It's been nearly a week since my last walk of the city streets but back walking today with my goal being to walk all of the town belt. Today I walked 6 streets.
448. Montpellier Street
449. Lane End
450. Braid Road
451. Duchess Avenue
452. Bute Street
The Dunedin Town Belt is over 200 hectares of native bush across several suburbs in central Dunedin. It is one of only three Victorian Town Belts in the world. The town belt is a good example of what Dunedin would have been like before the first settlers arrived and started cutting down the bush to build their homes. Today the town belt is an important habitat for many birds including the kereru, tui, bellbird and rifleman. It was a pleasure to hear many birds on my walk today
Queens Drive is the road that runs the length of the town belt and as it is narrow and windy, there is little traffic making it a great place to walk. I started my walk on Queens Drive from Eglington Road, Mornington and walked all the way to Prospect Park, Maori Hill. There are open grass areas in the town belt giving the opportunity for views of the city.
During my last walk, I walked past the front of Otago Boys High School today I walked past the back of the school.
The next bit of Queens Drive past Otago Boys High School is busy I walked past the city's public swimming pool. Moana Pool was opened in 1964 and was one of the countries first Olympic sized swimming pools. In the early 2000's the hydro slide was added.
It was good to get past Moana Pool and back into the quiet and the green of the town belt. The town belt has a number of walking tracks through the bush making it popular with walkers and runners. No cars passed me during my walk today.
As Queens Drive traverses a number of suburbs, the views of the city kept changing . The residents of the houses that border the town belt are very lucky to have this quiet, green space so close.
As I neared the end of Queens Drive, I came across a gap in the trees allowing me a great view of the University of Otago campus with all it's tall buildings and the stadium and harbour behind it.
Once at the end of Queens Drive, it loops around the playing fields of Prospect Park giving great views down to Leith Valley and over to Pine Hill, North East Valley and Opoho. I have not walked any of these streets yet and looking at them today, I can see that I still have quite a few hills to walk up.
I really enjoyed my walk of the town belt today and there were a few interesting things I noticed along the way. I came across this lovely big tree with it's commemorative stone telling how William Thomson had planted it and many others in the town belt from 1888 to 1923.
I also passed this old style post box outside Olveston. It is one of only a few of it's type remaining in New Zealand
It is great to see families making use of the green spaces along the town belt with areas for children to play.
Distance walked: 8.0 km Walking time 1 hr 32 mins
Total distance: 291.2 km Total walking 54 hr 36 mins
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