to County Line Road, which is the boundary between Bucks and Montgomery Counties. The trail continued a short distance to the northwest along the road and came to an abrupt end just after passing the first separate house on the right.
We paused there for a moment, and there was a pile of stone and no trespassing sign where the pavement ended.
I had a look at the woods just to the east of this spot and saw no signs and reasonably clear woods, so I decided we would bushwhack in through here because it wasn't all that far to the trail that was shown as a dead end out of Bradford Reservoir property.
A short bit into the woods, there was evidence of a long-abandoned road that used to continue through the woods.
We followed the old road route for just a bit but weaved back and forth from it on the path of least resistance. There were some thorns out there, but it never got all that bad.
It didn't take long, and we were to the paved trail at the reservoir property. I wanted to turn to the right and follow it to where google maps showed the trail ending, just to see if it actually did.
It did just come to an end a short distance away, with a faint trail along the Little Neshaminy to the left, and a bit of a worn path along a mostly grown over meadow straight and slightly to the right. That certainly would have led back out to to the development we had gone around, but we didn't bother to go that way.
We turned back and started following the paved trail to the west, which had a nice little side path from it with a view of the Little Neshaminy.
We continued to the base of the Bradford Dam, and the trail weaved to the right to climb to the edge of it to the north. Bradford Reservoir is not all that big and has lots of room to contain excess water, so I would guess that this was a flood control reservoir, but I am not really sure. I can't find any information about the history of it initially.
The sun was out bright when we got to the upper level, and it felt way warmer than it had earlier in the day. Another trail went north to Bradford Avenue, and Bradford Road is the access on the south side.
This used to be a through road as per the historic maps, eliminated when the reservoir was created. We kept to the left when that trail went right and passed through some meadows to the west. Pretty soon, we entered the woods, and there were some nice little reservoir scenes to the left.
The trail was really icy; I fell at one point and managed to not spill the beer I was carrying, but I was a bit sore from hitting the ground hard.
The trail went up and down with several ice patches, and my shoes were holding up, but there was no avoiding some slipping.
We crossed a foot bridge across the creek, and passed a sign warning of mud and slipperiness, a little too late. There was also an empty signpost.
The trail brought us to a nice little section of boardwalk, and then to a beautiful spot on the creek. The water was deeper here and would actually make a really nice spot to take a dip in warmer months.
We took a little break here because it was so nice and admired the view. We then continued on the trail, which brought us to a power line clearing where we turned left. Another trail continued to the north to a park known as Nike Park, which may or may not have been some sort of Nike missile site (I'm leaning toward not because it's so far from the coast, but I haven't read into it any yet).
The trail to the left took us uphill a bit, across the Little Neshaminy again on another foot bridge, and along the back of another new development. This brought us across Maggie Way, the new development road, and back out to County Line Road beyond.
From here, we turned to the right to follow County Line Road to the northwest. There was a large earth mover unlocked there, which Shane sat in for a moment, and other machines left unsecured amazingly. We continued past that, and it looked even worse when we got to the intersection with Folly Road, because all of the signs for the road or lane closures were fallen over with the wind. It seems the irony here would be the folly of having not weighted the signs, securing machines, or really taking care of the work site in general.
At the intersection with Folly Road was the historic Red Roof College as it was known, a oen room schoolhouse built in 1858. It didn't really look to me like the very old schoolhouses I'd seen elsewhere, but I suppose the difference in architecture makes it a bit more interesting.
I've heard it referred to as the County Line Schoohouse as well, but I'm not sure of its historic name. The settlement along County Line Road to the north of here was known as Eureka, and before 1900, earlier maps label it as Pleasantville.
In the yard of the school to the right of the building was an enormous tree stump with a sign in front of it. This was a White Oak that was referred to as one of the William Penn Trees.
That label is given to trees that were already present at the time of William Penn. The tree died several years ago, and it was over three hundred years old at that time.
We checked out the outhouse in back of the school, which might have been the same vintage as the school itself, or just a bit newer. it was made of stone, which is sort of atypical of an outhouse, because they would be moved from place to place over the years. One side of it was badly collapsing.
Across County Line Road from the schoolhouse was a line of trees blocking off a private home and yard. We crossed directly, and went around the trees to the left, then cut downhill toward the Little Neshaminy Creek. The edge of the creek wasn't so weedy, and much easier to walk along. We proceeded to follow the creek upstream from there.
There was no formal trail, but I figured we might be okay because just ahead, there is a pond in the back of several homes that appear to be sort of a common area between yards.
