Cape Foulwind Walkway and Lighthouse

This is a 4km 1.5 hour DOC walkway.

Begin the walk either at the end of Tauranga Bay Road, or closer to Westport (11km), at the end of Cape Foulwind Road. Starting at Tauranga Bay, you follow a well-formed track to the seal colony viewing platform. Just past that, the route becomes a marked trail over farmland. A short climb and you reach a plateau with a magnificent view of the coast and, to the east, the rugged Paparoa mountain range.

After about 20 minutes, you reach a memorial to Abel Tasman, the first European to record the cape. A mounted astrolabe, a replica of a navigational instrument used for measuring the angle of the sun, commemorates his anchorage off the cape in 1642. Other interesting features on the walk are the lighthouse and the remains of a railway. This was built to carry the granite, quarried on the cape, to construct breakwaters and embankments at the Buller River mouth.