Saturday, March 6, 2021

Day Thirty Seven Maori Hil

It was an interesting walk today where I walked some wide streets and also some very narrow streets.  Today I walked 12 streets.

474. Cosy Dell Road
475. Kyle Street
476. Ailsa Street
477. Lachlan Avenue
478. Highgate
479. Henry Street
480. Falkland Street
481. Lothian Street
482. Pollock Street
483. Como Street
484. Viewpark Lane
485. Chamberlain Street

I made a slight error in judgement today because I first walked down one of the paths through the town belt as I intended to start further down the hill.  Unfortunately the path I took didn't take me to the street that I thought I was going to start on and instead I ended up being further away than I had planned.  Not that it was much of a problem because I just kept walking until I got to where I was supposed to be and it also meant that I walked a few 'extra' streets.  

One of those extra streets was Kyle Street which was unusual as it was a narrow street through a tunnel of trees. I had no idea where it was taking me.  At the other end of this street was a tennis court and a few houses.  I did wonder why Kyle Street needed yellow no stopping lines as it is clearly not wide enough for anyone to park in. 

My earlier mistake through the town belt meant that I was on the outskirts of the University student flatting area and it was very obvious the difference in the state of the streets to anywhere in the city that I had already walked.  It is a shame that students seem to think that it is OK to just walk away from their rubbish. 


From Lachlan Avenue and Ailsa Street there are good views of the Dunedin Botanic Gardens which is the part with all the large green trees behind the student flats.  The Dunedin Botanic Gardens is the oldest botanic gardens in New Zealand and was established in 1963.  The botanic gardens forms the end of the town belt.

Once I started walking back up the hill, the views started to open out again and I was rewarded with a better view of the Dunedin Botanic Gardens with the University student flats in front,  Opoho behind the gardens and North East Valley to the left.  I have not walked any of these streets yet.

As I mentioned earlier there were some narrow streets that I walked today where cars needed to park half on the footpath.  One of the narrowest that I walked was View Park Lane.  It is so narrow that there is no vehicle access to the street but it has a street sign and the houses have letter boxes which means that I can count it towards my challenge of walking every street in Dunedin

And the next street over from View Park Lane is Chamberlain Street which is very wide and has a great view where as View Park Lane does not have view or a park.  I found these two streets a complete contrast to each other. 

I saw quite a few interesting things on my walk today.  It is always a bonus to find friendly residents sharing the produce from their gardens and there is a lot of parsley hiding among the roses at this house.  They have also placed a seat outside their fence for people to stop and rest on while walking up the hill.  



 

I have come across some great letterboxes during my walks and this was another one that made me stop and smile. And as I've already mentioned, there were some narrow streets and there were some wide streets and there are also some pretty streets with trees bordering the edge.  I particularly liked these trees as there were lots of leaves for me to kick as I walked up the hill.

Finally I'll share this photo taken in View Park Lane.  It seemed a bit strange to have two street signs in the one street, obviously the houses on one side have a street frontage on Chamberlain Street but does that mean they also have two letterboxes? 


Distance walked:  5.9 km      Walking time  1 hr 14 mins    

Total distance: 309.3 km       Total walking  58 hr 09 mins


1 comment:

Ross Davies said...

Good on you Debbie. I'm pleased you found my old Tennis Club at the end of Kyle Street, ye olde Cosy Dell Tennis Club. And you found our special lane, View Park Lane. The reason for the house clarifying that it was on Chamberlain Street is that the other side of the lane services houses in Como Street. Nobody ever had an address of View Park Lane. There is a watercourse down the gully on the north side of Como Street, wity a lot of narrow sections back to the lane. Many of the houses were well back from Como Street, and much easier accessed from the lane. Our house in Como Street actually had two foot bridges between the house and Como Street - it was quite a trek. In the olden times the grocer used to deliver the groceries down the lane, ditto the milkman. When we packed up the car for holidays, Dad always backed down the lane. And the lane made a great trolley track - mostly ball-bearing trollies. You could drive right on down and turn right and down to Como Street, although the last part was steep and now looks overgrown. I last did that in the 1970s in my Fiat 850.It's cool to see it shown on your blog.

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