In 2006, Norfolk Southern Corporation donated almost 34 miles of abandoned track to the State of Virginia —a major land transfer that included a crowning jewel, the High Bridge. This is a majestic bridge structure, an Erector-set fantasy that spans the Appomattox River and its flood plain about four miles east of Farmville —2,400 feet long and towering 160 feet above the river. Some trivia: A.C. Gilbert developed the Erector set in 1913, a year before this present bridge was built, and this bridge was a "modern" steel replacement for a tormented relic built in 1854, which was partially torched during the Civil War and re-fabricated soon thereafter. The bridge portion of the High Bridge Trail and the connection east to Burkeville are not yet complete, but that will merely be the icing on an already delicious cake: The ride out of Farmville in either direction is an idyllic journey through deciduous woods and past farms and homesteads, some that even predate the bridge.

In Farmville, I parked at the old Norfolk and Western train station, now a restored community facility used for farmers’ markets, weddings, meetings, etc. Farmville is home to Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College, the Virginia’s Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail, several significant markers on Lee’s Retreat and birthplace of my first sister. I took my bike out of the back of the truck and started pedaling east through the Farmville Historic District, past the tall 1838 Mill office complex, past a former tobacco warehouse (Farmville was a tobacco port town on the Appomattox River before the Civil War) and the old Craddock-Terry Shoe Factory (now part of Green Front Furniture complex, located north and south of the trail). Along this stretch there are places to eat or rent bikes, and the trail is only a block from the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts.