Rhode Trip! A love letter to the Sakonnet Peninsula
The state of Rhode Island is famously small, yet it can still take years to explore every corner. The Sakonnet Peninsula was a late—but extremely welcome—discovery for me.
The Sakonnet Peninsula—also known as the towns of Tiverton and Little Compton—is so obscure a destination that it’s not even included in some maps of Rhode Island. Located east of Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island, across a waterway called the Sakonnet River, it’s often considered an honorary part of southeastern Massachusetts—and no wonder, because its rolling farmlands, dense forests and sparsely populated villages feel much like those of the South Coast. Fewer than 12,000 people live here, and it seems as though all of them are family farmers: Every country road here is rife with tiny stands of fresh vegetables, eggs and flowers, and passers-by pay on the honor system.
I first read about this special place in a New York Times guest column. The writer’s description of Little Compton’s rugged, rocky shoreline and quiet pastoral atmosphere piqued my interest, and I knew I had to make it there someday. Yet nothing obvious set me in motion: There are no classic sandy beaches to lounge on here, no bustling colonial main streets to stroll along, no museums or state parks.
But I was armed with one concrete fact that eventually pulled my husband and me eastward: The Sakonnet Peninsula is famously sleepy, even at the height of the New England summer. It was, therefore, the perfect place for two crowdphobic souls and their bikes to escape to.
We set out one Fourth of July with few expectations. But the minute we pulled up to the parking lot at Gray’s Ice Cream and saw a sea of bike racks, we knew we’d made the right decision.
As it turns out, Tiverton and Little Compton are a cyclist’s paradise. There are challenging hills aplenty, something otherwise hard to come by in the flat-as-a-pancake Ocean State. There are no busy highways, so the riding experience is peaceful and typically incident-free. There’s just enough infrastructure—cafes, corner stores, art galleries, antique shops—to stay fed, hydrated and entertained throughout. And there’s great variety in scenery, from cliffs to harbors to farmlands.
On that first trip east, we biked in a loop around the southern half of the peninsula, starting at Tiverton Four Corners. A gentle uphill climb past farms full of hay bales and flowers, then a steep descent, brought us to the village of Adamsville, where we stocked up on snacks at Simmons Cafe and Market. I imagined what it might be like to live here—rolling out of bed on a Sunday, grabbing a lazy brunch at The Barn, chatting with neighbors at the pickup softball game across the street. The strenuous climb up Old Harbor Road toward Pottersville pulled me out of the reverie.
We rested over a lobster roll lunch at the center of Little Compton, where neat shingled houses, a few shops and an imposing town hall surround a huge triangular cemetery full of colonial history. Location scouts for “The Witches of Eastwick” thought Little Compton looked eerie enough to serve as the film’s main setting, but town residents and religious leaders famously nixed the idea. Too bad for Hollywood and the town coffers, I thought, but a boon for us: All this classic New England scenery and no film tourists to have to share it with.
With forest on our right and bay views on the left, we rode on to Fogland Beach, an unpretentious spit of rough sand that curls into the Sakonnet River. The couple of dozen visitors included fishermen in waders, locals exercising their dogs and children wading into the rock-sharp shallows with rugged water shoes on. We felt a world away from the Newport polo grounds just across the water.
Back at Tiverton Four Corners, we indulged in a scoop of ice cream and wandered around a few of the local antique shops, wondering why we hadn’t visited this place sooner.
I’ve been back to the Sakonnet Peninsula several times since. Sometimes it’s to explore other pockets of the area by bike. I’ve ridden to the peninsula’s very southern tip, where there’s a yacht harbor and a town beach with an attendant that records each visitor’s home address on a clipboard. (No better way to keep outsiders at bay.) I’ve biked east, past Adamsville and across the Massachusetts border to charming Westport and sweeping Horseneck Beach. I make surprising new discoveries every time I’m on two wheels: Old Harbor Wildlife Refuge, Carolyn’s Sakonnet Vineyard, Walker’s Roadside Stand, an ice cream shop on a goat farm.
I’ve also been back in the colder season, when temperatures are too raw for biking but perfect for walking. One April weekend, before the daffodils had emerged and the trees had become green again, we headed to the beautiful Stone House Inn. It was only a one-night stay, and we were only about 10 miles away from home as the crow flies. But the peninsula’s peaceful surroundings reset my cranky winter mood and propelled me through those last weeks of stick season.
Donning coats and hats, we set out for Tappens Beach, where dramatic boulders and rock islands dot the coastline. In summertime, kids swim to these formations and clamber over them. On this winter day, at low tide, we were the only clambering kids in sight. Warmed within, we made our way back to the inn and watched the sunset from Adirondack chairs overlooking Round Pond, glasses of wine in hand.
The next foggy morning, after breakfast on the porch, we explored nearby Weetamoo Woods. Boggy and mud-caked though it was, we couldn’t help but be charmed by the local-made trail signs, benches and positive messages dotting the grounds, and by the families warmly greeting each other on the paths. This was a kind of forested town square, where neighbors caught up and engaged in harmless gossip.
The sun came out, and we headed to Tiverton’s Audubon wildlife refuge to spot birds and the season’s first blooms. Though there wasn’t much of the latter, the trees were alive with the former. On the way back home, we climbed to the lookout at Fort Barton and got lost in the fern-dense forest behind it. I ruminated, as I have countless times before in New England, on what it might have been like to pass through here 400 years ago as a Narragansett Indian, or a trader from another tribe, or a traveler cast out of Boston for breaking from the Puritan faith, or a messenger en route to Plymouth on horseback. I didn’t have to use much imagination: In many ways, on the Sakonnet Peninsula, time stands still.
