No. 7 - Tiverton/Little Compton Loop - 66 Miles - 14 Scenic Sites & Ice Cream!

So how DO you feel about 66 miles on a warm day in July? This one starts at the Park & Ride lot off Fish Road, just north of Route 24. Before you know it the Sakonnet River Bridge is passing over head, with Grinnell's Beach and Nannaquaket Bridge on the horizon. Emily Ruecker Wildlife Refuge and Seapowet Marsh slip by on the way to one of the last scenic sites in Tiverton: Fogland Beach. Then, just-like-that, Little Compton delivers Town Way and Taylor's Lane, two classic Rights of Way on the way to Sakonnet Harbor and all the the activity down there. Scenic views abound along the southern Rhode Island coastline, but one of the greatest is South Shore Beach. A short walk along the beach, across a shallow tidal creek, and Goosewing Beach appears. The Beach is owned by the Nature Conservancy, who is doing everything it can to protect the piping plovers that nest there. Then it's a do-not-stop-at-GO cruise up to Gray's Ice Cream at Tiverton Four Corners.
Given the opportunity to go on a such a bike ride, in our little Ocean State, there is quite simply nothing else to say, save this:

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when when man invented the bicycle.
-- Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills p. 19
The Quotable Cyclist, by Bill Strickland, 1997