Ellis Estates – Scituate, MA
I am so ready for Spring, I want the weather, the birds chirping and the sun setting later. My kids are ready for Spring too, especially once we told them it rains a lot during the season and everything turns to mud. Well, they got a nice taste of playing in the mud during our walk along the Ellis Estates Trail! It snowed a few weeks ago, and slowly but surely it’s been melting, with the help of some warmer days and some intermittent rain, it was the perfect recipe for a nice mud fest in the woods. Getting a little bit dirty (or a lotta bit dirty) sure makes them happy though so I’m okay with it, as long as we have a working washing machine.
The Ellis Estates Trails is located in Scituate, in between two of my favorite places, Board 143 and the Mainstay Bakery, if you haven’t been you should take a ride over, although checkout the Mainstay website first for instructions on how to order as they aren’t open every day! I’ve driven by the parking lot to these trails so many times on my way to the North Scituate Playground with my kids but we’ve never stopped until today!
In 1981 the Ellis Estate itself was used to film the movie “The House by the Cemetery”. Don’t worry, there aren’t any actual cemetery’s along the trail and the Estate is currently being used as the headquarters for the Scituate Arts Association.
The Ellis Estate Trails include 4 different intersecting trails that are about 2 miles long all together. They go all through the woods behind and around the Ellis Estate including by Deke’s Pond. The trail map for these can be found on the Scituate.gov website and I’ve included it below for you:
Overall I probably wouldn’t take a stroller on this path, but if you have a really sturdy jogger you’ll be okay for the most part if you stay on the Bailey-Ellis Loop. There aren’t too many roots on that one, but the Ellsberg Trail is a little hilly and has some rocks so I wouldn’t try there. There weren’t any bridges here so a zero on our bridge rating, but there were some cool big boulders so that made up for it.
