Hike #1528;1/29/23 Newtown PA North Loop with Stephen Argentina, Jennifer Berndt, Jennifer Tull, Professor John DiFiore, Serious Sean Dougherty, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Weider, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, Eric Pace, Diane Reider, Violet Chen, Robin Deitz, Heshi, Shane Blische, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, and Everen
This next one would be a big loop on the north side of Newtown PA, which fit into our Neshaminy series I'd started a few years ago.
We had started on the Neshaminy Creek and followed its course, as well as many tributaries, all the way from the confluence with the Delaware upstream. When the pandemic happened, we kind of put some of that on hold, and returned again when things calmed down, but by that time we were pretty near finished with it anyway.
I had recently done one more following the course of the Little Neshaminy Creek, around Doylestown PA, and we followed most of the main Neshaminy Creek.
Now, we just had to go back to where we'd already been and do some of the other trails we had missed on the previous hikes, of which there are actually quite a lot.
This hike came about because our good friend Stephen Argentina had been hiking with us for almost exactly a decade this week.
He and I discussed doing another hike in White Clay Creek on the Maryland and Delaware border, but that was a pretty far drive, and Stephen wanted as many people to be able to join as possible.
I thought over what he was saying, and figured that the area around Newtown, and a hike I'd already scaled off and was ready to go, would be the perfect one because the terrain was pretty similar.
I wanted to have something that was very celebratory, and so there was a winery we'd not yet visited to the north of Newtown, as well as a brewery we had eaten at once before and liked in Newtown. I decided that our starting point would be in the same area as the Iron Hill Brewery, in the lot of the McCaffrey's food market, near the Starbucks.
I left with some extra time in the morning and used some of that to scoop up Shane on the way.
We reached the lot and much of the group was already there. I figured that overall this would be a relaxing one, and that since it was a loop, it didn't matter as much hurrying along. I also had ways of cutting corners if we found it to be necessary.
Once everyone was together, we set out. Carolyn would meet us a bit later.
We walked through the parking lot of the Acme supermarket, and then made our way out the west side of that into the property of the Newtown Skate Park. We followed the fence and lot to the south, and then cut into the woods on the south side. A foot path between the lots brought us out to the fields of the Council Rock High School.
Once in the fields, we went directly straight across for a bit. We angled slightly to the right, and then came out to the access road into the school property, near to the bridge that passes beneath the Newtown Bypass.
I wanted to try to do a trail I'd never done before, and the Green Lane Trail, which goes straight into Tyler State Park, also continues on board of education property to the south and parallel with the Newtown Bypass. We turned onto that and followed it south.
We passed the Newtown Middle School, and the trail turned to the left to head west, parallel with Richboro Road. We continued all the way to the bridge over the Neshaminy Creek. We crossed, and I paused everyone to tell them about the Spring Garden Mill across the street.
The Spring Garden Mill was built in 1819 on the Newtown-Richboro Road, adjacent to "The Dripping Spring". In 1781, members of the Doan outlaw band are reputed to have hidden their horses in a dense thicket near Dripping Spring, just before they rode into Newtown and robbed the County treasury. Newtown at this time was the County seat.
When we had last hiked through this area, we went back into the woods there and actually found the site of the Dripping Spring.
The Spring Garden Mill today has been refurbished and is operated as a playhouse of all things! The building is made of stone, but it is covered in stucco, so it doesn't have the look of antiquity quite like it should.
There is also the former site of the Spring Garden Mill Covered Bridge, just downstream from the current bridge site. It is said that the bridge was built in 1815, and that it was swept away in the Flood of 1955.
