Lilac Tuesday and some of the Metropolitan Water System - Tuesday, May 14, 2024

 RIDE REPORT

 

Tuesday, 14 May 2024, Lilac Wednesday Tuesday and some of the Metropolitan Water System

Ride Leader:  David Wean
23 miles, 10:00 am start from Brookline, MA

 

Riders (9):  David, Betsy Kimball, Bill Perry, Cynthia Zabin, Gerry Sheetoo, Jim Campen, John Springfield, Simon Lingard, and Susan Sabin

 

Pre-poned from Wednesday due to an unfavorable forecast, we gathered at Larz Anderson Park to explore a bunch of reservoirs and ponds, many of which were at one point part of the Metropolitan Water System, throwing in a couple of rivers for good measure.  In order:  Brookline Reservoir, Fisher Hill Reservoir, Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Waban Hill Reservoir (see a pattern here?), Chandler Pond, the Charles River, Fresh Pond, the Muddy River, Leverett Pond, Ward's Pond, Jamaica Pond, and the Arboretum's Faxon, Rehder, and Dawson Ponds.  

 

At Fisher Hill, we found that the Reservoir had been drained and replaced by a soccer field, though we were treated to an engraved stone map depicting many of the features of the Metropolitan Water System, indicating when each had gone on- and off-line, as well as several of the aqueducts.  At Chestnut Hill, we admired the Richardsonian (but not designed by Richardson himself) pumping station, part of which is now the Waterworks Museum.  We eventually picked up the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway to Fresh Pond, worked our way through Cambridge on the two-way cycle track along Brattle Street into Harvard Square.  We then followed the Charles to Boston University, after which we twisted our way along the Emerald Necklace, following the Muddy River, Olmsted Park, and a dirt/gravel path around tiny Ward's Pond where we saw the seven newly hatched ugly ducklings.  

 

We continued along Jamaica Pond and eventually to the Arnold Arboretum to catch the display of lilac bushes without the crowds that had visited on Lilac Sunday, two days prior.  Climbing our way through Jamaica Plain's Moss Hill neighborhood, we returned to the ride start, and six of us had lunch at the Putterham Grill, a Mediterranean restaurant about a mile away.  

 

Thanks to Gerry for sweeping and, though we largely hung together, the folks who stepped up to arrow the turns when needed.  

 

Report by David Wean.

Photo courtesy of Simon Lingard.