I’ve hiked the entire length of the Iron Horse Trail before (although during two different day hikes), but with me doing more bike rides lately I’ve been thinking of doing the entire trail by bike in a single day.

So with a day of mild and cool weather forecast on the last day of May, I decided to try to do the entire trail.

The majority of the trail runs along the old route for a now abandoned rail line. Hence the ‘Iron Horse’ name. For quite a while, the trail was 25 miles long from the north end to the south end, but recent additions to the south end have increased the length.

So, after riding my bike 2 miles from my home to the closest part of the trail, I started my southward ride. This part through Walnut Creek was very familiar to me, since I’ve been using it as part of my morning loops.

What was unusual were the two wild turkeys that were walking along the paved trail and didn’t seem to want to leave it as I rode towards them. It was brief, but they ran along the trail in front of my bike before finally figuring out that they probably should veer off. I’ve seen wild turkeys at Mt Diablo and other regional parks in the area, but this is the first time on the Iron Horse Trail. It was an interesting start to the day.

Then I went through Danville and San Ramon before hitting the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station. This was the former end of the trail, but now it goes on for almost 7 more miles.

They do have to work on the signage for this part of the trail, since it wasn’t always obvious what the route was. An old ‘Temp Iron Horse Connector Trial’ sign actually sent me off on the wrong direction after the BART station, but I realized the error quickly and got back on the real trail that ran through some business parks and housing developments.

There there were two major road crossings that broke up the trail, making me stop to check the maps several times before figuring out how to continue.

The current end actually has another section that is also marked with ‘Temp Connector Trail’ sign, but there isn’t any further part of the trial that it connects to once it hits the Livermore City limits.

After triple checking that I had reached the current end of the Iron Horse Trail, I then turned around and returned to the BART station. Not wanting to do the entire trail in both directions, I decided to take BART from here to the North Concord station so I could do the northern part of the trail. It’s cheating a bit, but I wasn’t sure my legs would handle a 60+ mile bike ride in a single day.

After getting off BART I made my way to the north end of the trail and made my way south again. Again, this part of the trail was one I had hiked and biked along many times before.

Reaching the original point on the Iron Horse Trail that I had started southward from, I patted myself on the back and finished the ride home along the Contra Costa Canal Trail. Although I usually take a lot of pictures during my hikes, I don’t usually take pictures while riding my bike. So no pictures for this adventure.

So almost 32 miles on the Iron Horse Trail and another 13 miles getting to/from the trail from home and between BART stations.

45 miles via bike in one day… blew away my previous best of 22 miles of bike riding in one day.

Maybe doing it both ways might be possible one day… but not for a little bit. 🙂