Milnthorpe Park

This short walk follows 1.3 km, near Collingwood in Nelson-Tasman.

A hillside of regenerating forest above Golden Bay, five kilometres short of Collingwood, laced with more tracks than the size of it suggests. The project started in 1974 as an experiment: the poor coastal soils here defeated the first attempts at planting natives, so hardy non-native trees went in instead to build soil and throw shade, and native forest has been coming up underneath them ever since. Most of it is tall canopy now. The tracks carry the names of the people who cut them, which tells you plenty about the place: Trev’s Track, Elise’s Way, Frampton’s Fairway, Hovenden’s Hole, Bishop’s Saddle, Jimmy’s Jungle, Leslie’s Lookout. Around two dozen of them are mapped, roughly fifteen kilometres in total. The line drawn here is The Old Master, the long spine track, 1.3 km from the Kendal Street road end north into the middle of the forest. Walked there and back that is about 2.6 km and an easy hour, and it is a reasonable first visit, but it is a fraction of what is here and you should treat it as a way in rather than the walk. Everything else branches off the network west of it. To get there, turn right just north of Parapara Inlet, 22 km north of Tākaka, then left onto Nelson Street and follow it into Kendal Street. There is a shaded picnic area at the road end. Dogs are allowed and DOC asks that you keep them under control, which is a genuine off leash permission and unusual for conservation land, so it is worth not spoiling. The park is thick with regenerating bush and the society traps predators through it. What does need watching is the edge of the map. The estuary next door is a different rule entirely: the Tasman District Council bylaw prohibits dogs at Parapara Inlet including Milnthorpe Quay Reserve, so the inlet is off limits, not an extension of the walk. The beach access path between Kendal Street and the Milnthorpe headland is a leash control area, and that one touches this walk: the first couple of hundred metres of the drawn line, out of the road end, sit inside it, so start with the lead on and take it off once you are properly into the forest. The beach north of the headland toward Collingwood is a controlled exercise area where the dog can be off the leash but under effective control. Three rules inside a kilometre of each other, so know which patch you are standing on.

Expect easy going, with around 7 m of climb, and takes about 16 min to walk.

Dogs are welcome here. This walk is on the map because Alex & Alfie suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.