This leg is an easy walk in the woods and on roads.

Rules: Foot travel only: no vehicles, bicycles or horses. Dogs must be leashed. Blue trails sometimes pass through private property, so stay on the trail. Practice Leave No Trace principles on your outing.

Walkability: Easy. This leg takes only about 30 minutes and is easily combined with the next leg, 14E  Iron Mine Lane to Eastford Road.

Total distance: 1.25 miles.

Elevation change: 75 feet (up + down). 

Environment: This leg is quite easy since most of it is on roads. At the beginning, when you enter the woods on the east side of Westford Hill Road, you walk only a few paces before coming to a stone wall where you turn left and walk between a wood fence and the stone wall. There is an amazing 3-trunked ash tree down the trail a bit on the right, almost hollow. Will it topple before the emerald ash borers kill it? Follow the narrow trail as it trends downward, carried across several wet spots on a series of boards and crossing a stream on steady rocks. You meet Oakes Road after 0.35 mile. Turn right and continue down Oakes Road and across the Mt. Hope River. There are remains of ancient sentinel sugar maple trees at 0.5 and 0.8 miles. Another sugar maple has been cut down, and its trunk is so hollow that it looks like a tube or a culvert. Continue to Westford Road (Rt. 89) where you take a short jog to the left, crossing the highway onto Iron Mine Lane. Continue down Iron Mine Lane for 0.6 mile to the parking area.

Directions:  Turn south onto Westford Hill Road from Oakes Road. Travel 0.4 miles, a short distance past the mailbox for #272. There are no signs at this location to mark the trailhead, only a blaze on a tree on the east side, and a peeling blue-painted arrow nailed to a stump on the west side, facing south (and you are coming from the north). Watch for the blaze and the stump. Park on the side of the road. 

Link to Connecticut Forest and Parks Association interactive trail map: https://ctwoodlands.org/explore-trails/interactive-map/ On a computer, type in "Nipmuck" and select "Nipmuck Trail" to see this section. On a phone, zoom in to locate area.

Back to the Nipmuck Trail Overview page. Link to the previous leg of the Nipmuck Trail, 14C Perry Hill Road to Westford Hill Road. Link to the next leg of the Nipmuck Trail, 14E Iron Mine Lane to Eastford Road.

November 2023

Photos: 1-Entrance to trail on east side of Westford Hill Road; 2-the trail after you turn left; 3- the amazing ash tree farther down the trail. How is it remaining upright?