Victoria Park Loop

This short track follows 0.8 km as a loop, near Waimate in Canterbury.

Victoria Park is the 6.8 hectare reserve in the middle of Waimate, five minutes on foot from the shops, and the whole park is off the lead by name. Waimate District Council did not put that on a webpage and leave it there. Appendix 2 of Chapter 6 of the district bylaw, the schedule of designated off-leash dog exercise areas, opens its list with Victoria Park excluding sport and play areas as marked on attached map, and every other public place in the district defaults to on-leash. The line mapped here is a circuit of the park, about 870 metres of formed path and gravel track, flat the whole way, a leg stretch rather than a hike. Start at the Queen Street and Tennant Street corner, follow the path southwest down the eastern side past the flower beds, then west along the southern edge past the toilets, the shelter and the information board for the frisbee golf course. Pick up the gravel track that runs northwest up the western boundary, past the second car park, then take the grass path that swings around the northern end of the cycling oval and comes back down its eastern side to the corner you started from. Plenty of other paths thread the park, so most people make a longer wander of it. Five zones are cut out of the permission, and they are drawn in colour on the council’s own park map, page 10 of the Dog Info A5 brochure. Dogs are prohibited in the children’s playground off Tennant Street, on the Victoria Park Cycle Track, which is the velodrome, in the sports court, which is the block of netball courts, and on the lawn bowling green. Treat the whole velodrome as out rather than just the asphalt ring, because the council puts the athletics club’s track and field area inside the oval, and the bylaw adds its own note that dogs are not permitted in children’s playgrounds or on marked sports grounds adjacent to any of these exercise areas. The camping ground strip on the Naylor Street side is the fifth, and it works differently: the map colours it a dog on leash area, so the lead goes on in there rather than the dog being shut out. The mapped line keeps clear of all five. One narrow allowance is written into the bylaw for the playground, and it is worth knowing, because the car park at the Tennant Street corner sits right beside the playground, the toilets and the picnic tables. You may move through an area of children’s play equipment to get from one side to the other by the most direct route, with the dog on a leash. So clip the lead on at the car and walk clear before you let the dog go. Then the part that makes this park unusual. It has animal enclosures in it, and the council says so in its own words: the park has beautiful gardens, trees and lawns, animal enclosures, a cycling oval, a 9-hole Frisbee golf course, open and sheltered picnic areas and a modern playground. Inge, who sent this one in, counted birds, peacocks, rabbits, a pig, ducks and two wallabies. What there is not is a rule about any of it. We read Appendix 2, Appendix 3 and every red polygon on the brochure map, and no aviary, zoo or animal enclosure appears anywhere in them, so we are not going to draw a boundary the council has never drawn. What does apply is the bylaw’s own definition of under control, and it repays reading properly: the dog is not causing a nuisance or danger, the person in charge has it under continual surveillance, and can obtain the desired response by voice commands, hand signals, whistles or other effective means. An off-leash park with caged birds and animals in it is a recall test, so if yours is not solid, keep the lead on around the enclosures. That is a call for you to make on the day, not a closed area. One last thing. Appendix 3 gives the council a standing power to notify by signage and public notification that a temporary dog prohibition is in place because of wildlife, stock or another issue such as a large public gathering. The velodrome hosts an annual Caledonian Society cycling meeting in January, exactly the sort of gathering that clause is written for, so a sign at the gate beats anything on this page. Knottingley Park, a couple of kilometres away, is the other Waimate reserve named in the same off-leash schedule.

Expect easy, near-level going, and takes about 10 min to walk.

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