The Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island. One of my favorite things I’ve done in the last year, and one thing I would recommend putting on your must-do list while in Newport.
The Cliff Walk is a 3.5 mile trail one way, which takes you past the Gilded Age mansions in Newport all while hugging the gorgeous coastline.
You can start at any point along the path, but I decided to do the full length of the trail, beginning at Memorial Boulevard.
Sarah is not one for walking or exercise, so she decided to pass on this excursion. However, one of the items on our list was to tour the Marble House, and it just so happens that if you begin the Cliff Walk on Memorial Boulevard, you’ll end your walk near the Marble House. We decided that I’d wake up early, do the Cliff Walk, and she would meet me at the end of the route so we could drive to the Marble House together for a tour.
It was the perfect plan, and truly the perfect morning.
The path begins paved, and very pleasantly lines the ocean.
I immediately noticed the plethora of signs with dramatic images of a person falling off the cliffs, and made note not to stray from the path.
It was clear others had not made the same decision, but I wasn’t able to risk it by climbing down the side of a cliff.
The sun was shining, the temperature was perfect, and the path was really nice. There were even a few sets of benches in case you wanted to take a break.
Suddenly there was a staircase to the ocean, for reasons I could not identify.
I obviously went down them, because if there’s one thing I’ll do it’s walk up or down a cool looking staircase.
It reminded me of Game of Thrones, and it wouldn’t be the last time the Cliff Walk reminded me of the show.
The stairs didn’t lead to anywhere but good views.
There was a cute little old lady with her older son, and it sounded like he’d brought her back her as a trip down memory lane, as she was telling him stories about visiting this place when she was younger. It was really adorable. I offered to take a picture of the two of them together and they thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
There was a young man fishing from one of the rocks below the stairs, so I wondered if that was part of the reason folks came down to this specific spot.
Knowing that I was on a schedule, I kept it moving and ascended the stairs again. Part of the trail was under construction, so I ended up taking a detour past The Breakers.
I didn’t mind – the Fall foliage was still in full swing, and The Breakers isn’t exactly hard on the eyes.
I also walked past this really cute house on the water.
Ok, it’s definitely a mansion, but there’s something vaguely house-like about it. I liked it.
Here, the path resumed its normal route, and I once again saw a shift in the path. There were many changes along the path, from the types of pavement, to the fences or walls surrounding the trail. It was a constantly ebbing and flowing route.
The cute mansion-house had a little enclosed gazebo at the end of the property, which was charming and also probably a delight to sit in and look out at the ocean, but I felt like you’d feel a bit like a zoo animal so close to the Cliff Walk.
I continued walking, and beyond the cute house was another property that had this sign posted on their fence.
This sign perplexed me. Totally respect the desire to want to indicate that your home is private property, as there are likely a bunch of hooligans that want to mess around with these mansions. However, “Bad dog?” I wasn’t sure if they were trying to say they had a bad dog, but a large part of me felt like they were calling me and collectively us a bad dog, which felt like a very derogatory rich-person type of thing to say. The sign really put a bad taste in my mouth, but I continued on!
And that’s when things started to get interesting.
Hmmm. Yeah. That does indeed look rugged.
Now, here’s where I’ll get honest with you guys. I didn’t do my research on the Cliff Walk. I heard the words “Cliff” and “Walk” and thought hell yeah, I’m in. My friend, Sarah, was actually the one to discover the Cliff Walk, and she described it as a walk along the fancy mansions in Newport. It being Newport, I expected that the path would be paved the whole way, because I assumed the wealthier Newport folks would have wanted a paved trail.
I was wrong. I was also wearing flats.
Fortunately for me, they were Birdies flats, which means they’re the most comfortable shoe to exist on the planet, with plenty of support, so my feet were totally fine during the walk, but my shoes did need quite a bit of cleaning by the time I was done.
As I started at this sign, telling me to wear appropriate footwear, I had two options. I could continue on, not knowing if appropriate footwear was sneakers or hiking boots, or I could turn around and not complete the Cliff Walk. There was no way I was turning around, and I love a tumultuous, rocky hike, so I was pretty excited to walk across the rocky path you see above. I just wasn’t sure how much more “rugged” the terrain might get. I decided to risk it.
After walking across the smooth, perfectly lined up rocks on that section of the path, you end up on a sandy, pebbly path for a moment, before the path turns into pavement again.
There were some beautiful grasses blowing in the breeze along the shoreline.
