The Millwood Heritage Walk — Story and Route

Gold in the forest

The Knysna forests were already working country long before anybody found gold in them. Through the 1800s the woodcutter families made their living here, felling stinkwood and yellowwood and dragging it out on ox wagon along paths that several of our routes still follow. It was hard, poorly paid work in a forest that gave up very little easily.

Then, in the mid-1880s, gold was found in the streams of the Millwood valley. The news travelled the way news of gold always does. Diggers arrived from the Cape, from the diamond fields and from overseas, and within a very short time a village had assembled itself in the middle of indigenous forest: shops, canteens, a bakery, hotels and — the surest sign that anybody expected it to last — a newspaper.

It did not last. The gold at Millwood was real but the reef was broken and thin, and it never repaid the effort of digging it out of a wet forest hillside. By the early 1890s the population was draining away, and when the Witwatersrand opened up in earnest the last of them went north. Buildings were dismantled and carted down to Knysna, where some of them still stand; one of them, Millwood House, is a museum in the town today. What was left behind, the forest simply grew over.

What is actually left

This is the part that surprises first-time walkers. There is no ghost town at Millwood. There is a clearing, a scattering of interpretive signboards, some old workings, a restored shop building, and a great deal of forest. You are walking through the outline of a town rather than the town itself, and you need somebody to point out where things stood.

That absence is the point. Standing at what was the main street, looking at seven-storey trees where a hotel used to be, tells you something about the Knysna forest that no photograph will. It took roughly a century for it to erase a village. It is doing the same thing, quietly, to the mine adits and the water furrows a few hundred metres away.

Walking the route, section by section

The first kilometre. We start at the Millwood clearing, where there is parking, shade and an ablution block. The first stretch is on the old road bed — wide, well graded and almost flat — with the signboards spaced along it. This is where we do most of the talking, because it is the easiest walking of the morning and you can listen without watching your feet.

The middle section. The path narrows and drops gently towards the old workings. There are two short rises here, neither more than a couple of minutes, and the surface can hold water after rain. Take it slowly. This is where you see the mine entrances and the cuttings where the diggers followed the reef, and where the forest is at its most impressive: yellowwood, stinkwood and Cape holly with the light coming down through the gaps in narrow shafts.

The last kilometre. The route swings back on itself and climbs, very gradually, to the clearing. There are benches at two points along this stretch and we always use them. Total distance is a little over three kilometres, total time about two hours with stops, and the honest verdict on difficulty is: easy, but not flat.

If you have energy left, Jubilee Creek is a short drive away and worth adding. It is a shaded picnic site on a clear brown stream, with a gentle out-and-back walk to a waterfall — the same creek where much of the original alluvial gold was panned. It makes a very good place to eat lunch and do nothing for an hour.

When to go, and what it costs

Autumn — March to May — is the best time for this walk. The ground has dried out, the air is cool and the light is at its best under the canopy. Winter mornings, June to August, are cold and clear and beautifully quiet, though the gates open later. In summer, December to February, we start at first light: it is hot, the school holidays fill the Garden Route, and the clearing gets busy by mid-morning.

Millwood sits inside the Garden Route National Park, so a daily conservation fee is payable at the gate. If you plan to walk here often, a SANParks Wild Card is the cheaper route. The road in is gravel and perfectly manageable in an ordinary car in dry weather, though after heavy rain a bakkie is a comfort rather than a luxury.

A guided Millwood walk with us costs R650 per person including VAT, or R950 with transport from Knysna and coffee afterwards. Groups are capped at twelve, the walk leader is first-aid trained and carries a kit, and we go at the pace of the slowest person in the group, which is usually one of the guides. Payment is by EFT, card, SnapScan or PayFast.

A few practical notes

Cellphone reception at Millwood ranges from poor to absent, so make your arrangements before you leave the tar. Take a litre of water each, wear shoes with grip, and bring a rain shell whatever the forecast says — the Garden Route gets rain in all twelve months and the forest catches showers the coast misses entirely.

Do not go off the marked path near the old workings. Some of the shafts and cuttings are more than a century old, they are unstable, and the vegetation hides the edges. Stay on the route and you will see everything worth seeing.

Before your first walk, read our guide to preparing for a forest walk , or look at what an easy walk under the trees does for you . If you would rather just come along with a group, send us a message and we will give you the next dates.