The story below is an excerpt from our September/October 2017 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
This pleasant, flat walk combines out-in-the-woods with right-next-to town.
My morning outing starts with a cappuccino inside Dublin 3 Coffeehouse located just a few steps from downtown Lynchburg’s Riverwalk. Enjoying the ambiance created by the wooden beams and exposed stone walls of a converted tobacco warehouse, the espresso is soon coursing through my body, indicating it’s time to get moving.
Grade schoolers are streaming into the Amazement Square Children’s Museum as I walk eastward, surprised by how many people are on the trail at 9:30 on a Friday morning: young mothers pushing baby carriages, joggers of various shapes and sizes, senior citizens taking leisurely strolls, dog walkers, dozens of bicycle riders and—what seems to be inevitable in today’s world—someone so absorbed in looking at her smart phone that others have to swerve away to avoid being walked into.
Just beyond the rental bicycles displayed on the lawn of Bikes Unlimited, the trail turns to cross the James River on a curving, former railroad bridge, providing grandstand views up and down the stream. Couples, emulating a European ritual, have hooked padlocks onto the bridge’s chain link fence as a symbol of their unbreakable love.
