Bright Ridge Skyline Trail

Once you have found a park and proceeded along the driveway to the sign you will start on a lovely bit of gravel trail and think 'this is ok'... well it lasts about 40m until you reach a stile into a paddock.

Once in the paddock head left over the streamlet and up the track - not up the fenceline! At the top of that first wee climb there is a walkway pole so you know you are heading the right way. Just past that a farm track heads off to the right - ignore this as its not the way to go & instead head off down the wider grass track to the left and eventually you will find another pole

A bit further on you will reach a fence line - don't go over the gate, instead turn right and start the slog to the top of the hill. Once there you do go through the gate and just after that you will hit a 4WD track and you follow that for the next 1.2km or so until you reach a road.

Turn right and cross the road and take the first driveway (about 40m up the road). This starts out as 4WD track again and turns into pretty cruisey single trail until you reach the top of Barry Badfield Nikau Reserve. If you want to save your legs some wicked down and uphill then turn here (but you wont get to tick the trail as being done lol). Firstly you will go down a set of large wooden steps. Then, just before the second set of steps as the true bush starts, there is a trail off to the right. It almost looks abandoned but it's not. Follow that and it will take you on a lovely technical downhill, still with lots of steps as it is a steep hill, but eventually it will spit you out on a much better quality track at the bottom. Follow this past the track labelled Lookout and you will come out on the other end carpark by SH1.

Turn around and head back to the 'Lookout' sign and head up that way, this is a much more well-formed trail than the downhill, but still steep and a bit of a slog. Once at the top you retrace your steps to the start.