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Shoreline cliffwalk. Regular Cliff Walkers know the 3 1/2-mile path ( a National Recreation Trail in a National Historic District ) as a windy stroll between the manicured lawns of Newport mansions and the unfettered Atlantic. There was a time, back in the 1980s, when chunks of the trail -- which begins at Easton's (or First) Beach on Memorial Boulevard and ends at the tip of Bailey's Beach on Bellevue Avenue -- were nearly impassable. 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.