Ryton Pools

A walk around Ryton Pools, with the intention of visiting the wood now that the ground is dry.

The park occupies an area of about 100 acres and contains four pools, the largest of which covers approximately 10 acres. The park used to be a set of fields until 1965 when it was used as a landfill site. Waste was dumped here for 27 years until 1992 when work started on developing part of the site into a country park. The park officially opened in 1996 with over 2,500 trees and shrubs being planted.

We only managed to walk around a small section of the park and the reason as to why will become obvious later on in the post.

Soon after we started we came upon a scrape, or ephemeral pool, an area of shallow wetland that seasonally dries each year. It's an extremely important habitat for many aquatic invertebrates, as the regular dry spells provide a fish-free haven where these species can thrive. The permanently wet soil allows a range of water's edge plants to flourish throughout the scrape, benefitting even more invertebrate species. Scrapes are also key places of refuge for larger wetland animals travelling over land between permanent water bodies.

We soon arrived at one of the large pools - so calm,  just idyllic

the path circles the pool

and the blossom is out

and as you walk, you get different views of the pool

four Canadian geese resting on the shore

we walked in splendid isolation. Weekends are a different matter, it gets very busy here

We left the park to enter Ryton Wood which is 230 acres of oak woodland.

It's beautiful here, magical

soon we were walking with the second pool on our right

the first bluebells on the ground. Soon, the whole floor of the wood will turn blue and we will be back for that

I remember from other years - first these white flowers, and then, the bluebells

it's a big pool so we walked alongside it for quite a while

Sometimes the path is quite clear and sometimes it's not

We decided to try a different route to the ones we usually take

After about an hour we realised that we were hopelessly lost. We started walking around in circles, realising that we had done this bit before, and this one and so on... We finally came upon another couple who were also lost, same as us. We decided to stick together. At this point I stopped taking photographs.

Finally, after an hour and a half of being lost in the wood, we finally got to the exit. Rather than finishing the walk around Ryton Pools we decided to take the quickest route and go home. We've been walking around these woods for years, and this is the first time we got lost. Oh well!