Great Harbour Way - Te Ara Tupua-Petone

This 9km long route starts with the wonderful Te Ara Tupua shared path, and continues along the Petone foreshore before finishing at Seaview just past the Waione Bridge over the Hutt River.

Te Ara Tupua is 4.5km long and runs between Petone and Ngauranga, and takes about 1 hour to walk or 25 minutes to bike on way. It has helped to complete a 12km continuous separated walking & cycling route between Wellington and Lower Hutt. The key purpose of the project was to ensure that the critical Hutt Valley-Wellington railway line and State Highway 2 would be protected from increasing damaging storms and sea rises.

The name Te Ara Tupua translates to "The Ancient Pathway" and was gifted by the Taranaki Whānui to honor the region's mana whenua (land ownership) and the foundational Māori creation stories of the harbour.

Map, Route GPX file, and 3D flyover simulation video

Below you'll find a route map, a downloadable GPX file compatible with any walking or cycling navigation app, and a 3D flyover simulation video of the route.

Note: the GPX file can be loaded into your favourite walking or cycling navigation app.

3D fly over simulation video with photos of the Te Ara Tupua - Petone route

Route Guide

When travelling north along the Great Harbour Way, this Te Ara Tupua section starts just after the Ngauranga interchange. For people wanting to do this individual section of the Great Harbour Way, it is easy to catch a bus or train to Ngauranga or Petone bus stop / train station. At Ngauranga you will need to take the narrow shared path that goes underneath the motorway fly-over. Be careful and stay left as a number of fast cyclists use this path.

From this start of Te Ara Tupua (the path of the ancients) you go up the beautiful bridge that crosses the railway line to get you back to the harbour shore. The path has been marked with a designated lane for walkers on the seaside, and a designated lane for cyclists and people on scooters on the railway side. Cyclists and scooter riders need to stay left within this designated cycling lane.

Share with care along the shared path by the busy Ngauranga Interchange.

The Te Ara Tupua path starts with the beautiful walk & cycle bridge over the railway.

Thumbs up for Te Ara Tupua.

Te Ara Tupua finishes at the Honiana Te Puni Reserve. You can carry on to the Petone-Melling path to get to the Petone Station or to Lower Hutt. Or follow the path along the Petone foreshore. This takes you all the way to the Hikoikoi Reserve by the Hutt River. Use the narrow shared path on the Waione Bridge to cross the Hutt River and to continue on the next Seaview-Pencarrow section of the Great Harbour Way.

Make sure to visit Petone as it has a fantastic selection of cafes, restaurants, 2nd hand stores, and various eclectic shops like the Dutch Shop and Ellen G. Alongside a number of pubs there is also the local Baylands Brewery and Abandoned Brewery Tap rooms. The Petone Settlers Museum is definitely worth a visit. And check out the wonderful Alfred Memelink Gallery along the foreshore.

The beautiful Manu Tukutuku (traditional Māori kite) at the Petone end of Te Ara Tupua.

The Petone foreshore path

The wonderful Petone Settlers Museum.

The Māori history of Te Ara Tupua

Te Ara Tupua has a number of resting places along the path that honour what were used by the early Maori people to land their waka (canoes) and for small settlements. You can read about this amazing history at the various information boards at these resting places. And also information how the work to strengthen this length of the shore is ensuring the restoration of the natural habitat and encouraging little blue penguins, native lizards and other animals to make it their home.

Read the Māori history at the various rest places along the route.

There 8 resting places in total along Te Ara Tupua.

Piki Wahini is one of these resting places, named after the hill above Ngā Ūranga.

It was during 1820s and 1830s that iwi of Taranaki migrated south to settle along the Kāpiti coast and around Te Whanaganui-a-Tara, the Wellington Harbour, including along the foreshore between Ngā Ūranga (Ngauranga) and Pito One (Petone).

You will read for example about Ngā Ūranga, which was a small Pā (settlement) and waka landing area with a population of 48 when a census was done in 1842. The Ko Te Wharepoūri information board explains how this senior chief of the Te Āti Awi tribe in Taranaki was also an expert waka builder. The images show Te Wharepoūri and next to it a depiction of Ngā Ūranga Pā with behind the house an upright memorial waka for Te Wharepoūri.

Over a century wait for the path

The idea of a cycleway between Wellington and Lower Hutt first appeared in Hansard in 1901. Photo: Supplied / Not-For-Syndication

The Wellington to Petone path, was originally envisioned in the Hutt Railway and Road Improvement Act of 1903. While it took over a century to realise the separated pathway, the modern planning phase for the $348.7 million project officially commenced around 2013, culminating in its opening in May 2026. After many years of submissions by a range of advocates, the then Labour-led coalition government gave the go ahead in 2018–2019, later accelerating it in 2020 under COVID-19 fast-track consenting rules to start this "shovel ready" fast-track infrastructure project to ensure massive coastal resilience and to protect State Highway 2 and the Hutt Valley railway line from storm damage and sea-level rise, and alongside this create the long awaited walking and cycling path between Ngauranga and Petone.

Green Party MPs Celia Wade-Brown and Julie Anne Genter at a sneak preview of Te Ara Tupua before its opening in May 2026.

As the Mayor of Wellington from 2010 to 2016, Celia Wade-Brown laid the essential regional groundwork for the path over a decade before construction finished.Regional Inclusion: She successfully lobbied and campaigned to have the Ngauranga-to-Petone link prioritised and integrated into the Regional Land Transport Plan.Early Advocacy: Alongside Lower Hutt Mayor Ray Wallace, she led high-profile public and mayoral advocacy campaigns to back the Great Harbour Way coalition's vision. This kept the project politically viable long before central government took it over.

As the Associate Minister of Transport (Green Party) within the Labour-led coalition from 2017 to 2020, Julie Anne Genter was the primary political driver behind securing the necessary capital funding; she formally approved the central government funding that allowed the project to proceed. Genter re-prioritised the National Land Transport Programme to allocate significant funding toward walking, cycling, and climate resilience infrastructure rather than exclusively highway expansions.