Templers Island Trail
Christchurch · Canterbury
This walk was suggested by the community and checked against the authority quoted above before it was published. The route line comes from official track data. Christchurch City Council’s own wording: “Christchurch City Council, Dog Control Policy and Bylaw 2025. Dogs must be leashed on all paths in greenspace areas where dogs are allowed. We checked the Council's own dog restriction dataset on 4 September 2026 and tested all 607 points of this trail against every restriction polygon around it: the trail itself is not inside a single one, so the district's on lead default is what applies and there is nothing site specific on top of it. The riverbed next to you is a different matter. Restriction 435, "Waimakariri Riverbed - north of Lorimas Road", is Prohibited to dogs, in the Council's words "to protect wildlife values (the Waimakariri riverbed is an important nesting area for threatened species, including black-fronted tern, white-fronted tern, Caspian tern, black-billed gull, banded dotterel and wrybill)", and it is prohibited at the request of Environment Canterbury. That boundary comes within about five metres of the trail. On the path, on lead, is fine the whole way. Down on the shingle is not”. Evidence: the rule-setter’s own published wording. How we check dog rules.
Good to know
Dogs are allowed here. Keep them on the lead, watch for ground-nesting birds and stock, and read the signs at the gate.
About Templers Island Trail
Templers Island Trail is a big walk of 14.7 km, near Christchurch in Canterbury.
Just under 15 km of flat gravel along the south bank of the Waimakariri, from the Dickeys Road end near McLeans Island out east to Kainga. It is a wide, well formed cycleway shared with bikes, mostly gravel with a few compacted and unpaved stretches, and there is no climbing on it worth the name. You can start at either end or drop in partway and do as much of it as you feel like, which is how most people walk it, and the western half around Templers Islands is the quieter one. The name is worth a note because it will save you a search. Land Information New Zealand has the locality as Templers Islands, after Edward Mercer Templer, and that is the spelling Lisa sent it to us under. OpenStreetMap still carries most of the trail under the older Templars spelling, so maps and apps disagree with each other about it. Same trail, either way. Dogs are on lead here. Christchurch City Council is the authority for the whole length, which we checked rather than assumed, because the eastern end gets mislabelled as Waimakariri District by some geocoders and it is not: the river is the boundary and this trail stays on the south bank. We also ran every point of the line against the Council's own map of dog restrictions and the trail does not enter any of them, so this is the plain district rule and there is no extra local catch on the path itself. The catch is beside the path. The Waimakariri riverbed north of Lorimas Road is closed to dogs completely, at Environment Canterbury's request, because it is a nesting area for black-fronted tern, white-fronted tern, Caspian tern, black-billed gull, banded dotterel and wrybill. Those birds nest on open shingle, their eggs look like stones, and the boundary of that closed area runs within about five metres of the trail in places with nothing on the ground to mark it. So the rule that actually matters out here is simple: stay up on the formed trail and keep the lead on. It is a lovely long flat walk for a dog, and it costs the birds nothing as long as nobody wanders down to the river with one.
Expect hard going, with around 96 m of climb, and takes about 3 hr 6 min to walk.
Dogs are allowed here, on the lead. This walk is on the map because Lisa & Ruby suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.