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I have been talking about this walk with a few members who seemed interested. Essentially, I want to walk a circuit along the two streams called Great Run and Baptist Run that are deep in the woods near the house where I lived growing up.
The route starts and finishs at the Surrender Field parking area on Surrender Road. I have walked much of the route in parts but never in one go. The route passes through land that belongs to the National Park Service, the Newport News Waterworks, and the American Battlefield Trust. It gets close to some private property but it’s easy to stay off the private property using GPS. I expect to complete the route in 3 to 4.5 hours depending on how fast we all can walk and how much back tracking we might have to do.
Much of the route will be bushwhacking since there are no maintained trails along the streams. It can get a little mushy if it has rained recently, but it’s easy to just detour around mushy areas. If necessary, we can cross the streams where it’s an easy jump or where the streams flow through culverts under a road.
The first mile is along the paved tour road. Then we will walk through about a mile of woodland along Beaver Dam Creek to where it splits and then along Great Run, and reach a point on the tour road at which anyone can return to the parking area on about 1.5 miles of paved roads and a maintained trail. The group will go on through about 1.5 miles of woods (no trail) crossing Crawford Road to reach the French Loop on the Park Tour Road. We will continue as far as possible along Great Run and then use GPS to find Baptist Run. We will follow Baptist Run and Beaver Dam Creek back to the Park Tour road and then a mile back to the parking lot. The total distance is about 9 miles. See the Shared Image of a map of the walk.