Washington and Old Dominion Trail
Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority
Purcellville, VA to Arlington, VA

The W&OD Trail consists of 45 miles of paved, asphalt trail, running on the roadbed of the former Washington & Old Dominion Railroad from Purcellville, Virginia to Arlington, Virginia.

I do not provide any specific trail descriptions, since lots of great resources currently exist on the Internet for the W&OD trail. These include the following:

• http://www.nvrpa.org/wod.html
• http://www.wodfriends.org/
• http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Trails/9401/
• http://bikewashington.org/trails/wad/wad.htm

For trail running, a dirt and gravel bridle trail runs parallel to the asphalt trail for 32 miles from Purcellville to just north of Vienna, Virginia. If interested:

• The Loudoun Roadrunners host a run on the W&OD from Purcellville to Leesburg on the last Sunday of each month. This offers one of the most beautiful sections of the trails. See http://www.loudounroadrunners.org/ for more information.
• The Reston Runners host runs that cover a portion of this trail on a fairly regular basis. See http://www.restonrunners.org/ for more information.
• The Virginia Happy Trails Running Club holds a race/run known as Andiamo along the W&OD Trail. See http://www.vhtrc.org/events/andiamo.htm for more information.
• The W&OD intersects with the Fairfax Cross-County Trail in two places: (1) Tamarack Park; and (2) Twin Branches Nature Trail.
• You can enter Lake Fairfax Park from the W&OD and continue on dirt trails all the way to Great Falls National Park. See Colvin Run for more information.

Last updated: 12-Nov-01