We moved on along the creek for a bit, and it was quite pretty. There were some blocky Piedmont style stones with ice on them on the far side. There was not much undergrowth, so moving along the creek without violating the privacy of nearby homes was quite easy. We didn't bother stepping up onto any cut lawn until we came into view of the aforementioned pond. There, we skirted around the south side of it as to continue in somewhat anonymity.
I heard a voice coming from a back porch, and I don't know that it was referring to us walking back there, but it was obvious. She might have been saying something about people walking back there, but we were away from the area before we could really cause much concern.
At the end of the development lawns, we continued into the brush adjacent to the creek again. It was only a short distance from that last bit of lawn to the Ukranian American Sports Center.
There is a long parking lot that stretches almost to the creek. When we got to the first path near that, we cut to the south side of the ball fields.
From here, we just headed inland and followed grass on the south side of the property with no problems. There was one girl playing tennis with herself or something, but no one else around at all.
We made our way to the west side of the property and hit Lower State Road.
A left turn led us across the Little Neshaminy again, this time on a handsome old double stone arch bridge constructed in 1838. This was known as the Horsham-Montgomery Bridge, and also as the Limekiln Pike Bridge.
It was in danger of being demolished and replaced with a modern bridge by PENNDOT, but public outcry for saving it was apparently strong.
It was closed at least partially at first in 2010, and then restored. It was obvious stone restoration work was done on the north side of the bridge, because the way the stones were laid out did not look like they were any kind of weight bearing.
We continued across the bridge, and to the right was another handsome old stone farmhouse, which looked very out of place among a new addition on it, as well as a lot of other more modern buildings with obviously face stone facades on them.
This house was the Steever Manor House, built in 1752. It had a date mark on top with 2007 also, meaning that was when the additions and/or renovations to the building took place. It now houses a physical therapy business.
Historic maps of the area label this as part of North Wales. I'm not sure who built the house and who owned it through most of its history, but Steever is the name that appears in the historic 1870s atlas of Montgomery County.
We walked through the parking lots of these businesses, then continued south on Lower State Road a bit. I thought maybe we'd get along the creek a bit, but there was a sewage treatment plant, so we didn't need to get over there just yet.
The next mile or so was some of the worst part of the hike, which isn't saying much because it was overall good and pleasant. We just had to walk more road without trail through this bit than anywhere else.
We turned right on Davis Drive and passed a whole lot of houses. It was a less busy residential road, but it just kind of dragged on for me even though it was probably only a mile of it.
Shane was getting pretty tipsy off of the Merry Monks beer he had brought, as well as some sort of lemon booze that his neighbors had given him.
Justin liked it, but Shane drank most of it pretty quickly, which is probably how he got so blasted so quickly. Jenny and I walked farther in front of them, and we could hear Shane cackling from a block away. I wanted to get us out of that neighborhood before too long.
My plan for turning was what appeared to be a common area along the backs of some of the last homes on the road. There was a wide area between two homes, and a large, fenced retention pond area. I was having trouble trying to get Shane to quiet down, so we just hurried down through the lawns and along the north side of the retention basin. We turned left at the far end of it, and then headed to the tree line.
There was some concrete debris and other junk, as well as a small wet spring area, but we just pushed through and came out on the paved pedestrian path parallel with Kenas Road.
We turned to the right, and the path moved a bit off from the road and crossed the Little Neshaminy on a pedestrian bridge. We crossed here, and on the other side, we turned left and hurried across Kenas Road into Windlestrae Park.
This bit of the park was called the Rose Twig Fields. We skirted the left side of the mowed clearing parallel with the Little Neshaminy to the left. When we reached a wooden foot bridge across it to the left, we turned. Immediately on the other side, we turned right along a grassy, wide and mowed path that leads parallel with the stream to the north. A pipe discharged more water into the stream, with a natural sculpture of ice forming around the mouth of the pipe.
Soon, we saw to the left a very nice old stone farmhouse. This building was built in the mid 1700s, but I could not find anything with a specific date on it.
It is simply referred to as the Windlestrae Farm House. Historic mid 1800s atlas maps refer to this as the Dobbins Farm I believe. One of the more prominent residents was Joshua Jones, who was a Baptist minister who broke away from the rest of the church. Jones was known to end his sermons with "I leave it with you briefly and abruptly; may God add his blessing!"
We continued along the creek to the west a bit, still on the trail which was a very wide and mowed area. To the right, there was a foot path that went into woods, and I figured this was the way we were intended to go as per how the trail was shown on google maps, but I was wrong. At the time though, we tried it.
