Located in Portsmouth, Rhode Island is the Rail Explorers a rail bike tour company. There are a few Rail Explorers around the country, this is the closest to us. Riding a rail bike has been on my family and I’s to do list for a while and we finally checked this off our list.
We made the trip from New Hampshire down to Portsmouth, Rhode Island to join a tour. Reservations in advance are hight recommended. Prior to our bike ride we stopped at a small grocery store, Clements Market Place in Portsmouth, they had a great selection of pre-made foods, which was perfect lunch before our ride.
The Rail Explorers is located on Alexander Road. There was plenty of parking.. The check in process was easy and the staff were very friendly. We had to wait a few minutes before we were assigned our rail bike. There were a couple different options for tours and we did the Northern Ramble, which was a six mile ride.
We were given a short intro on how to use the bikes and safety information. Each party was assigned their own quad bike. A staff member went first followed by the rest of the group.
The trail road by homes, a golf course and ocean views. They gave us a booklet with information about the trail and landmarks.
It took us a little over an hour to go the six miles. We took a bus ride back to the starting point. We all agreed that we would have liked to do a longer one. We found it pretty easy to peddle them with the three of us. If we needed to take breaks it was not a big deal as we could coast or the other passengers could peddle. We cannot wait to do another one.
After the rail bike ride we took a drive into Newport. We walked around the downtown area and got a Del’s Lemonade. We then walked over to the Cliff Walk to enjoy the beautiful views of the ocean.
Overall it was a great day, and we highly recommended doing a rail bike tour and then doing some exploring around Newport.
