We saddled up our bikes and headed to the East Bay to check out the Iron Horse Regional Trail. This multi-use trail starts in Concord/Walnut Creek and ends Dublin/Pleasanton along abandoned railroad tracks that roughly parallel 680 freeway.

It’s a great ride as the trail is quite wide &  open to multiple uses (bikers, walkers, even horses) but is mostly separate from traffic. The path passes through several communities with easy egress/ingress so you can stop to eat, rest or picnic along the way.

The route will ultimately span 33 miles but right now it’s 20+ miles.  However, we only rode 5+ miles of it (and back) making a total of 11 miles. This was our first major bike outing of the season and clearly my knees were not as enthusiastic as I.  We also made the big mistake of driving to Walnut Creek. The best way to get there is to leave the car home & take Bart which can drop you off at either end of the trail making it easier to ride the whole route and then take the train back home from there.  Seriously, Bart is the way to go. We got stuck on Highway 24 for 45 minutes waiting to get through the Caldecott tunnel– or as we called it– the funnel as four packed lanes squeezed down to two!

Walnut Creek is a great place to start the trip as we launched with lunch at tasty Tender Greens, then blithely rode over major intersections on lovely bridges which fall along the route, one of the nice ways Iron Horse Trail takes you off road.

It’s almost the end of National Bike Month but for me it’s the beginning of cycle season. Now if I can just convince my knees of that, we’ll be on our way!