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Tour de Greylock bike ride, designed to draw tourists to northern Berkshire towns, is canceled

The Tour de Greylock was designed to be a noncompetitive bike ride through six communities in the northern Berkshires.
Nancy Eve Cohen
/
NEPM
The Tour de Greylock was designed to be a noncompetitive bike ride through six communities in the northern Berkshires.

The Lanesborough, Massachusetts, economic development committee has canceled a 41-mile bike tour around Mount Greylock, scheduled for later this month.

The first annual Tour de Greylock would have circled the base of the highest mountain in the state. The goal was to draw more tourists to the town and surrounding area.

"We wanted to establish Lanesborough as an outdoor recreation destination," said Patricia Hubbard, the ride director.

Besides Lanesborough, cyclists would have pedaled through New Ashford, Williamstown, North Adams, Adams and Cheshire. But that requires setting up an emergency management plan with each town in case someone got hurt, according to Hubbard.

Hubbard said the committee organizing the tour wasn't aware of these requirements until recently.

"We were like deer in the headlights, like we absolutely had no idea. And then as we began to think, 'Okay, we can climb over that hurdle,'" Hubbard said. "Then we discovered that there was a cost associated with that."

Such as the cost of hiring police officers in each town during the ride.

Hubbard will send a "personal note" to each of the nine people who signed up for the ride, reimburse their $50 registration fee and and mail them the 'cue sheet' — the route for the ride, in case cyclists want to do it on their own.

Hubbard said the committee will evaluate the work done planning the ride this year and then decide whether to plan the ride for next year.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a senior reporter focusing on Berkshire County. Earlier in her career she was NPR’s Midwest editor in Washington, D.C., managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub and recorded sound for TV networks on global assignments, including the war in Sarajevo and an interview with Fidel Castro.