We reached the edge of the creek, and the foot path, which was in an obvious location, had a large fallen tree over it.
However, along the Little Neshaminy itself, there was just a wide beach of little stones so we opted to just walk on the edge of the creek. Some of the water was pretty still, so there were sections of ice on it.
Shane was still being very silly, and standing on the ice a lot of the time. It wasn't all that deep, but no one would want to get wet either. I think Jenny called it that he was going to have a problem.
Pretty soon, Shane went through the water and was in far more than he ever should have gotten. He was on his back and through the ice, with his long Peter Falk jacket quite soaked. He quickly moved his phone to another pocket.
We had to keep moving to keep him warm and he'd be fine, but it was certainly not fun being wet. In a short while, his coat froze almost solid in spots, which I'm sure was better than having it on totally wet.
We made our way back out to the mowed trail when we realized we hadn't gone the correct way, and followed it to the west a bit more. Pretty soon, there was a wooden post with a yellow marker on it denoting that we cross the Little Neshaminy again on another foot bridge. The trail became wide again on the other side, mowed, and took us to the west a bit more.
The mowed trail started to turn to the right a bit, away from the Little Neshaminy, and a foot path continued directly along the creek. It was very well worn at first, so we started to follow it.
The path led to a spot low on the flood plain next to the water, next to a rough and stony section where at times of high water, it flows over.
This was certainly not one of the trails we wanted and wasn't going to take us out of the woods any reasonable way, so we backtracked to the last mowed trail.
We continued along this trail, which eventually led us to a more open field area. We headed to the north through these fields, apparently still part of the park although not shown as such on Google maps, and then to a tree line. We turned left there, and the the trail seemed just to be open field. We followed that tree line all the way out to Stump Road.
From here, we had to only walk about a block to the northeast and turned to the left on Steeplechase Drive. An immediate right onto Chaps Way led to a cul de sac in a very short distance, and from the corner of that was a paved trail that led through a line of trees and out to Montgomeryville School.
When we came out of the trees to the school, the google maps showed when zoomed in that a trail continues along a tree line to the west, and connects with the Rt 202 Parkway Trail. We turned left on that field edge to the west.
At the end of the fields, there was a tree line. We cut into these trees and the trail became paved, then reached a split rail fence with a path around it to the paved Rt 202 Trail.
The Rt 202 Parkway Trail stretches about 8.5 miles from Welch Road in Montgomery County to New Britain Road in Bucks County. It basically is a paved trail that just follows Rt 202 the entire way. It was never anything I was terribly excited about walking, but I figured I would do it eventually.
Since Ev was born, it seemed like the perfect time to knock out some of this paved trail, since it was appropriate for the stroller, so that was part of the reason for scheduling this hike when we did.
Since Ev didn't come, I decided to change the plans a bit.
From the trail, Shane wanted to take a break, but I was looking directly across the highway. There was another paved trail over there, not shown on my map. and I had no idea where it went.
What I could see on the aerial images was that there was another trail it seemed along the opposite side of 202 from its namesake trail, which looked far less used. Street views seemed to show it to be accessible on the east end.
If we were to dash across 202, turn right on what looked to be a utility right of way, we would come to that trail and be able to continue. I thought that would be better than the boring several miles on the 202 parkway trail. If we did this, we could do an almost entirely different version of this hike with Ev the next time I bring him to the area.
It seemed like the right idea.
We dashed across, the the trail looked like it ended near a retention pond and a back yard. We didn't hang out for long. We turned right and followed the clearing behind a back yard, which was fenced, and then continued along the bottom of a retention pond. We dipped down and crossed a small tributary of the Little Neshaminy Creek and ascended again.
The main creek continues to the west only a little while farther, and we will do that last bit on another future hike. For this one, we continued behind some more houses, then down and over yet another little Neshaminy tributary next to a bridge that carries it under 202.
There was another little section of meadow beyond, and then we came to the paved trail, which looked like it ended at a small cul de sac or intended parking area.
There were old rusty metal signs that read it was Montgomery County Park land. The pavement has grasses growing up between the cracks and seams, and clearly no one had walked this in a while.
I was so glad we had chosen this route over just staying on the official trail on the other side, because it added so much more interesting stuff.
The trail was secluded and farther from 202 than the official trail was. We continued on this until it paralleled a town house community, in an area known as Wrenfield. We then crossed over County Line Road for the last time, and immediately across from the outlet of the trail was the entrance road to the St John Neumann Cemetery.
We entered the cemetery and skirted the right side for a bit. We stayed among the tombstones rather than go on the road all the way to the right, which made for a more pleasant walk.
