Day one 32 miles
DUMBO in Brooklyn to Pierpont.
Set off and got a bit lost coming off Manhattan Bridge trying to find the Joe Strummer wall. Asked directions from a nice old boy, a war veteran who was stationed in a big town in the war (turned out it was Reading).
Some nice shouts from the many riders passed in the 32 miles from Brooklyn to Pierpont on the Hudson. Inc 'hard core' going up a big hill (from a rider going down, and I don't even think he was being sarcastic), which gave me a bit of a spur.
Turns out the ride out to Piermont where I was headed is 'the standard ride' for New Yorkers on a Sunday, and I can see why. The Greenway along the West side of Manhattan was rammed with riders and runners, aided by riders in green bibs who had completed the 5 boros tour of NYC, the biggest cycle event in America which allows 40,000 riders to cover a car free ride around the city, starting and finishing in Battery Park at the southern tip of the island.
Packing was the usual panic, what to pack, how heavy. The big dilemma was whether to go with camera gear (3-4 lenses) or camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, mat etc), I decided it was too much to go for both. I plumped for camera gear this time as it was a shorter ride and I couldn't see too much camping opportunity until Albany.
I found a B&B first night not too far from Brooklyn in Piermont. It is run by a classic valleyite called Carolla. Who is a wellness and yoga teacher. Carolla kindly offered to run me into Piermont (2 miles away) to a nice Portuguese restaurant. Carolla joined me for supper and we got chatting to Karen and Dennis at the next table. Turned out Karen was also a 'Wellness' expert. And you can imagine that Carolla and Karen has lots to talk about with Dennis (a drummer) and I giving lots of nods at appropriate times. Then back to Riverview (probably not the last of those I'll stay in) for a quick catch up on the days footie and Giro results. The house, a beautiful slatted painted wood building, was once owned by Rex Harrison, who played Henry Higgins opposite Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
I read a nice piece about fishing in the Palisades on the Hudson by a man called William O Allison, who was born in 1849 and wrote this in 1913.
'Looking up at the small dilapidated abiding places along the Palisades in 1913, one could hardly help smiling when told how an ancestor refused to live in an isolated old house at Manhattanville (today the neighbourhood around West 125th street), because it was so lonely there. There were probably few places in this or any other county, where so good a living could be obtained with so little effort. The River, until became polluted, teemed with fish of every sort, and the shad fishing during some six weeks in the Spring was profitable enough to support a family for the year. At low tide, the soft clams could be dug, and the oysters beds on the west side of the river could be raked and tonged. It was a common thing, any still summer day, to observe a shark swimming near the surface. Porpoises were plentiful, and the huge sturgeon would call attention to his frolic by jumping his full length out of the water, and falling back. The catching of Shad was by using poles sunk into the deep water and mud across the tide. The poles of oak or hickory would be 45-50ft long. On each pole was a strong hoop, made of hickory sapling, with a stone fastened to it weighing perhaps 25 pounds. The nets were lifted every six hours, at the slackening of each tide, called the ebb lift and the flood lift. The best fishing was on the flood tide, as the shad were going up to fresh water to spawn and the great catches were when they had a full moon, and big flood tides. It was no uncommon thing for a boat to bring in 500 shad from one lift, and often take 1000 in 24 hours. The fishermen made an arrangement with a merchant in New York, to sell their fish, usually ro 1 cent a piece, and in the 1860s as low as six cents per shad. Sturgeon were an annoyance as they were so big they broke the nets. Besides striped bass, smelts and eels from from the salt water, there would be goldfish, sunfish, pike, pickerel, suckers, catfish, etc from the freshwater'.
Well that's it, tomorrow and hoping to get over the river to Mt Kisco to take a look at Woody Guthries archives and to meet Anna (his granddaughter).
I realised that though I had packed the big heavy New York lock (for the bike) I had left the key. Ho hum.

Setting out from the Joe Strummer mural in the East Village. It was used in the video for Redemption Song, and seemed a good starting point.
Untitled by nick_hand at Garmin Connect - Details.