Titahi Bay Beach

Titahi Bay Beach covers 0.9 km, near Titahi Bay in Wellington.

Take the calendar first, because it is the whole of this page. From 1 November to 31 March, between 10am and 7pm, dogs are prohibited on the signed section of Titahi Bay Beach. That is a ban rather than a leash rule, and Porirua City Council puts it plainly in its own gloss: no dogs allowed, even on leash. Outside those hours, and on every day from 1 April to 31 October, the same schedule makes this a Dog Exercise Area where a dog under control may run off the lead. That is why the verdict here reads off lead and why the season has to be read alongside it. A dog on this sand at 2pm in January is an infringement, whatever it is or is not wearing. The dates are the bylaw’s. The council’s own dog walking page prints 1 April to 30 October for this beach and 1 April to 31 October for Plimmerton three lines further down, and only one of those matches Schedule One, so we have published the bylaw. Where the ban stops is a matter for the signs. Both the bylaw and the policy word it as prohibited between the signs, and the council describes the off leash ground as running between the marker signposts. Nothing we can read maps where those signs stand, so the marker signs at the beach entrance are the boundary, not anything on this page. Read them on the way down. Behind the sand the rule changes and it has no season at all. Schedule One lists Titahi Bay as an Urban Area suburb, which puts a dog on a leash at all times in the residential areas, streets, parks and open spaces of the suburb, and that is the reserve strip, the promenade and the car park behind the beach. So the lead is on from the car and comes off once you are on the sand. The Titahi Bay Beach Reserves management plan is stricter again for that strip of reserve land: continue to maintain a liquor ban, and prohibit dogs from any part of the reserve during summer daytime hours, allow dogs on leash at other times. Stuart Park is the answer when the sand shuts at 10am, and it is the most useful thing on this page. The 32.9 hectare reserve adjoins the south end of the beach, the council’s reserve finder records access to the beach from it, and Schedule One lists Stuart Park separately as a Dog Exercise Area with no seasonal window on it whatsoever. Off the lead, year round. Do not read the beach season across to the park, and do not read the park’s permission back onto the sand: they are two entries in the same schedule with different rules, and only one of them closes in summer. One warning rides with the park and it belongs beside the off lead recommendation rather than buried under it, in the council’s own words: these areas have possum control measures in place, to prevent your dog being poisoned, make sure it does not go into the bush or scavenge carcasses. The council points you at its Pest Animal Operations map for what is being used and what precautions apply. We are not naming a toxin, because the council’s own pest and weed page names none for this ground. Vehicles are the live hazard on the sand. Porirua allows no vehicles on Titahi Bay Beach other than for launching boats or unloading items at a boatshed, with gate access for boatshed owners, boaties and emergency services, so a ute and trailer on the beach is a normal sight here rather than someone breaking a rule. The ramp and the boat sheds sit at the northern end of the bay, which is where a loose dog and a reversing trailer are most likely to find each other, so call your dog in when you hear an engine. North of the beach the authority changes. Greater Wellington runs Whitireia Park along the coast immediately north, and it asks that dogs are under control at all times and on the lead in Onehunga Bay and around the coast where little blue penguins nest. No source we read puts a kororā colony on Titahi Bay sand and we are not claiming one, but a dog that keeps running north off this beach crosses onto ground where a different council wants it on the lead, and kororā come ashore after dark. Clip on before you get that far. One note on the line drawn here. No walking track is mapped on this beach, so the line follows the mapped shoreline down the middle of the named sand, a little seaward of the dune edge, from the Stuart Park end in the south to the north end of the named beach. That is a bit over 900 metres, so a little under two kilometres out and back, and it is flat the whole way. Read it as the shape of the sand rather than as a route, because the walkable ground moves with the tide, and do not read it as the extent of the dog rule either. Sand carries on north past the named beach, and the ban runs between the signs rather than between the ends of anything we have drawn. Hellie, who sent this one in with Indie, had the seasonal windows right and put us onto Stuart Park, which turned out to be the best part of it.

Expect easy going, with around 6 m of climb, and takes about 11 min to walk.

Dogs are welcome here. This walk is on the map because Hellie & Indie suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.