We came upon a tomb stone that read "Shane" on it, which was a great photo opportunity because of how much Shane was complaining that he was going to perish after his dip in the creek.
Another nearby tombstone was odd in that it appeared to have wrestlers depicted on it, but it could be taken several different ways.
We continued through the cemetery to the northeast end, and then looked for an opening to the lands ahead. There was a meadow close to the edge of 202 I wanted to try to pass through, so we followed a sort of dump road for debris from the cemetery, and then cut through a corner of woods to the meadow, which was full of deer.
I went ahead of the group to the north along 202, and skirted the left side of the fields. I soon dipped down to the left and crossed over a small spring, the headwaters of the Mill Creek, which is a tributary of the main Neshaminy Creek. It passes beneath Rt 202 by way of a very oversized underpass to the right.
That area was fenced with chain link, so that's why I dipped down to cross the stream through the woods.
The others didn't see me go down there, and they went over to the underpass and went in. I climbed up the other side and ended up in fields, which look to be owned by the cemetery. There were no signs on them anywhere.
I turned right and followed the trail through the windy fields, which by this time wasn't too bad. I had worn enough layers to make it more comfortable for me to walk.
Jenny eventually called me while I waited in the fields to find out where I went. I didn't realize quite where they were, because they could have gone up to the 202 trail rather than try to follow me further on and saved some time, but we were doing pretty well on time anyway.
We continued along the field edges, along a chain link fence, and then downhill to Detweiler Road, which was severed by the construction of the wider Rt 202.
We climbed the slope to the 202 trail on the other side and continued walking it to the north.
The trail weaved away from 202 a bit on the right at an upward slope before crossing Rt 152, which was a nicer section. We crossed and everything moved along quite fast.
There was another side trail to the right that comes in from the right from the Warrington Township public works area, which I want to follow as part of another different hike in the future, possibly a loop.
We passed under Pickertown Road, and the trail switched sides of 202 to the southbound side, which meant we had to wait twice at the traffic lights.
There were a couple of cyclists coming through at insane speeds on this trail, hollering at us as they approached. They were definitely doing more than the fifteen mile per hour speed limits imposed usually by National Park Service, but I'm not sure what the regulation for it is on this trail. Some cyclists can be the biggest jerks.
Pretty soon, we crossed over the main Neshaminy Creek on the northbound side. A bit past that, another trail, which we followed on a previous hike, broke off to the left to follow the upstream Neshaminy.
It is possible that some of the lands to our left were open to public as well, but I'm not sure. That would have to be a future one.
We continued ahead across Almshouse Road, and then toward Lower State Road, where the trail shifts sides of the highway again.
We didn't wait to go down; we just crossed 202 early, and dashed down through an open field, over a retention pond, and then over Lower State Road through a group of three business buildings. In back, the trail along the Neshaminy reaches close to the lot. We got on that and continued walking in a more peaceful setting.
There was a bench with a drawing board on it, which seems kind of odd.
The group originally wanted to just follow the 202 trail and road back to the cars, but I pushed to do the trail along the creek because it was so much nicer and quieter through the meadows. I think they were probably glad we went that way too.
A side trail led up to Radcliff Road, but we continued along the downstream Neshaminy through fields, then along the creek and closer to the development.
To the left of the trail, near the end of Sunrise Drive in the new development, was a very obviously older stone house, probably one of the first on the property.
I sometimes see this, where we pass through a new development, but the original homestead is still there, looking out of place.
According to the historic 1876 atlas of Bucks County, this was the property of S. T. Patterson at the time.
We continued from here out to Wells Road, crossed, and entered the Central Park where our cars were, with plenty of time before they would shut the gates. We cut to the left through the grass to get there more quickly.
There are so many other little side trails through this area, and ways I can loop with some of what we've done, but a lot of what we hadn't, to continue with this series. Now is the perfect time really.
There are also so many other connections that build off of this one.
I actually have a few more hikes to do to really wrap up the Neshaminy Series completely, because there are other streams and head waters, but we can also build off of what we had done on this and previous hikes into nearby trail systems.
There are ways of connecting the trails around the Doylestown area with the stuff around Horsham, as well as the upper Wissahickon pretty easily, and there are a ton of trails still along that I have barely touched upon at all.
There is also the fact that I have still never really walked through Doylestown proper, and I really need to get around to doing it because it is such an interesting little town.
While this was not the most incredible hike, it was still a very good time with a lot of interesting little things. I was very glad to get back to the area and explore some more.
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