I've done then and now compilations of the historic covered bridge at three different angles, which showed how the abutments were built to accept the weight of the Burr Arch trusses. Those compilations can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/metrotrails/posts/2143526189017241
https://www.facebook.com/metrotrails/posts/1933293500040512
https://www.facebook.com/metrotrails/posts/1722949544408243
I also did a then and now compilation of the Spring Garden Mill, which can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/metrotrails/posts/1921308434572352
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| 1830s Clark Nature Center House |
We continued ahead to one of the parking areas for Tyler State Park, and turned to the right. My initial plan was to follow the Wood Field Trail to the west, because I'd never done that one before, but then I decided we would go along the creek directly in a pretty route I had done before.
The first part of it was fine, out to the dam on the Neshaminy, which is shaped like an arc, next to some scenic cliffs. What I did not consider was the difficulty of the trail beyond. I knew I could walk it with no problem whatsoever, but with Ev in the stroller, it was going to be much harder.
Still, I managed to push on through and got him past multiple places where there were blow downs to go around, and then a really rough spot where I had to push him on a narrow footpath along the creek, then up a steep rocky slope to reach the Wood Field Trail. Once we got there, everything was much easier.
We continued along the trail, which meandered along the the upper slope of the creek, and eventually descended to the causeway across it.
I was surprised to see that some sort of big event was going on. I think it was a triathalon or something like that.
We continued through the parking lot, and then to the right across open grass, toward Swamp Road. Once out to the road, we hurried across, and then went directly uphill on the other side between some trees into Helen Randle Park.
If the property lines are similar to those I see on the historic maps, this too was part of the Tomlinson tract that was on the other side of the road.
A paved trail went around the perimeter of this park, and my plan was to use that for a bit. We followed it northwest, parallel with Swamp Road, then turned ninety degrees to the northeast along the far edge of the park.
My plan, when we got to the northernmost corner of Helen Randle Park, was to cut into the woods and make our way into the Clark Nature Center, which was another little park I had never explored before, owned by the township.
We entered the wood line, after seeing a deer run in that direction. It seemed like there might be a reasonable path at first, but I didn't have my hopes up because I was planning that this would be the most difficult part of the entire hike.
It might have been the most difficult I suppose, but it actually wasn't too terrible. The first entry to the woods was near to houses, so I wanted to get out of there before we had any problems.
I had to push Ev in the stroller as carefully as I could back and forth around many fallen trees. It was amazing that I was able to get him through the mess as well as I did.
We came to a point at the top of a hill near a deer stand, and below I could see a power line clearing not too far away. I figured we could head down to that, and then at the very least follow the clearing out to the east.
We carefully headed down through the woods, and bullied our way out onto the power line, which was not all that bad. The line to the right was kind of uphill, so it was a bit more of a workout than I was counting on getting, but I do need it.
I was hoping that there would be a good cut through to the north, which would get us in to the trail system at Clark Nature Center. However, there was no such trail. We had to continue to the east and come out on Durham Road.
Once on the road, we turned left to the north, and then came to the open lawn at the south side of the Clark Nature Center.
The house at the front of the property was constructed in the late 1830s by Stacy C. Buckman when he had acquired about 50 acres that is now the nature center. The property was named Mount Pleasant, and it remained in the Buckman family until about 1891, the same year as the map I have been reviewing.
The property was purchased by Lyman Clark in 1935, and the Clarks sold the property to Newtown Township in 1997.
The timing was good, I thought, when we arrived here, because we could do some of the trail system, and then make our way to the Rose Bank Winery. However, when we got back to the parking area, we found the signs saying that all of the trails were closed to anyone walking them due to the dead ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borers. It was a disappointment that I had included this property, but we couldn't go through it.
We took a littel break here, and then decided to move on along to the winery. It was just about time for them to open, so we would just arrive a little earlier than I had anticipated we would.
We headed north on Durham Road for a bit, and soon reached the corner of the property for Rose Bank Winery, a handsome stone house with a somewhat steep grassy hill.
We had to get up the hill, and waited for a break in traffic. We all started running across the street, and a car came speeding up behind us when the tail of the group was just getting across. The guy ended up flipping off the group. There's a winner right there.
