Karen Beyel, left, and Debra Orgera, both of Northampton, take a test ride Tuesday on the newly opened Rocky Hill Trail in Florence. Walking the trail are, from left, Mark Wamsley of the Kestrel Land Trust, Northampton Director of Planning and Sustainability Wayne Feiden and Melissa Cryan, with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
Karen Beyel, left, and Debra Orgera, both of Northampton, take a test ride Tuesday on the newly opened Rocky Hill Trail in Florence. Walking the trail are, from left, Mark Wamsley of the Kestrel Land Trust, Northampton Director of Planning and Sustainability Wayne Feiden and Melissa Cryan, with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Credit: STAFF PHOTO/KEVIN GUTTING

FLORENCE – Officials from a collaboration of city, state, private and nonprofit entities held a ribbon cutting for Northampton’s newest multi-use trail on Tuesday. In his remarks to the 40 or so in attendance, Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz noted that the Rocky Hill Trail is the first of its kind in the city in that it does not follow the line of any former railroad bed. Not a rail trail so much as a “cross country” trail, as he coined it. The nearly mile-long paved path winds through the Burt’s Bog Greenway Conservation Area from Stone Ridge Drive in the north to Burts Pit Road in the south. A short spur connecting westward to Overlook Drive means that students and families of the Brookwood Drive, Florence Road and Burts Pit Road neighborhoods now have a safer route to walk or bike to R.K. Finn Ryan Road School. 

Kevin Gutting can be reached at kgutting@gazettenet.com.