I’m riding my bicycle on a secluded trail near Lafayette when the first tiny birdhouse appears to my left.

As I photograph it obsessively from every angle — a fairy-sized Tudor treasure that looks like it has a library and warm fire inside — my guide Jeff Johnson politely points toward boughs of trees in the distance, covered by dozens more little avian condos.

“It gets a lot better!” he says.

The Lamorinda Trail Loop is the “it gets a lot better” of easy Bay Area bike rides. Like the superb Iron Horse Trail a few miles to the east, this 15-mile journey launches and ends at East Bay BART stations, travels exclusively on wide bike lanes and follows the protected path of a former railroad line.

But the charms go far beyond what you’ll see looking at a trail map. The loop spills into a town square with elite lunch options. There are two — about to be three — neighborhood movie theaters along the route. And by the end of our ride, the level of whimsy is off the charts: Beyond the bird houses, there’s a backyard chicken coop (with a little library-style shop filled with eggs), a century-old possibly haunted ranch and neighborhoods that seem ready to go full Clark Griswold for the holidays.

I received the tip from Johnson, a 74-year-old retired computer science teacher at University of San Francisco. Johnson has followed my Chronicle bike adventures and offered a list of favorite rides around the Bay Area — almost all of them car-free and accessible by public transit.

“I’m not riding to get from Point A to Point B, I’m riding for fun,” Johnson explains. “I would guess that 90% of my riding is facilitated by BART.”

I meet Johnson at Orinda BART, exiting on an elevated platform with a heralded view over four lanes of traffic on Highway 24. It looks like an animation cel from a Hayao Miyazaki film, rolling hills covered by billowing trees with leaves in striking yellow and red. The marquee of the Orinda Theatre (my ninth favorite cinema in the Bay Area) is visible as well to the south.

We pass underneath the BART tracks, walk our bikes across a busy intersection, and start pedaling uphill on Moraga Way, one of just three turns total that I’ll take on this ride. Johnson often detours for a longer ride west to the redwood tree-enclosed town of Canyon (population 208), and the loop has a connecting path to the Iron Horse Trail.

Today we’re taking a novice route, a simple circle from Orinda to Moraga to Lafayette that passes near the downtowns of each. Our straight line uphill through the Orinda hills feels claustrophobic — tall fences close to the road — until we hit McDonnell Nursery, where the valley opens up and Gudde Ridge is visible in the distance. We pass large single-story homes, a golf course and Miramonte High School before turning left on School Street.

We had been heading south toward downtown Moraga, but stop short of the main drag and get Lamorinda history instead, passing a preserved-in-time ranch filled with 1910s maroon buildings with white trim that used to belong to James Harvey Irvine — who planted the pear and walnut orchards that fueled this community’s initial boom.

Most of the ranch buildings range from dormant to dilapidated — an echo of Moraga from before Lamorinda became synonymous with wealth — except the cozy-looking Ranch House Cafe with its flower-filled entrance and smell of huevos rancheros.

About five miles into the ride we enter the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail, a 7.65-mile route that was once part of a mule trail to haul redwood from Oakland to Sacramento and later hosted the Sacramento Northern Railroad. It opened to pedestrians (and horses) in 1976 as one of the first rails-to-trails pathways in California.

Riding under a canopy of oak trees, we continue onto the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail that mostly runs parallel to Saint Mary’s Road, and is wide enough to accommodate bicyclists, dog walkers, joggers and horseback riders (though we don’t see any today). It’s like a switch has flipped on the ride, from a recognizable suburb to a winding road through a shifting countryside filled with undeveloped acreage and old growth trees that make the scene feel more like the 1920s than 2026.

At the halfway point, we reach the green lawns of Lafayette Community Park. The Lamorinda Trail Loop suggests a left into downtown Lafayette, but we take Johnson’s director’s cut, biking an extra half mile east on the trail. The birdhouses once hung from a single tree until it came down in a storm; now there are several hundred, scattered in trees up and down the trail. One takes the form of a camper van with a little black Weber barbecue out front. Another is shaped like a watermelon, and a third is covered with glitter like a miniature Studio 54 nightclub for birds.

About a hundred yards away, are “the chickens,” a poultry Disneyland and one of my new favorite Bay Area surprise destinations. The massive backyard is filled with hen-sized wooden structures and rusted metal sculptures. Fluffy hens peck around like they own the place, while on our side of the fence, there’s a coin-operated birdseed dispenser and a wooden box often filled with fresh eggs. “Honest Egg Stand,” a sign reads, with a slot to deposit $5 for six eggs (plus a Venmo QR code).

We double back into Lafayette, where Johnson laments that his first choice, the French bakery La Châtaigne, is closed. But second choice Sideboard is pretty fantastic. We eat chicken sandwiches and a fancy tostada salad and split an “Outrageous Brownie” just slightly smaller than a VHS tape.

Johnson shows me around town, pointing out Mighty Fine Guitars store, which has a performance space at Lamorinda Music next door. Up the block, I see the Park Theatre is well under reconstruction with its steel frame exposed, the old marquee seemingly floating in thin air.

Johnson’s wife Karen Ande is a documentary photographer. They live in San Francisco’s Excelsior District and have traveled all over the world, from Europe to Japan to Nepal to New Zealand, but he’s come to love his Bay Area backyard more and more.

“I think people in San Francisco have an impression of Contra Costa County that it’s really horrible and suburban,” he says. “It’s more diverse than you might think. It’s got its suburban stuff, but also its unique stuff.”

The full loop would take me a few miles back to Orinda, but I detour to Lafayette BART for a shortcut home. I’ll definitely be back.

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