bikerwannabe

QUESTION: Can you ride a road bike from Valley Forge to Graterford/Skippack?

I have ridden a road bike as far as VF and have ridden a MTN bike on parts of the Perkiomen trail.
But I am not sure of the trail surface between the two. I generally don't ride my road bike on anything but paved roads, though I know others do. So I am looking for advice on trail surface and opinions on whether it can be done on a road bike by a relative newbie (50+ years old with about 7 mos on a road bike).

THANKS

Stacey

I've ridden the northern part of the Perk trail, down to around Collegeville, it's pretty much hardpack gravel. I was comfortable on 27x1 1/4's. I don't know how I'd feel about 23's tho.

SPlKE 

I did the perk on the hardpack gravel stretch on my road bike.

I wouldn't do it again.

While I could consistently find hard, relatively gravel-free areas, it was exhausting constantly concentrating on the surface just ahead of my bike, and steering to the least gravely parts of the trail.

bikerwannabe

SPIKE - I agree completely with your assessment. On Saturday I rode past VF for a few miles and I too found it exhausting (and slow) trying to keep to a suitably hard, gravel free portion of the trail. I was hoping to make it to Skippack but decided not to push my luck so I turned around at Collegeville.
Oh well - it was worth a try!

Thanks for the replies.