If you rate that on beachside, and sandy area play zones then yes we are onto a winner.

For all the pleasure a dog provides to a family, shouldn’t we look after the best interests of “mans best friend.”

I’ve mentioned before the fact that Nelson

has one of the highest tidal ranges [up to 4.6m]

in all of New Zealand, and that affords us an added benefit, that might at first, not be apparent.

Courtesy of the following three [3] factors

1] aforesaid wide tidal range

2] very gentle sloping beaches (as you can see in above photos)

3] plenty of estuarine areas

…..we are blessed not only with fabulous beach/channel side zones to walk the dogs, but because of the very wide tidal range we are also lucky to have a longer part of the day from which to decide to do so.

I mean it takes 6 hours for the tide to come in over hundreds and hundreds of metres of sand ………so its really just a few hours either side of the high tide that there isn’t as much available sand and combination of gentle sloping sandy beaches and estuaries.

The top photos demonstrate that tidal range at the front beach at Tahunanui, which incidentally is “no go” for dogs [see map details end of this article]

but the Back Beach [as in above photo] is just fine……

its a place to meet new friends……and as you can see, there is absolutely tons of space.

When Googles satellites were overhead taking photos of Tahunanui for Google Earth they did me a favour in explaining this to you, because it looks like they have overlapped different days imagery

in the one spot which is very convenient because you can load up Google Earth [currently at least] and actually measure the distance from high to low as an example. In saying hundreds and hundreds of metres, I wasn’t far off the mark.

This is a quick overview of just one of the spots where dogs can roam in Nelson.

Further Reading

Another page mentioning Dog Walking in Nelson.

Nelson City Council Dog Walking Guidelines.

Nelson City Council Dog owner responsibilities.