The centre of Adelaide is famous (kind of) for being fully surrounded by parks – with an unbroken green belt known as the ‘Park Lands’ enclosing the CBD and North Adelaide. Although it is technically one continuous park, it is divided into 29 smaller sections/parks – each with a name and a number.

The Park Lands Trail is a 19.5km walking/cycling trail that does a full circuit of these Park Lands, and as we were staying only a 5 minute walk away from the southern edge we picked a sunny Saturday and walked the entire trail in one go.

The first choice to make was whether to walk clockwise or anti-clockwise from our starting point (Blue Gum Park – park 20). This choice became obvious when we tried to work out where we could stop for coffee and lunch without going too far away from the trail. The choices were very limited and so we chose to walk anti-clockwise in order that we could have coffee at ‘Exchange Coffee’ near the Eastern Park Lands, and lunch at ‘Hello Harry’ near the Northern Park Lands.

The walk went according to plan and passed through quite a variety of different areas – including tree-lined boulevards, playing fields, a lake, botanic gardens, a fruit bat colony, the River Torrens, horse paddocks, a cemetery, some ornamental gardens, and a Russian Orthodox Church. There was even an afternoon stop for a cold drink at Cafe Bonython. One small section of the walk was closed due to some building work and there was a short detour around it.

Including the detours for coffee and lunch and going to and from our place in Parkside, the total walking distance was around 22km. We left the house at 9.45am and were back at 4.45pm.