We reached the driveway to the place, and walked past the old stone house, followed by other beautiful out buildings with manicured lawns and bedding.
The tasting room had just barely opened, so we went inside to have a look around. I picked Ev up and let him out of the stroller to run around a bit, but watched closely that he didn't grab anything glass to break.
I talked to the ladies that were behind the counter about the history of the place, and found it to be quite amazing.
This property had been deended to the daughters of William Penn, and the oldest section of the main house building was built in 1719. The property was expanded upon quite a lot around 1832 when it was purchased by Jacob Buckman. I assume he was probably related to the Stacy Buckman who built the homestead on the other side of Durham Road.
The tasting room is called Buckman as per the sign; it occupies a beautiful stone bank barn built in 1834.
The lady behind the counter told me it suffered a terrible fire in the early 2000s, and she pointed up to the hand hewn beams that bear the smoke damage from that time. Rather than demolish, the building was rebuilt with expansions for the winery that included an amazing upper level ballroom.
The group graciously allowed us to use the upper event rooms rather than crowd the tasting room below, which was just awesome. The group scooped Ev up and brought him upstairs, and I would have to take the stroller around the outside to the handicapped ramp on the other side.
Eric was trying to decide what to get, so I talked to a guy working behind the counter about what stuff he likes. He was a self proclaimed "sugar addict", and so I knew I'd get along with his tastes. I got two bottles, one of the cranberry wine, and another of the blackberry wine. Eric decided to go with a simple concord grape one, and he got a flight of some wines.
Upstairs, Ev had an absolute blast running around on the nicely finished floors. There wasn't really much he could get into, so he could have free reign to run around as crazy as he wanted. By the time we were finished at this place, he was more content to sit down for a bit.
We were definitely in the place for over an hour. I think we may have overstayed our welcome because they had an event booked up there I understand. As soon as we got wind of that, we hurried to get our stuff together and head out.
Carolyn had met us at the winery about when we got there, so our group was complete.
We actually moved pretty quickly, and went out the door with the ramp. It was really a great stop, and one I will definitely be making again in the future, becuase I've got other almost totally different versions of this hike we did, possibly even better ones.
I was originally going to head back out the front of the winery, but I realized there was nothing barring us from exiting the back and going to Veterans Park that way, so we just went for it. Initially, I was disorented to much that I almost turned to the right, which would have been the wrong way. I had to try to get my bearings. The plan I had for the hike from here was an oddball one, and I think I felt thrown off by not doing the Clark Nature Center, plus from having some wine.
We turned back to the left again, past Newtown Elementary School, and turned right on Wrights Road. There is a paved path that follows the north side of that. We walked it for a bit, and another paved path went to the left. I had thought to follow that, and it would have gotten us where we were going faster, but I had seen on Google Maps a small foot bridge over the Newtown Creek to the east, so I assumed there would be another nature trail into the woods in the area that would be good. We continued east because I wanted to find that.
We made it all the way to the intersection with Eagle Road and there was nothing. I looked more closely, and there was nothing of a trail going into those woods. We had to turn left on Eagle Road, which didn't have a great shoulder, but it wasn't all that far to go for the next turn.
Once we crossed Newtown Creek, we cut to the left across grass and into an area of parking.
Just as our large group had crossed over onto the lot, there was a woman that had walked by around the perimeter of the lot. I think she had headphones on and didn't notice any of us at all! She noticed us finally when she made a turn to the right and we were going to the left. It must have been an insane shock to turn and see 17 people meandering right behind her, all of which seemed to appear out of nowhere because we came from through the grass over a hill on the road, and we had no cars parked in the area.
We cut to the left from the parking area because I saw there was a foot bridge in the woods in this area via the aerial images. It was there where it was supposed to be alright, but the trail didn't go anywhere but to it. It was well worn enough just to the edge of the creek and seemed to disappear.
I suspect that this trail used to continue along the creek through this property and made some sort of a loop, but that no one continued to maintain the trail and it has grown in.
