My favorite Amelia Island Half Marathon (ish) trail route

There are three obvious candidates for trail running on Amelia Island: Egan’s Creek Greenway, the Fort Clinch multi-use trail, and the beach. What I discovered is that you can link all 3 of these together in a way that comes up right about at the half marathon distance. It’s one of my favorite routes on Amelia Island of any distance. A photo of the route is below, and you can view the full details on Strava.

Since it’s a loop, you have a number of potential start points: any beach access parking between Seaside Park (Salder Rd.) and North Beach, the Atlantic Ave or Jasmine St Greenway entrances, or the Fort Clinch parking at the front or the park or at the visitors center.

As with any run that involves the beach, it’s important to time this at or near low tide. Otherwise the beach running portion is going to be miserable. If you can catch the beach portion at dawn that’s an added bonus.

The loop comes in just a bit shy of a full half, but you can easily get the extra quarter of a mile by taking one of the tangents on the greenway, or doing a small amount of the group camp road or nature trail along the Fort Clinch trail.