Northeast - Southern NH/Northern MA riders - route from Manchester to Seacoast?

Hi All,

My wife and I would like to bike from the Manchester, NH area to Portsmouth, NH and other points along the seacoast. Can anyone recommend some good (and safe) routes to get there and back?

Thanks in advance!

I have some good century rides out of Concord...I am sure you can switch up the route a bit for manchester.

Concord to Plymouth and back.
Route is 106 to 3 to 175 through Holderness, down to Plymouth, cutting over to Bristol and back through Hill, Franklin, etc.

As far as to North Hampton...routes on 27 isnt tooo bad from what I am told (have not done it so I am not sure)

Hey SwimBike,

Thanks for the reply. The trip to Plymouth along 106 and 3 sounds nice... I will have to investigate. I don't think I'm up to riding a century yet (I just started riding this spring) but I'm working on it. I think two 50 mile days back to back are more my speed right now.

Thanks also for the tip on route 27. I went onto the google map website and tried out some routes based on route 27 and I think I found a nice scenic route to Portsmouth. It's about 51 miles from my house to the coast. I think I'll ride there on a Saturday, spend some time in town once I get there, then ride home the next day.

I spoke to a fellow at the LBS in Manchester (Nault's) and he said that when he rides from manchester to UNH in Durham, he rides along 27 as well and that the automobile traffic wasn't too bad.

Naults is a good LBS. I goto Goodales on the north side of manchester (well i guess hooksett really). Pick those guys brains for every bit of info they have.

SwimBike - I like Nault's and Goodales. I pester the people at Nault's asking all kinds of questions and they've been very helpful and friendly. Likewise with Goodale's. They've been very helpful and patient. I don't frequent Goodale's as much, though, since it's a little farther for me (I live west of the Merrimack River).

Have you ever done any rides to the western part of the state or into VT? I'm thinking about riding west to Monadonock (sp?) or maybe northwest to lebanon.

I ride out of concord a great deal with GSW. Besides that my rides normally consist of me getting lost on back roads. I have only been living in NH for a year. I turn right 4 times and hope I finish where I started.

there are a lot of nice rides through bow and dunbarton. I have not done a lot to far west. I have had medical issues this year having a real slow start to the season. I cant do my 50+ rides just yet.

The NH Dot released the pdf for the 2007 bike route maps. They were expecting to release the maps to the Welcome Center/Rest areas on Friday so I would check those resources for good routes. http://www.nh.gov/dot/nhbikeped/maps.htm
The maps are great and very popular. They ran out of Hillsborough county maps early.

Hi Mel_bikes. Thans for the link. Those maps are great!