Camel Trail - Current Trail

Current Trail

The railway was built so that the trains would not have any steep inclines or sharp turns. It is these characteristics which make it an excellent cycle trail. Since the trail has been open to the public cycle hire shops, cafes and other attractions have sprung up to cater for the traffic. Many families take their young children to the trail to allow them to become more confident cyclists in a traffic free environment. The local cycle hire shops have a wide range of tag-alongs or buggies to allow very young children to be safely transported behind their parents. Only a small part of the trail, through Wadebridge, is on roads and shared with normal traffic.

Car parking at Padstow, Wadebridge and Poley's Bridge allow the trail to be broken into 5-mile (8 km) sections giving an easy 10-mile (16 km) round trip back to your starting point with a break in Wadebridge or Padstow for food, drink, shopping and rest.

There have been considerable efforts to convert the cycleway back into a railway, in order to allow it to carry china clay traffic again, and in more recent times to extend the Bodmin and Wenford Railway but these have been rejected, on the grounds that the cycleway provides more benefits to the local community than removing heavy lorries from the local narrow winding roads, many of which have had to be converted to one-way operation in order to allow them to carry the lorry traffic.