Newport, Rhode Island's Cliff Walk: I Did Not Have to be Rescued!

I drove to Newport in order to immerse myself in the Gilded Age. I've been thinking of putting together a presentation or essay about that era sandwiched between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I when new technologies changed the way American humans lived and innovators and businessmen got very, very rich. Many of these rich folk summered in Newport in lavish mansions with many a gold-leafed surface and listened to some interesting music which is what draws me to the era. Mark Twain coined the term Gilded Age with one of his novels, but he didn't mean it as a compliment. He referred to the gilded surfaces of the rich which obscured the reality of the rest of the people, many living in poverty, and not yet benefiting from the new technological advances. There really was gilt, but he was using it as a metaphor.

I visited The Breakers, the most opulent of all the mansions,

The Breakers

 and the number two mansion, Marble House.

Marble House

 Both of these belonged to branches of the Vanderbilt family. That's how I occupied my Saturday.

I saved the Cliff Walk for Sunday morning. I wasn't sure how much of the walk I'd do because I read that some of it was challenging, and as there is no Cliff Walk Aptitude Test I'd have to evaluate in the moment what they meant by "challenging." The popular part of the walk is a sidewalk running along the edges of many of the famous mansions' enormous back lawns with the rough, rocky ocean on the other side. 

The easy part of the Cliff Walk

The Breakers, as seen from the Cliff Walk

breakers with a small 'b'

It's gorgeous, really, and very popular with what seems to be locals and tourists alike. Some of the privately-owned mansions have erected fences to keep Cliff Walkers from gawking at their homes, but most of the rest are visible. There's also a university taking up residency in one of the mansions formerly owned by a titan of industry, now known as Salve Regina University. Their commencement was being held under a huge white tent adjacent to the Cliff Walk on my Sunday morning amble.

The giant commencement tent is further down the walk.

Eventually I got to a spot where the sidewalk ended and there were giant, flattened-out boulders to walk on. These posed no great challenge to me as I grew up walking on boulders like this in Cape May with my dog, Bambi, and my dad. I'm no expert, but I think these were the same kind of rocks Bambi and I walked on.

That's not Bambi; that's a Newport dog with an impressive stick

The boulders linked to more sidewalk, some gravel areas, and more boulders. Every now and then there would be a tunnel going under mansion property or a grandiose fence. It was such a unique and scenic walk! 

One tunnel went under the Chinese Tea House which belongs to Marble House. This tea house was built for Alva Vanderbilt to hold her women's rights meetings, but now refreshments are sold there.

The Chinese Tea House and the tunnel to the left

At some point I saw a sign explaining that the walk from that point would be more challenging. Did this mean "challenging" for my grandmother, or "challenging" for me who has experience walking on flattened boulders with Bambi. I decided to keep going because the place was so gorgeous and different, and because I was hoping to find Lands' End, the mansion once owned by writer Edith Wharton, a great critic of the Gilded Age. The gravel and flat boulders gave way to large, smooth rocks which had no place to put my sneakered feet. These were not Bambi rocks. Soon these boulders required big steps up (or down) which the hiking guys who passed me navigated easily with their longer legs and hiking boots. I am physically unable to step that far up or down. I had to use the sit-and-spin-the-legs-around method. (Luckily for me, there is no video evidence of this.) At times there might have been a chain link fence to hold on to (for dear life) and at times there wasn't. Periodically, I checked my illustrated Cliff Walk guide to get my bearings and remind myself what Edith Wharton's Lands' End looks like.

I considered turning around when I got to Rough Point, a mansion built by Vanderbilts and eventually inherited by Doris Duke, the tobacco heiress, who died in 1992. It's now open for tours.

Rough Point

At Rough Point, I was standing atop a boulder contemplating the wisdom of continuing, when one of those long-legged hiking gentlemen happened by and told me I was pretty well into it and might as well keep going. I did, for a little bit, but paused again to consider my situation. How would the U.S. Coast Guard (or Newport police) rescue me if I wiped-out? That would be embarrassing. No matter how far I walked/climbed, I would have to walk back to my car. I should probably turn back. It was then that I looked ahead, about where Lands' End should be according to my book, and there were the white chimneys of Lands' End! (I think.) So I shot them (with my camera):

I started back. At one point I turned around to take in the vista I had just climbed down. Look for the tiny people near the top to get the scale of this (and the magnitude of my accomplishment):

But gosh, it was beautiful! It took me a couple days to recover from this exhilarating walk, but it was worth it! (And I did not have to be rescued.) Later I calculated that I walked/climbed about five miles which is my usual walk in the park, actually, but without boulders...

More tiny humans taking the Cliff Walk challenge!