Kingfisher Bridge put-in

The put-in sits within the Durham City Green Corridor, a stretch of roughly 10.5 kilometres of the River Wear's bank that Durham County Council and the National Trust have been developing together since 2022. The banks here are densely wooded, with oak, alder, hazel, crack willow and dog rose forming a canopy over the water. The river is non-tidal at this point, and this open reach ends downstream at a weir near Framwellgate Bridge.

Upstream, the reach is shared with rowing crews from the university and city clubs based along this stretch of bank. Adventure Access, a Paddle UK-affiliated operator, runs paddleboarding, canoeing and dragon boating trips from Durham Amateur Rowing Club immediately beside this put-in. Further round the peninsula loop, the water passes beneath Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle. The adjacent footbridge, built in 2007 by the council's Bridges Unit, takes its name from the kingfishers that frequent Old Durham Beck, which it crosses nearby.

The wider Wear catchment was heavily polluted by nineteenth and twentieth-century lead, zinc and cadmium mining in Weardale. Remediation by the Environment Agency, the Coal Authority and the Wear Rivers Trust has since restored a river that now supports returning otters, sea trout and salmon.