After a lovely breakfast at Porches on the Towpath in New Hope, Ted and I hop on our bikes for our first full biking day on the Delaware canal’s towpath and start north. Leaving New Hope, the path for bike tires narrows and we find ourselves on a high berm between the river and canal. The shaded coolness and quiet of the moment lets us get into the groove of cycling slowly stretching and warming our leg muscles for the 47-mile trek ahead.
But in just a moment, the water in the canal disappears becoming a reed-filled, muddy ditch. Then as fast as the water disappears, it returns. This juxtaposition will occur for most of the day first with the Delaware canal then the Lehigh canal.
We pass an unused and pristine wooden aqueduct that appears out of place as both ends empty into dry canal beds filled with vegetation. An adjacent plaque explains its purpose though for the life of us its existence appears as a folly.
Pushing on, the trail is dry with our tires spreading a fine coating of light dust on our bikes and legs. There is not as much wildlife around us today, no doubt due the inconsistency of water in the canal. When water fills the canal its presence cools us and accommodates ducks, geese, turtles and other creatures.
It is a slow climb heading toward Bethlehem as each flat section of the towpath gets a bump upward at an abandoned lock. The locks’ walls made from massive carved stones have little purpose now save being vertical gardens for ferns and other plants that have made a home in their cracks and crevices.
There seems to be fewer invasive plants along the canal edges giving native pollinators such as milkweed, mullein, clover and thistle a chance to thrive and express their perfume. A lone swallowtail butterfly follows me before landing on one for a meal.
We stop to admire the Nockamixon cliffs, which soar to our left along with many raptor birds above a now rapidly flowing canal. Many trees and bushes hang onto these craggy shale behemoths precariously.
Reaching the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers (and canals) the towpath condition is greatly upgraded from varying conditions of rock and stone dust to a smooth asphalt path. We are grateful for the change.
We are surrounded by remnants of the area’s industrial past. Large rusting structures are counterbalanced by a pristine clean river. Collapsing and old telegraph poles line the towpath, which now appears to be following an old railroad bed near the Lehigh river and canal. We enter a densely forested space.
It is hard to believe that this area used to be thick with the commerce and pollution of coal and steel. There are no signs of this as we push on. A mother deer and doe emerging from the woods confirms this observation.
A break in in the trees, however, brings into view a decaying Bethlehem Steel plant that is being redeveloped into industrial space. Further up river, a more dramatic structure is spotted, thick with rust and age of a facility that has not produced steel for 40 years. Now called SteelStacks (ironically) it has been repurposed to produce entertainment and tourism. It’s been a long day and after crossing the Hill to Hill Bridge over the Lehigh we arrive at our hotel.