There was also a vine-covered brick wall that looked mysterious and intriguing to me.
Looking back at this point, I could see the quaint home that I liked, with it’s little gazebo on the ocean.
Soon, I came upon this cute house, which reminded me of the house Ben Gates buys at the end of National Treasure.
I’m apparently always thinking about National Treasure.
I also came upon the tea house at the Marble House – I would discover on my tour later that Alva Vanderbilt held rallies for the women’s suffrage movement here.
As I got closer, I walked past this beauty.
As I drew closer to the tea house, I realized that to pass this point, I would have to walk under a very dark tunnel.
The flash on my camera doesn’t do it justice how dark this was. It’s moments like this where I think long and hard about how I’m a solo female traveler and this is the perfect place for a murderer to hide, and how so many women are murdered while taking walks or going for runs. I put my phone’s flashlight on, and walked through the tunnel, no murderers to be found.
Shortly after, I came upon another tunnel, but this one was shorter, cheerier, and reminded me of The Hobbit.
This next section was really fun to walk across. The large stones were flat at the top, which made them easy to jump from one to another, which is exactly what I did.
I was getting a little giddy at how cool the trail was at this point.
Plus the views of the coast were so cool!
I came upon a pair of lights that reminded me of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby for some reason.
They look like glasses, right??
Here, we received another warning about the rough terrain, this time telling us we could either turn around now or walk the 5/8 mail until the next exit point.
We wouldn’t need an exit point, though!
The path had a few odd sections of pavement here, where it broke off, became pavement again, and then was suddenly pure cliff.
Up ahead, the path would narrow, which felt a little more dangerous and a lot more fun.
You’re. Literally. Walking. On. The. Cliff.
Obviously it’s called the Cliff Walk for a reason, but I didn’t expect it to be so literal.
Next, you come up to Rough Point, the mansion where Doris Duke committed murder but got away with it.
I didn’t know the story as I passed by it, but I ended up meeting a daughter and mother who were doing the Cliff Walk, who had toured the mansion the day before and told me the whole story. They highly recommended the tour, but they told me that they felt the tour guides danced around the murder and made Doris seem like this wonderful philanthropist who accidentally killed someone – it all felt off to them, so they did a little Googling during the tour and found out some of the gnarlier details – like how Doris “accidentally” backed up and ran the guy over a second time. And how the Newport chief of police ruled it an accident and then moved to a huge mansion in Florida a year later. Normal things that totally happen when one of the richest women in the country is totally innocent.
After Rough Point, things did indeed get rough with the terrain.
This section got tricky, because the rocks were…vertical here. They stuck up into the air in a much more dramatic, rocky way, and you really had to be careful where you stepped so you didn’t twist an ankle.
I do a lot of hiking at State parks, so I’m good at identifying where the route is through some of these rockier terrains. I hugged the route that I could see through this worst of this section, and was gradually making my way through it. There was a middle-aged couple behind me, and the husband apparently decided that he could go faster than I could, so he tried to pass me while taking on the rockiest and worst part of the path – he made it to about the middle when he realized he couldn’t go any further, so he retraced his steps and ended up following me on my path out of there. Patience is a virtue, folks!
After this next section was another area that reminded me of Game of Thrones – more House of the Dragon this time.
I felt like Rhaenyra on the Dragonstone Bridge.
Randomly, the path was paved again.
This raised a lot of questions for me about how they got the equipment down here to pave the path, and why just this section?
Abruptly, it wasn’t paved again!
I really enjoyed this section of dirt path, though. The flowers and greenery were beautiful, and the rocky ocean was a sight to see.
Imagine living out here.
I imagined that if I lived in Newport, I would be doing the Cliff Walk all the time. It was a fantastic trail, and I really did enjoy the variety of path surfaces. It kept me guessing! I particularly enjoyed the challenge of the rockier sections.
Soon, I came once more upon a paved section of path near a beautiful white house.
Next up was a cool mansion that looked very German-inspired.
There were larger slabs of rock leading up to this one, and they had cool veins of other rocks in them – Newport granite and quartz veins.
I had my final two Game of Thrones moments on the path, when I saw this private beach with an interesting rock wall around it.
Following the rock wall was this cool set of stairs.
After a bit more path, I finally came to the end of the Cliff Walk.
I was kind of sad it was over, because I’d had such an absolute blast trekking through the entirety of it, but I was excited to head to our next destination, the Marble House. Read more about that here, or stay tuned for more adventures!
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