The Babbacombe Cliff Railway

One of England's last working funiculars, dropping you from clifftop to beach in under two minutes since 1926.

There are grander attractions on the English Riviera, but few are as purely satisfying as the Babbacombe Cliff Railway. Two small cars, a single track down a near-vertical red cliff, and a beach waiting at the bottom — it is engineering reduced to its essence, and it has been working this way for the best part of a century.

The railway opened in 1926, cutting its line through the distinctive Devon-red sandstone that gives Babbacombe and Oddicombe their drama. Before it existed, the only way down to Oddicombe Beach was a steep footpath — fine on the way down, punishing on the way back up with tired children and a bag full of damp towels. The funicular solved that problem elegantly, and it still does.

The mechanism is beautifully simple: the two cars are connected by a single cable, so the descending car's weight helps haul the ascending one. Modern safety systems have been added over the decades, but the fundamental principle has not changed. The ride itself lasts well under two minutes — steep enough to feel like an event, slow enough to take in the view, which opens out across the bay towards the red and white stripes of the cliffs and the glittering sea below.

At the bottom, Oddicombe is a proper beach: a long arc of mixed sand and shingle, backed by those towering cliffs, with a café and the kind of calm that the larger resort beaches in Paignton and Torquay rarely manage. It faces roughly north-east, which means morning light and shelter from southwesterly winds — worth remembering when planning the day. The South West Coast Path runs along the clifftop above, so walkers can ride down, swim, eat, and walk back up through the coastal scrub if they feel energetic.

The clifftop station at Babbacombe sits alongside Babbacombe Downs, a long, well-kept promenade with views stretching down the coast towards Berry Head and across Lyme Bay. The combination of clifftop stroll and funicular descent makes for a genuinely satisfying half-day — unhurried, easy, and the kind of thing that lodges in memory rather than fading into a blur of attractions.

The railway typically operates through the spring and summer season, though hours can vary. Worth checking locally before making it the centrepiece of your day — but if it is running, ride it. Both directions.

— How it unfolded

1. 1926Babbacombe Cliff Railway opens, cutting a line through the red sandstone cliff to Oddicombe Beach

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