Lake Champlain Bike trail

We flew to Burlington, Vermont for the weekend and I took my Brompton in my new case to see how it went. I'm pleased to say the case worked out really well.

Evo bike pod from Polaris Bikewear

It holds a vanilla Brompton with no fuss, but I had to loosen my Brooks Saddle and slide it forward and also loosen and turn my Ergon GP4 bar grips. I also had to remove my QR SPD pedals. I did all this with the Brompton tool set. Once that was done the bike fitted like a dream. I added two sets of cycling clothes into the gaps. The case, clothes, and bike were about 45lbs (I have a rack and dynamo hub) and has a total linear dimension of 62" so it is not oversize or overweight.

There's a great bike trail through Burlington called the Lake Champlain trail which is paved most of the way except for the northernmost six miles which is lovely gravel on a breakwater that extends into Lake Champlain. 

I recommend starting from the Amtrak station in Burlington and heading North. The out and back trip is about 20 miles with 400 feet of climbing - none of it steep. The trail surface is suitable for road tires and there's about half a mile of quiet residential roads - the rest is bike trail. The gravel section is smooth and has no wash boarding.

You can also go south from Amtrak which is also very nice but only about ten miles out and back and with some steeper climbs. If you do both you will get a moderately strenuous 30 mile ride.

At the Amtrak parking lot there is a Creemee stand right on the bike trail that is worth a visit. It turns out a Creeemee is just a soft-serve ice-cream. I got a large maple and raspberry. Who knew that was a thing?

This is a creemee

For me, the highlight of the ride was the gravel causeway. It's like you're floating over the water. At the north end there is a bike ferry run by Local Motion over to some more causeway and then onto South Hero Island but it doesn't run at night so I turned around. If the ferry had been running, I could have made the trip into a loop.

Lake Champlain trail

The second time I rode this trail it rained - hard! I was trying to find a way to dry my gloves. I used the old "roll them up in a towel and squeeze" trick which helped a lot. But then I decided to put a frying pan and lid on low heat and dry the gloves on that. It worked!.

It's probably not a good idea to leave the room while you're doing this

I finally made a YouTube video of the trip.