Wachusett Reservoir Loop

A long country loop west of Boston: it leaves Concord, crosses Harvard, Bolton and Lancaster among orchards and stone walls, climbs to Sterling and Princeton and drops into West Boylston to skirt the Wachusett Reservoir through Boylston before heading back through Clinton, Berlin, Hudson and Maynard. It's 77 miles of back roads with no highway. Stop at the Old Stone Church on the water's edge or on the Harvard common. In September and October the orchards fill with cars on weekends.

The Wachusett Reservoir was built to supply Boston: work began in 1897, the dam on the Nashua River in Clinton was finished in 1905, and the reservoir first filled in 1908, covering land in Boylston, West Boylston, Clinton and Sterling. Hundreds of buildings were torn down, and in West Boylston only the Old Stone Church, a Baptist church of the early 1890s, was left standing because it was built of stone. Today it sits alone on the shore beside Beaman Street (MA-140), with parking near the gate. Further on, MA-70 runs along the reservoir through Boylston, where the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill looks out over the water from its hilltop (admission is paid).

The rest of the loop is classic central Massachusetts: the Harvard common with its general store, in business since the 1890s, the orchards of Bolton, and Sterling, whose common has a bronze lamb from 1991 honoring Mary Sawyer, the local girl who said she was the Mary of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Princeton sits higher up, on the shoulder of Wachusett Mountain. On the way back, Hudson has a busy downtown with a 1950s-style diner on the rotary, and Concord is the start and finish, so plan fuel and food in those two towns.