bikeman111

I'm going to Cape Cod for Memorial Day weekend and plan to bring my road bike. I'll be staying in Orleans and plan to pick up the Rails to Trails pathway there, then take it to Wellsfleet and perhaps on to Provincetown. Would appreciate advice on the quality of the bike trails between Wellsfleet and P-town, as well as references to any maps that could be helpful.

Lightingguy

The east/north terminus of the trail is in Wellfleet. You're on road to P-Town, just heads up.

https://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/trails/print/ccrt.pdf

SB

bikeman111

I'd heard it was all on-road riding after Wellfleet. Are there any dedicated biking trails once you get to P-town?

bktourer1

There is the Provincelands trail that goes to Racepoint Beach, Wellfleet to Ptown is on the road.
Get the Rubels bike maps for the cape

merlin55

wellfleet to ptown is a very busy road on the weekends during the summer...fyi

mprelaw

You can take a break from Rte 6 by following some of the beach roads in Wellfleet and Truro. A couple of them loop by the Hollows and then rejoin 6 a little farther along towards P-town. Check your bike maps. In North Truro, you can try 6-A along the bay shore.

Another option is to ride back towards Barnstable from Orleans, by following Rte 6-A. If you want a slice of what Cape Cod must have been like before tourism changed it. It's a beautiful ride, along rolling hills. Not as heavily traveled as Rtes 6 and 28.

Don't trust your bikes unlocked at night, or even when you're in a restaurant. Cape Cod has a lot of drug-related crime now. Orleans has its share of that, too.

bikebadger14

Nickerson State Park is along the CCRT, as well as having a number of paths within the park. It'd probably be pretty crowded during the summer, though (my only experience is in October) but so will anything on the Cape. There's a spur trail about 10 miles 'west' from Orleans (toward Dennis) that goes out to Chatham, but I've never been on that one. The CCRT is paved, well-marked, and there's plenty of opportunity to swing off to visit a beach, museum or historic site. (A side-trip to the National Seashore/Natural History Museum/Marconi Beach was recommended to my dad and me by an LBS in Orleans.)

transporterjr

Even though it after the original poster's tour time, thought I weight in here since I just returned from touring Cape Cod. We started in Mattapoisett, MA and rode ~25 miles to Shawme-Crowell state park in Sandwich. Picked up the canal road in Bourne & rode over the Sagamore Bridge.

From Shawme, we rode to Wellfleet, with a side trip to Nauset Beach, We had a little bit of a messy time in Hyannis, winding up down there trying to maximize bike path time. We used the service road aside of route 6, Picked up the Cape Cod Rail Trail (CCRT) and took that to all the way to Wellfleet (w side trip to Nauset). We had a little bit of a messy time in Hyannis, winding up down there trying to maximize bike path time.

Wellfleet back, we stayed on the CCRT, but decided to stay North. That put us on Route 6A for a while which even though the section we were on is listed as a bike route, has no shoulder and lots of traffic. We took 132 south and worked our way to Service Road on the way back - over Sagamore, Canal road back to Mattapoisett for a 65-67 miles day.

Touring the Cape is generally going to be like this I believe. There's the smooth great rail trail, when off it, or other bike paths, if you are trying to get somewhere, you will likely wind up on a busy road with little shoulder.