The Lucas Creek Walkway

A few of the North Shore Nordic Walkers met at Kell Drive on Sunday to explore Kell Park once again.  It was pretty cold in the morning and the mist was still hanging in the air and the grass was very wet!

Kell park, Albany

One of our regular walkers Pam E passed some walking books to me a few weeks ago, one of which was Explore the Shore, Volume One, Albany& Greenhithe Area Walks.  The booklets are available online or you can collect them from the library and information centres.

Cannon at the top of the Walkway overlooking the creek

The books have been put together by a lady called Margaret Scrymygeour, they are beautifully illustrated with maps and written instructions on local walks.

I have met Margaret at one of the Walk to Work events in Takapuna in 2010 organised by Living Streets Aotearoa and Auckland City Council.  Margaret is a lovely lady with heaps of local knowledge and she put the maps together a while ago; I've used The Harbour Sports website to print her maps, its lovely to see them all professionally published and presented in these wonderful booklets.
As we had already been to Kell Park and wandered about there the previous week I decided that we should try the Kell Park and Lucas Creek Track and take the 5 km walk that features in the booklet.

The painted chooks and some of our Nordic Walkers

We met at the car park which is located in Kell Drive behind the shops and library at Albany.  This is a recently developed suburban area with lots of lovely houses which run adjacent to one of the local and oldest waterways.
Following the instructions we followed the path down to the Creek and took the left hand walkway across the footbridge, walking along the concrete footpath and turned right across the grass into the Nature Reserve. We walked across with wet trainers until we reached Wharf Road and at the signpost for the Reserve we went straight over Wharf Road and continued along the grass, and crossed over onto the Lucas Creek Walkway.

The huge slide at Kell Park

At Kinleith Way there is an exit into a walkway between a couple of houses and crossing the road,  we encountered another walkway which exited at Mahoney Drive, which passed through a third walkway further along Mahoney Drive and exited into Vinewood Drive. 

Following our map we continued and took a right at the playground into Roanoak Way taking yet another walkway between the houses and that’s where it all became very confusing.

Beautiful carved wooden chair in the park

Alan had joined us for our walk this week, Alan usually walks with the group in Northcote but has brought his poles along to walk with us before.  Alan and I agreed that at this point the instructions were a bit confusing so we took a right and followed the path back and eventually made our way to Wharf Road and onto The Landing. What we should have done really was go back across the wet grass to Wharf Road. From The Landing we took a right into Landing Drive and at Widdison Way we crossed over to the walkway and then made our way back to the Nature Reserve.

The Albany Village Logo

We followed the footpath back to Kell Park and back up to the platform where we had earlier met a few of the local dog owners, one of which had tried Nordic Walking at Long Bay in the past. I love the cannon here and there's a huge slide as I mentioned last week and down the steps to the left is the flying fox. We could see eels swimming in the creek below.

At the end of the walk we had the opportunity to stroll around the fruit trees by the children's playground and had a debate over some of the fruit and  what we thought was a pear tree is actually a quince.  There are also some wonderful wooden sculptures in this area, one of which is an enourmous wooden chair beautifully carved from a tree trunk.

After talking for a while we made our way back to the cars and had a coffee at the Opium Cafe, however being so early  on a Sunday we had to take a stroll for 10 minutes while they opened. Despite the dubious name the cafe serves excellent blueberry muffins!

The Chooks

It’s worth noting that there will be Art in the Park next weekend at Kell Park, and if you’re free take the kids or grand children, it’s a great venue and there are some intersting sculptures dotted around.

Make sure you look out for the beautiful painted chooks on the wall.