Throckley put-in (Newcastle upon Tyne)

The Tyne here is a working tideway, not a quiet backwater. High water reaches about two miles further upstream to Wylam Bridge; the limit used to sit lower down, marked by a shallow rapid called Hedwin Streams and a stone obelisk carved with Newcastle's three-castles arms, until nineteenth-century dredging of the river removed the rapid and pushed the tide up to Wylam. The tidal range here reaches up to five metres between the highest and lowest tides.

Newburn Bridge, a 144.8-metre steel lattice-girder bridge opened in 1893 and freed from its tolls in 1947, crosses the river a short distance downstream. The reach is shared: rowing clubs, water-skiers and powered craft all use Newburn Slipway, with a dedicated water-ski zone immediately upstream active for up to three hours either side of high tide. Both banks have long stretches with no way out of the water, mud that will not bear a person's weight in places and high vertical walls in others, and the channel narrows with overhanging trees and rocks and further shallows toward Wylam.

The park itself is reclaimed industrial land, formerly the site of Isabella Colliery. Directly across the water, on the Gateshead bank, Ryton Willows nature reserve holds a Site of Special Scientific Interest around its ponds and forms part of the registered battlefield of the Battle of Newburn Ford, fought in 1640 between a Covenanter Scottish army and English forces defending the river crossing, a fight the Scots won two days before occupying Newcastle.