Walk status: Off-lead
I'm marking this one as off-lead although its a little unclear. Council recently told me that all parks and reserves are off-lead to dogs now, including pathways within them. However as this walkway through this park is the Te Whau pathway which will eventually span 12kms, its hard to know if you could eventually walk this entire path off-lead. For now its safe to run your dog off-lead here, if you avoid letting them go on the sports fields.
A local to the area told me they exercised their dog here a lot, but its taken me years to finally make it down the road for a visit. Archibald Park, thanks to the Te Whau pathway is a great option for the winter months. It offers a large expanse of green space for your dog to stretch their legs, but you get the comfort of walking a concrete path the whole way around.
I parked up at the end of Archibald Road, although there are quite a few options to enter and exit the park. The path divides the open space area with the sports fields, so heading left keeps you away from the fields. We followed the path right to end where it indicates that you can head up to Cobham Crescent. There are markers along the track telling you which roads you'll be heading out to if you exit the park, helpful if you wanted to do some road walking and rejoin from another entrance.
We turned around at reaching the Cobham park of the track and headed back to complete the loop back to the parking lot. This is a word of warning if you have a dog like George who doesn't know when to quit, even if the other dog looks like he could rip his face off. Reaching the corner of the park past Ingleby Place where the houses don't have fences were two dogs. One was tethered to a chain, the other was free roaming and entered the park seeing George and I. Both dogs rushed towards him barking, and George went on the defensive. Thankfully the one that was roaming was friendly enough and didn't cause an issue, but had the other been untethered it might have been a different story. Others have commented on this dog, so it seems its often on its chain taking offence to any dogs that came near its patch. If you put your dog on a lead before reaching this corner, or if your dog is more docile and wont take notice then you'll be fine. Unfortunately I didn't notice either dog until it was too late and George was quicker to react than I was, nothing happened but I wished I had him on a lead at that point for my own peace of mind!
As we had already done a walk before reaching this park I didn't explore further so the loop we did was short but you could make this one as long or as short as you like by following the pathway that runs alongside the sports fields, or looping around the surrounding roads.
Location: 134 Archibald Road, Kelston.
Things to know:
There are sport fields so could get busy during game times
Lots of options for parking
Multiple entrances into the park from surrounding streets
Part of the Te Whau Pathway
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