You could get through by scrambling over boulders or clinging to a chain-link fence while trying to sidestep explosions of spray from the swells crashing on the rocks below.
Those days of high adventure are (mostly) gone. After being closed since September for $4.3 million in renovations, the portion of the Cliff Walk from Ruggles Avenue to Bailey's Beach reopened on Memorial Day, with most of the new paving, steps, and bridgework finished last week.
My wife, Kathy, and I picked a bright, hot afternoon to walk the new walk and see if it provided relaxing views and an unencumbered ocean stroll -- a true Cornelius Vanderbilt kind of experience.
The start is easy . We set off on NASCAR-perfect asphalt, slaloming around some puddles and an eager dog. We won't see any improvements for a while. The fences and benches here are familiar; we know them like parts of a neighborhood park.
With almost no wind, the waves below us are barely wrinkling the surface . Shadows and fish glimmer in the Bermuda green.
``Wish I'd left my jacket," Kathy says, knotting it around herself. ``Vive Cuervo! ``Vive Cuervo!" shouts a sign on an airplane.
At the end of Narragansett Avenue, we get to the ``Forty Steps" leading to the water. I take it just to see what there is to see. Not much. A man is fishing, angrily flicking his lure and shaking bait out of a pail.
Back on the path, we reach the Cliff Walk's Mansion Row. Most homes in this section are now part of Salve Regina University ( Ochre Court, Cave Cliff, and Vineland). But the biggest of them, The Breakers, built by Vanderbilt in 1895, still looms independent over its lawn, an aloof pile of stone.
No namesake breakers today. We stride around the point without a puff of wind to push us. Sailboats are trying to sail . Kathy points to a crane who's eating a snack on a rock.
At Ruggles Avenue, we encounter the first of the renovations. What used to be a crumbly path is now a sidewalk. And here's a metal fence. ``We're safe from falling," sats Kathy. ``But I don't like it. Feels like you're in jail."
