d & j: TWO WALKS: MOONEE PONDS-WILLIAMSTOWN & BELGRAVE-SHERBROOKE FOREST

I have two walks to write up, and they are as different as can be!

The first is a 21km walk from Moonee Ponds station (9th of August 2009), down the Maribyrnong, around the Yarra/bay to Williamstown. This was a very flat walk on sealed paths, passing through some lovely suburban green spaces and some interesting semi-industrial sections. We lunched under the West Gate Bridge and spotted some dolphins slipping around the moored boats (although we didn't get any photos). The weather was sunny and breezy, there were heaps of people out enjoying their weekend, and we ate a second lunch of chips and cider in the rotunda at Williamstown.

The second is a 10km circular walk from Belgrave station (16th of August 2009), past Puffing Billy and through Sherbrooke Forest. The walk went over the hills on unsealed paths, through bush and rainforest. It was windy in the treetops, it rained for a lot of the walk, and we had to move our picnic lunch into the (very clean, very new) toilet block in order to not get flooded out! There were very few other people out and about, although the café in Belgrave – where we had tea, coffee and cakes afterwards – was doing good business.

Both of these walks are accessible by public transport. The Moonee Ponds – Williamstown walk is serviced by several train stations, making it easy to complete the walk in shorter sections. The Belgrave and Sherbrooke Forest walk is only met at a couple of points by buses (which don’t run on Sundays), but it is easy to plan a shorter circular walk of 3 or 6 kilometres. Here are the maps:

The Moonee Ponds – Williamstown path is mostly accessible to those with wheels (mobility aides, bikes, pushers and prams), although there might be a couple of minor route alterations needed to make the walk fully accessible. For instance, we did not take the available accessible path through Yarraville Gardens, and it is not possible to access our lunch spot under the West Gate due to some unavoidable steps after the footbridge.

Only small sections of the Belgrave and Sherbrooke Forest walk are accessible, and most of the path is specifically signposted and gated to prevent bikes from entering. It would be possible to walk the first 3km with a pushchair (or possibly a wheelchair), but the very start of the walk is extremely steep! The rest of the walk is mostly along narrow walking paths, and there are frequent steps. However, the picnic grounds are beautiful, can be reached by car, and have wheelchair accessible toilets.

They were very different walks for different purposes. The Williamstown walk was designed to be a long walk (for training purposes), and to explore more of the western side of Melbourne. We’d wanted to walk along the Maribyrnong for ages, so it was about time! The Belgrave walk was planned in order to show some visiting UK friends (one an ex-pat) some of the gorgeous bushland that is close to Melbourne, to give them a literal breath of fresh air and a chance to see a part of the city they wouldn’t usually get to. The hills were also good practice for us for our SWCP walk!

In the interest of getting this write-up done and out there ASAP, I am now going to do a bit of a picspam of both walks, first the Williamstown one, then the Belgrave one. Please feel free to ask me questions about these walks and I will answer them. I think that’s probably a better way to spend my time rather than writing up an in-depth journal entry that only 4 or 5 people will read!

You can see our pictures of the Williamstown walk here. (I've only used ours because it's easier to upload them). You can see SJ’s hilarious photos of the walk here, and G’s fab pictures here.

You can see our pictures of the Belgrave walk here.

MOONEE PONDS AND WILLIAMSTOWN