Who can resist walking on a floating boardwalk? Not us, so we headed to Marlborough this past weekend to check out the new extended Lake Williams trail in Marlborough, which is about a half hour car ride from Natick Center.

The roughly 2-mile loop trail now includes a half-mile long floating boardwalk made of plastic and metal (it opened in May). You can start at either end of the boardwalk: We passed the baseball fields and parked off of Lizotte Drive.

Our leisurely sub-hour trek began in shoreline woods featuring tall pines, lush ferns, and plenty of bird calls. With the aid of the Merlin app on my phone, we identified the Carolina wren, northern flicker, and great crested flycatcher (wish we’d seen this too) among our companions that misty morning.

Parts of the soft woodland trail were narrow and we had to trudge through high grass at parts, so hiking pants would be in order to fend off ticks. There was only one decent uphill on our walk. The trail wasn’t buggy on the morning we were there, but it’s got potential.

Before long we hit the boardwalk, which indeed crosses Lake Williams. We didn’t get up and out as early as we usually do, so were among dozens of people on the trail—peopled but not crowded.

Williams Lake trail, Marlborough — Hopefully a ramp will be added for accessibility

The boardwalk offered views of the water and surrounding woods on one side, a busy roadway and buildings on the other. So this isn’t a completely serene adventure, but it’s a fair mix of nature and city life. You may hear the pings of baseballs being hit.

The boardwalk features several cutouts where you can pull aside and hang out or let people by. There are also a couple of life preservers, just in case things get wild. We’re pretty sure they’re not designed as props for Insta photos, but that didn’t stop at least one gramps and kid from going that route.

The lake is used as a backup water supply, so the city does not allow fishing, pets, or water access.

To stretch out our adventure, we took a spin through downtown Marlborough, which has a farmers market on Saturdays from 9am-1pm behind City Hall. We picked up some strawberries, which were among the varied food offerings available, not to mention arts and other treasures. A guitarist sang under one tent on this quiet morning.

Marlborough has a nice and historic downtown, with interpretive signage to give you the backstory. The retailers include the usual mix of insurance companies, realtors, etc., but also a variety of restaurants (Thai and Chinese among them) and other stores. We popped into the Word on the Street book shop to buy a couple of books for neighboring kids. We had our pick of breweries, from Flying Dreams to Lost Shoe, but it was too early in the day for such shenanigans.

More photos below…