When Tom and I considered coming to Fort Frederica, one of the things that most excited us was the bike trails on St. Simons Island.  There are 30 miles of bike trails on an island that is only 10 miles long.  All of the main roads have a bike trail paralleling the road.  This means we can ride our bike pretty much anywhere we want to go on the island.  We didn’t wait long to try out the trails!

Fort Frederica is the midpoint of St. Simons.  For our first ride, we decided to head north on the Hampton Spur.  We rode the bike trail from the National Monument to Lawrence Road, and then picked up the Spur.  The Hampton Spur is five miles long and goes from the round-about mid-island to the Hampton Estates on the north end of the island.  Although the trail ends at the Country Club, you can ride on the road past the mansions in the Hampton Estates.  Riding to the end and back gives us a ride of 12 miles.

This northern end of the island is less populated than the southern end of St. Simons.  Consequently we can ride faster and not be as concerned about cars turning into us.  The trail is beautiful, with homes on one side of the road and maritime forest on the other.  We passed several historical markers describing plantations that used to be on the island.  This is the ride we will take when we want some exercise.

The bike trails through the rest of St. Simons lead to the places people want to go.  We rode our bike to the movie theater one day.  Another day, we rode to the beach.  We rode to CVS to pick up allergy medicine.

The main road south is Frederica Road, and the bike trail runs beside it.  Because it is the main road on the island, traffic is really heavy.  To get to the south end of the island, we have several large intersections to navigate and many smaller cross streets.  The bike trail is convenient and we can get where we want to go, but we have to be very careful and can’t go fast.  The nicest part of this ride is going by the Sea Palms golf course.

Unfortunately, the County Sewer Department is starting a sewer improvement project for the north end of the island and Frederica Road will be torn up.  I’m not sure what that means for the bike trail beside it.  The news article said they would reroute the pedestrian path but there aren’t too many places it can go.  I guess we will just keep riding and see what happens.

Tom and I are loving being able to ride the bike trails to the places we want to go on the island.  We are looking forward to longer daylight hours when we can ride our bike to a restaurant and get back before dark.