It sucked that we went across it and had to go back, but fortunately it wasn't really too far.
We headed to the north through the grass for a bit, and then reached an access road. We crossed directly, and then continued on the other side on a paved path which goes through the property of the Newtown HOA Recreation Center. We passed a tennis court or something on the left, and then came to a T intersection with another paved path. We turned left there and followed it to the entrance to a parking lot. We turned right into that, then continued out of the north side of the parking lot through grass, and immediately parallel with and Chesterbrook Academy Preschool. We emerged onto Marigold Drive.
We turned left briefly, then right on North Drive, and continued a short distance to the intersection of Teaberry Lane and Zinnia Drive. Then, we cut into the grass on the north side of Teaberry, and made our way through the grassy top of a berm between and around trees near to the backs of town houses. I figured much of this land is treated as common area, and so we used this to get through.
We passed five or six buildings, and then emerged into a well mowed retention pond area. We skirted around the south and west sides of that.
We made our way to almost the north of the retention pond, and I could see that thre was a somewhat clear path through the woods to the left of us. This was a buried utility right of way of some kind, that I hoped to be able to walk.
I also looked across the creek and could see a clearing that was behind a development off of a road known as Rittenhouse Circle. I mentioned to the others that if there was a good way thrugh and across the Newtown Creek between the spot we stood and over there, we could take a bit of a shortcut. I noted that the open field was the destination coming up anyway, so it made sense to try to cut this particular corner. Everyone seemed to agree, and they started going through it.
Serious Sean had gone ahead first to make certain it was something we could at least get the stroller somewhat through. He deemed it all to be okay, and so we made our way through the woods to the brook.
I walked right through the water and pushed the stroller because I didn't have the time to be messing around with waiting for help. Once we got up and out of the mess, onto the retention pond behind this more posh section of development, we made our way around the outside, and then into the development.
People gave us some weird looks as we headed through this bit. We continued in a counter clockways way around the Rittenhouse Circle, then at the building that was closest to Durham Road, we cut through trees and along mowed grass around the building out to Durham Road.
We turned right on Durham Road for just a bit, and none of the fields on the left side were signed with anything. I assume they must be township owned fields, which also forced me to reconsider how we go about going through the next bit.
Way back in the wooded section there seemed to have been an abandoned house, and possibly another one in a nearer piece of property. The front property appeared to have once been owned by Charles Blair, and the rear one we'd pass, by a C. Twining around the turn of the century.
We turned down a driveway off of Durham Road, and reached a wooded area where there was curbing on the right, and apparently the site of a former house. The historic maps show that there were three dwellings back there in the center of an 85 acre tract. It was sad that really nothing but the curb remained along the entrance road.
I left Ev with the group by the road, and I ran back the drive to see if there was anything else. When there was nothing, we continued along the wood line to the right, and then cut straight to the west, in a trajectory toward a ninety degree bend in Twining Bridge Road.
There was a deep chasm in the field for runoff, which required some assistance from Serious Sean to get Ev across in the stroller. We then made our way out to the road for a relaxing time.
We weaved around the sharp corner, and a driveway on the left to the apparent abandoned house was too much in sight from other area houses, so I decided not to try to go and explore it this time. Just beyond the turn, a paved trail turned off to the right side of the road and paralleled at a slightly higher elevation all the way to a spot after the intersection with Dorchester Drive.
A short distance farther took us to the intersection with Swamp Road, where a brief jog to the left and then to the right led us back into Tyler State Park, on Covered Bridge Trail, which is the older route of Twining Bridge Road.
We headed down along the trail, cut to the right, and then descended to the Schofield Ford Covered Bridge, which was also once known as the Twining Bridge.
The original bridge at this site was built in 1874 over the Neshaminy Creek. Sadly, that original structure was burned by an arsonist in 1991. Funds were raised, and a new covered bridge was built on the same site in 1997. At 163 feet long, the Town Truss style double span is the longest covered bridge in Bucks County.
