EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a four-part series, “Beginning, Again” about people who moved to this area during their retirement years. Today’s piece is about Catherine Martone and David Hallerman, bike riders who were drawn to this area for its extensive network of trails. Also featured is Gail Hornstein, who spent 30 years in Holyoke before fulfilling a desire to live within walking distance of a downtown. The final installment will run on Monday, Aug. 3. To read all of the stories in this series, visit gazettenet.com.

Catherine Martone and David Hallerman met through the New York Cycling Club in October 2001. Bicycles became part of their story then, and they’re a big reason they live in Northampton now.

In 2023 they left Peekskill, New York, where the biking wasn’t great — too hilly, too much traffic — and moved to Florence, where they have easy access to rail trails and bike paths.

For a bike rider, “this area is heaven,” said Hallerman, 75, as he talked one afternoon at the couple’s home on Garfield Avenue.

He and his wife visited Northampton for the first time in 2008, after reading up on places to bike in western Massachusetts. They stayed at the Hotel Northampton, ate at Fitzwilly’s and checked out the downtown. It felt like a place with “a real center,” Martone, 69, recalled. And they loved the cycling: good trails, fewer steep hills, scenic back roads, less traffic. Return visits followed.

Moving, at that point, wasn’t on the horizon. They were rooted in New York, where they’d lived in the city before moving to Peekskill in 2007. They were busy with their lives and careers, Martone’s as an architect, Hallerman’s as a writer and editor in business and digital technology.

Years passed.

As retirement beckoned, Hallerman felt increasingly ready to pull up stakes. Though he’d enjoyed many aspects of life in New York, he intensely disliked the isolating, car-centered lifestyle of suburban Peekskill, where going anywhere and doing almost anything involved getting behind the wheel.

Martone wasn’t intent on leaving, in part because of family ties. Her mother lived nearby and she visited her frequently. Martone’s retirement in 2021 was followed by her mother’s death a year later. Those two profound life changes allowed her to take stock and look ahead.

In May 2023, she and her husband revisited Northampton. It had been a while — years, actually — but they hadn’t forgotten Hampshire County’s appeal. They booked a getaway at the Sugar Maple Trailside Inn, a B&B in Florence owned by Craig and Kathleen Della Penna. The aptly named inn is just a few steps from the Mass Central Rail Trail.

Craig Della Penna, an associate broker with The Murphys Realtors, is a longtime leader in the rails-to-trails movement. As a Realtor he specializes in properties near bike paths and greenways, a market, he says, that has grown to include older buyers.

“People are living longer and staying active,” he said. They want pleasant, safe outdoor spaces where they can walk or ride a bike, maybe with grandkids in tow. Walkable neighborhoods near a downtown, he added, hold strong appeal.

Not long after their May visit, Hallerman and Martone came back for a longer stay, this time with an eye to relocating. Working with Della Penna as their broker, they found a house in July and moved in November.

They live in a neighborhood where sidewalks and front porches foster connection. “People here take the time to stop and talk,” even if just to say hello, Hallerman said. As newer arrivals, they appreciate things others may take for granted. Drivers who stop at crosswalks. Fresh produce at local farmstands. A hardware store and coffee shops within walking distance. A civic culture, however strained at times, that still seems sustained by core values.

Their biggest frustration after moving was finding medical providers, a problem shared by others interviewed for these stories. Hallerman and Martone encountered long waits for appointments  and closed practices; in the end they opted for a concierge practice. Seeing specialists involves longer trips to Boston and Worcester than they needed to make in New York, but they’re not complaining.

In good weather, they’re often out on their bikes together; they also join weekly rides with the Northampton Neighbors Biking Group.

To meet others with shared interests, Martone joined a Northampton Neighbors gardeners group and Hallerman started a Poetry Reading Group. He also participated in a program at UMass that pairs older adults with students to forge connections across generations.

Asked if they ever considered moving elsewhere, Hallerman said no. “I’m happy we moved here,” he said one day after he’d joined the throngs at Northampton’s No Kings rally.  “Right now there’s no other place in the United States I’d rather be living in.” Some choices require shopping around, he added, but not this one: “Sometimes you just know.”

During her career as a professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Gail Hornstein, 75, made her home for 30-plus years in Holyoke.

“It was a wonderful place to live,” she said, recalling the city’s energy, diversity and proximity to campus.

But after retiring in 2018, she started thinking about what’s next, a process that led Hornstein to tweak her priorities. Two points emerged: She wanted to live within walking distance of a downtown, and she wanted to be part of a close-knit neighborhood.

In 2021 Hornstein bought a house in a Northampton neighborhood close to Main Street. She talks of it as a best-of-both-worlds location. From her front door, it’s a short walk in one direction to the city’s Center for the Arts — or in the opposite direction, to unspoiled open spaces.

She enjoys the access to downtown, which she didn’t have in Holyoke. “It’s a town center that’s highly used,” she said of Northampton’s appeal as a hub for business, social and civic life.

Though she’d been to Northampton many times over the years, she saw it as an outsider. Her visits had specific purposes — a lecture, a yoga class, a dinner out. That has changed.

“I am astonished at how different Northampton feels to me since I began living here,” she said.

She explored new-to-her bike paths, discovered neighborhoods she never knew existed, and became a regular at Grow Food Northampton’s Tuesday Market. She took Tai Chi classes at the Senior Center and joined Northampton Neighbors, expanding her network of friends along the way. She signed up for volunteer stints at the Northampton Survival Center and got up to speed on local politics.

“I’m much more tuned in to the city’s strengths and limitations,” she added via email. “Of course I wish every empty storefront would soon be filled with a thriving local business,” and she has backed candidates she hopes can help make that happen.

She’s kept longstanding ties to Holyoke, returning now and again to support local businesses there. She also volunteers for the Wildflower Alliance of Holyoke, a nonprofit organization that offers mental health care alternatives, and for Rachel’s Table of Western Massachusetts, a nonprofit that works to alleviate hunger and reduce food waste.

But Northampton is home. “My fantasy that I could live on a quiet street only a short walk into town, where I could do errands by bicycle and have a warm supportive relationship with my neighbors, has been fully realized,” she said. And for that “I am happy and grateful.”

Realtors hear about priorities from older buyers who, like Hornstein, Martone and Hallerman, have specific asks.

Rachel Simpson, of Five College Realtors, worked with a couple who said being close to a hospital topped their list. They eventually found a house minutes from Cooley Dickinson.  For two women from Ohio, social connection was key. “They wanted to find community,” Simpson said. “They were also tired of living in a less progressive state.” But much as they liked Northampton, they couldn’t find housing in their price range that worked for them.

It’s been true for some time, Simpson added, that people move here “because it’s more LGBTQIA friendly.” The 2024 election created an uptick in interest, she said. “We’ve met political refugees — people from more conservative states who believe Massachusetts is safer.”

The median listing price for a house in Northampton was  $519,000 in early June, according to Realtor.com.

“It was definitely easier for people to find homes that worked before 2020,” Simpson said, “because while supply was still relatively low, homes were not as expensive.” That changed during the COVID pandemic era as home values rose. This spring, the housing market has been very active, Simpson said, with high demand continuing to outpace supply.