Keen walker David Mallowes offers suggestions about fun and interesting routes people can take to get some exercise and enjoy the area in his latest column.
The Murvale Reserve in Bucklands Beach is a beautiful park with many walkways meandering through tall stands of exotic and native bush, and some open-grassed areas for picnics and playing.
Many options to walk your own route, exercise your dog, and some mountain biking.
The Murvale Drive entrance is only 200 metres from the expansive Macleans Park which leads to Eastern Beach and then Musick Point, the Bleakhouse Road entrance just 300 metres from the McLeay Reserve and bush and wetland paths that lead to Mellons Bay Beach.
Perfect for young families to walk and for children to explore. Two paths circle the reserve, with four tracks crisscrossing a large hillside.
Expect some well-made steps with handrails, gravel paths, and boardwalks. In all about 3km of paths and tracks mostly through mature forest.
Quiet and calming, clean and tidy, lots of shade, lots of birdsong, views of the Sky Tower and Rangitoto Island.
My favourite parts of the park – the awesome stand of old oak trees as your enter from Murvale Drive, following the mountain bike track through a large mature grove of ferns and palms, and the open grassed areas at the top.
History – part of what was a farm that in 1854 was given as a Crown Grant to Surgeon J.T.W. Bacot.
The name Murvale was given by a later landowner who ran a stud farm and pedigree Friesian cattle. Subdivision in the 1960s saw transfer of the property to the council as a reserve.
Access – 16R Murvale Drive, 82 Bleakhouse Road, next to 125 Macleans Road, or from the end of Etherege Place.
Dogs – off-leash, under control. Toilets – none. Seats – only two that we noted. Prams – suited to the first 200m from the Murvale and Bleakhouse entrances.
Nearby – 1.2km via Macleans Park to cafes and toilets at Eastern Beach, 1.4km via the McLeay Reserve and MacDonald Walkway to toilets at Mellons Bay Beach, 1km to Stockade Hill and Howick township – maybe consider a walk that encompasses all of these!
For more photos and information, visit Facebook page Walks Out East.
