Day trippers beware: SH2 is a fast highway. Though there’s a pull-off area on the Auckland side of the SH2 bridge, it’s better not to use it because the bridge has no foot access, and you’d have to cross it to get to the track’s northern start. Instead, drive across the bridge and pull off the highway wherever you deem safe, then make your way back on foot. 

 

The entrance to the track is not yet signed, but if you cross a stile on the northern side of the highway you’ll find a stile that takes you over a fence, and under the bridge. Follow the stopbank which is on the true left of the Mangatawhiri River – i.e. the left bank as you face downstrean. There’s one low-lying area about halfway along which may flood, but only in very wet weather. After a 5 km walk down the stopbank you’ll come to a drainage ditch about 10 metres wide. At this point the stopbank, and the track route, turns a right angle and follows the drainage ditch inland for about one kilometre before finishing at the McIntyre Road end, and a pump-station there for an Archimedes Screw which is part of the drainage.

 

If you want to see what this land was like before being modified, look across the drainage ditch and you'll see land run by the Auckland/Waikato Chapter of Fish and Game. It's natural swamp.