Find the top rated bike trails in Pensacola, whether you're looking for an easy short bike trail or a long bike trail, you'll find what you're looking for. Click on a bike trail below to find trail descriptions, trail maps, photos, and reviews.
One of our favorite ways to spend Saturday and Sunday mornings is riding the Blackwater Heritage State Trail. It’s a beautiful, well-maintained trail that’s perfect for a relaxing ride. The entire trail is paved, and there are plenty of stopping areas with restrooms along the way, which makes it super convenient for a longer ride.
The park service does a fantastic job of keeping the trail clean, regularly clearing away leaves and branches to ensure a smooth ride. There are two access points to the trail: you can start from Caroline Street or Old Bagdad Highway.
For my wife and I, we prefer parking near the waterfront park and picking up the trail around the visitor center, though we’ve done both starting points and they’re both great options. No matter how you approach it, it’s always a peaceful and scenic ride. If you’re looking for a nice way to spend a morning, I highly recommend giving it a try! Plus, there are 3 different breweries when you finish that serves up a very nice cold brew.
The Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail is really a net work of trails within the Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores AL. I highly recommend doing it without a map. Just let your instincts take you from trail to trail. There are paved segments,boardwalk segments, wooded areas, marshy areas all teaming with wildlife. The surfaces are in good shape and you can easily rack up 25 miles of riding. I started at sun up at the park headquarters where there is a lot of parking. I spotted osprey and other marsh birds and some gators. All in all a great ride.
It does not get much better than this, plenty of parking and access points, bathrooms clean and well spaced along the way, nice visitor center and plenty of benches to take a break if need be. 12' wide nice smooth paved trail, slight elevations, nice scenery. In town plan on some stops at road crossings but people are very bike friendly. There is a great bike store too along the downtown trail head if you need something. I just moved about 15 miles from this trail and will be using it often!
Wide for the most part, paved, water stops on east side section that is in town. Crosses a lot of driveways, both residential and commercial so you have to be aware of vehicles entering and leaving. The few miles on the eastern end are out of any residential or commercial development, At the eastern terminus of the trail there is a bike lane that begins on the road that you can ride another approximately 15 miles Navarre Beach.
Took my dog with me and literally wore us both out. Very nice trail with lots of shade, flora and fauna.
We spent 4 days biking all the trails in the Gulf State Park - returning to many trails multiple times. The trails are in excellent condition, there are several areas to stop, relax and view the natural areas you’re biking through. The boardwalks are impressive and well maintained. This is a top-notch biking area and if we’re ever in the area again, we will definitely return to these amazing bike trails!
Loved this ride-- rode it in late Feb, 70° and very little traffic through the national seashore portion. Loved the pristine dunes and having the ocean on one side and Santa Rosa sound on the other. Plenty of places to stop and rest or have a picnic.
I can't improve upon the above Trail Description or the previous Trail Reviews. In simplest terms, the trails of Alabama's Gulf State Park are absolutely awesome! My wife and I traveled from California in March of 2022 to experience the trails and we had the time of our lives!
Be sure to visit the Gulf State Park website for a map or have the Rails-To-Trails TraiLink app handy since there are twenty-seven trails and/or connectors within the park. We wanted to ride as much of the expansive system of trails as possible, and it was like putting a challenging puzzle together to organize our routes.
Every trail has something that makes it interesting or fun. Our favorite trail was Gulf Oak Ridge for its beautiful views from the overlook platform, and for riding through the forest of trees which envelope the trail.
Kudos to Alabama State Parks for this park and its system of trails. I wish I could ride these popular trails every day like michaelraydunaway!
I ran from north to south after starting at the very north end of the paved path. The path section of the path measured 1.75 miles (3.5 miles out-and-back). You can continue running onto a non-paved section of the trail. I stopped at 2 miles but it looks like i might be closer to 2.2 if you run all the way to the road (4.4 miles out-and-back).
You do cross a number of roadways. Most of these are small side streets but there are 2 larger roads where you may get stopped by traffic.
We ride this trail about 300 times a year. It’s a great trail but someone is asking the State to ban E-bikes. We are Seniors with various ailments so it’s nice to have this place to ride. Not sure what Alabama is thinking when it comes to e-bikes but many are riding them. We understand some of the young people that come here & ride out of control have caused this to be considered but don’t take it out on the Seniors not to mention thousands of Snowbirds that vacation here.
A lot of people have given this trail a bad review, I didn't think it was all bad! It is a sidewalk, so there are a lot of crossings, but it's a wide path very good signage, and you go through beautiful neighborhoods, the alligator boardwalk, and some coast views. I crossed over 4000 miles on this trail so I've been on a lot of trails! I wouldn't do this trail with skinny tires because of all the crossings but we enjoyed it overall very much.
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