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A walk in the park
The newly opened walking and cycling track through Millbrook Resort to Lake Hayes is 3 km long and so gentle it’s traversed by kids on bicycles.
The track was built by Queenstown Lakes District Council, the Wakatipu Trails Trust and Millbrook Resort, and winds through the landscaped Millbrook grounds, with views out to Lake Hayes and the snowy Remarkables. By agreement it’s also part of Te Araroa’s route between Arrowtown and Queenstown.
Says Wakatipu Trails Trust CEO Kaye Parker: “We love the concept of Te Araroa because we don’t see it as being just about long walkers. It’s about ‘wherever you go in New Zealand you can tap into it and find a wonderful walk at your level – there is something for everybody'. And that’s where the Millbrook Track fits in. Most people with children can’t go off for a five or six hour tramp. We see it in skiing terms – you have the Green run, the Blue run, and the Double Black Diamond run depending on what you want to do.”
Te Araroa CEO Geoff Chapple says: “It’s a high quality track, and we’re very happy with that. It’s literally a walk in the park, and a stark contrast to the nearby Motatapu high country track. But it’s part of the plan to have day-walk standard paths en route so that everyone – in this case, from what I’m told even young children – can do easy bits, and feel also the thrill of being on a trail that stretches away 100s of kilometres either side.”
Wakatipu Trails Trust chairman Terry Stevens says his organisation is dedicated to building a “world class” network of trails in the Wakatipu region. The Millbrook Track is “a particularly important link because it’s accessible to a broad range of users, both individuals and families.”
The track is already heavily used by locals for both walking and mountain bike training, either as a 16km round trip to Lake Hayes or a 5km journey to Arrowtown.
Says Kaye Parker: “I recently took a friend who has cancer on the Millbrook Track because that is the level she is able to walk at the moment, and at the end we had a wonderful cafe meal in Millbrook Village Centre. That’s the other thing about it – people like to have a destination.”