We continued through the bridge, and it was pretty cool that a horse was running toward us, and proceeded through the covered bridge.
We got our group shot on the far side of the covered bridge, and then turned to the right on Hay Barn Grass Trail.
The trail was pretty easy at first, right along the Neshaminy Creek. I had hiked it before, and I figured it wouldn't be too terribly difficult with the stroller. When we did the Neshaminy series originally, we just bushwhacked upstream from that location to the next road. I had never continued to follow the trail all the way through as I recall.
The wooded section was tough with all of the tree roots and such, and it took me some time to push on through that, and that was only the first part.
This time, we followed the trail through and turned to the left when the trail turned. This was the last really rough spot on the hike because it was so insanely muddy.
I wasn't counting on it being as bad as it was, but it was a seriously tough push through the fields because of the depth of the mud. A lot of the group was falling far behind us, and I tried to push through quickly. There wasn't a lot of marking to show where the trail was supposed to go, so I tried to follow what looked most like the trail.
It became more obvious when we were on the field edge going directly to the south, and when we got to the intersection with White Pine Trail, which is a sort of woods road, we waited for everyone to catch up again.
During this tme waiting, there was a group of fighter jets that went over the fields. We couldn't figure out what was going on, but then we figured it was a fly over for a football game that had been happening that day.
We turned to the right on the White Pine Trail, reached the ninety degree bend to the south where the trail skirted an equestrian farm area, and headed gradually uphill. This portion of the trail is open to cars going to the farm and one private residence located out in the park.
We continued uphill to the Betz Hill Trail, another old road, and went around a gate to the left around another gate. This one took us on gently rolling terrain with some nice pastoral views, and then to Mill Dairy Trail. Here, we turned to the right and headed gradually downhill until we came to the Neshaminy Creek again, at the causeway we had been across earlier.
Once we got across the causeway, we turned to the right on Tyler Drive Trail, which follows along the Neshaminy Creek downstream for a bit. There was a beautiful enormous tree on the right side.
When we reached the point where the trail turned away from the creek ahead, we stopped in the trail and a dance party ensued using a portable speaker, which was hilarious.
We continued on the trail uphill, and then continued up on the Quarry Trail, which gradually makes is way up to another parking area to the east.
When we got to the lot, we continued straight ahead on the Green Lane Trail further to the east. The trail came out to the road known as Green Lane that leads to the Council Rock High School, where we had turned earlier, and passed beneath the Newtown Bypass again.
We continued through the school lot, further to the east, and then took a path through the woods at the end through trees and out into a strip mall near the Newtown Farmers Market. We turned left at the end of the lot, and continued through lots, across grass, and parallel with Eagle Road back to the section our cars were in.
The Iron Hill Brewery was there, and so we made our way toward that to have our meal.
We managed to get a big long table that held the entire group, and we sampled some of the Russian Imperial Stout.
Ev sat pretty nicely in a high chair for much of the time, when we had him eating and such. He's doing pretty well as long as he's getting attention, and so with the group he's pretty good.
Eventually, we had to let him down for a bit and he started running up and down the edge of the place near tables. He got to be a little out of hand so we had to have him up in the chair again. For the most part, while he was eating he was okay.
I think I ordered a pasta dinner thing so that there would be something Ev could eat too. Everyone usually offers him something of theirs anyway, and it seems inevitable that someone gives him fries here or there, which he loves.
The dinner finished pretty soon, and we were on our way back over to the cars. Ev ended up walking most of the way holding either my hand or someone else's.
This was really a pretty great day overall, and I have another entire version of it that would be very much different to eventually post. Part of me is tempted to just post it very soon again, because this was so nice, but then the other part of me wants to hold off for a year or so and post other stuff in either the Neshaminy series or immediately connecting areas.
If my misfortune is that I have too many good options in life, I'll take it.
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