Fence Houses

Rainton Meadows Nature Reserve and Visitor Centre is situated adjacent to Rainton Bridge Industrial Estate in Houghton-le-Spring and is Durham Wildlife Trust’s headquarters.

The Visitor Centre at Rainton Meadows offers a shop, café, informative displays, a classroom, conference room and a viewing station where visitors can spend time watching birds feeding in the winter months.There is also a Wildlife Garden with spring and summer meadows and examples of what can be done to attract wildlife to your own garden.

The Nature Reserve is a haven for wildlife and has a variety of habitats including grassland, scrub, mature woodland and ponds. Mute swan, skylark, short-eared owl, brown hare, lapwing and many types of wildfowl are regularly seen at the site.

Within Rainton Meadows is a 4 hectare Site of Specific Scientific Interest known as Joe’s Pond. A haven for bird watching, the hawthorn and willow scrub surrounding the Pond provides shelter for over 140 species of birds. Fox and roe deer can also be seen around the Pond.A series of events are hosted here throughout the year, details of which can be found on our events page, or in the visitor centres.

Rainton Meadows and Joe’s Pond can be found by following the brown signs from the A690 between Durham and Sunderland. By bus, the services 222 and 220 regularly leave Park Lane in Sunderland, or the bus station in Durham and set down at the nearby Mill Inn. There’s a short walk under the A690 continuing until you reach the last roundabout of the industrial estate. The entrance to the Reserve is called Mallard Way.

Contact us on 0191 584 3112 for more details

With thanks to  Mervtheswerve’s Photos from Fliker.

Lambton Lake

The nearest thing i had to a fishing rod before i built this pond was a piece of string which i used to throw over the bridge at chester river when i used to play the nick from school, From day one i’ve sought the advice from contractors and local trout fisherman plus the enviromental agency about any descisions made in the developement of the pond,being a small still water of 1 acre in size plus a small 30 x30 square metre pond for children who just want to do a bit float fishing, the only way i can compete against the larger ponds is to make lambton trout lake one of the best small stillwaters in the northeast by supplying good quality fishing and facilities to help the angler have a good stress free stay, in a nice quite secluded surroundings i will welcome any sensible suggestions which will help me in my descisions to improve the developement .The idea to build the pond came about when the waterboard decided to renew and reroute a sewermain which ran through my land and during the renewal i noticed the area where the pond is situated now was a claybed ideal for the devlopment which is in progress now and if the whether holds out, will be finished sooner than later most of the work to do is landscaping ,facileties at the moment includes a free cup of tea coffee oxo .use of the lodge with heating,microwave,vending machine hot cold water ,sandwiches made to order ,toilets on site, ample car parking covered by cctv24/7

Flits with her first fish

This one was just one caught last week.

Goldie caught by Dave Cook

Returned safely

http://www.lambtonlake.co.uk/