Tees Barage

The Tees Barrage vicinity has many facets. It serves as a flood defence, debris remover, a road and foot bridge, a lock and also a fish pass. It's a white-water rafting and high ropes centre, with a nature reserve and maze nearby. You can easily spend a day in the Tees Barrage area near Stockton-on-Tees.

Most of our family were performing high acrobatics on the air trail. The rest sauntered around here and swung by the nearby Infinity Bridge.

In 1974, Bill Pearson from Stockton noticed that there were so few fish and even the salmon he saw were dead. He put the idea out there to build a barrier to clear the river of pollution. It was 21 years later when the barrage was built to stop flooding. The upstream side (west) is kept at an average tide height.

The painted ironwork makes the bridge look Victorian/Edwardian and was completed in 4 years in 1995. The designer was Sir Ove Arup, known for the Kingsgate Bridge in Durham, where there is information about him and his chopsticks.

Here are some technical details courtesy of Wikipedia:

“The concrete base of the barrage is 70 m wide, 32 m long, and 5 m thick; it is supported by five concrete piers. In between the piers are four 8 m tall, 50 tonne fish belly plates to control the flow of water, operated by 21 tonne hydraulic rams. The 600 ton road bridge is of a tubular steel arched viaduct design specified at 45 units of HB motorway loading.The bridge has eight welded tubular steel arches each 17.5 m wide with a 5 m rise but only the four central arches actually cross the waters of the river Tees. The arches are sprayed with green chlorinated rubber paint and are sealed against corrosion. Some 16,500 cubic metres of reinforced concrete and 650 tons of structural steel went into the building of the barrage.”

If, like me, you can't see how the barrage works, it is worth looking at videos and learn about the fish belly plates - what a name! They weigh 50 tonnes, which is approximately how much an adult Blue Whale weighs. The huge hydraulic rams look like cannons. They lift the plates out of the water and you can see the arc marks on the wall.

There are 60 miles of the Tees and so debris booms are in place to stop branches from blocking the barrage. In 2005 there had been plans mooted to use the debris as an energy source.

There was testing of a prototype marine current turbine in 2007.

There is a navigational channel for small boats and has a lock.

Two fish passes have been created, but there are problems, as the fish (Salmon, Trout, and Eels) can be fickle and use other routes, like the lock or one of the gates. Seals predate the fish and sometimes the barrage makes the hunt easier. Those in the know tried an Acoustic Deterrent Device (ADD) in 2017 and found the seals liked the high-frequency sounds and spent twice as long at the Barrage when the ADD was switched on. Unfortunately, I couldn't see them. If any Fabulous Northerners have a photo I could post, especially with the salmon leaping, it would be much appreciated

On the bridge, there is the Tower of Light, which looks like an arty installation in my opinion. I understand the 95 foot tower is an aerial mast and used for navigational aid. There are globe lights that look like buoys with reflective curved plates, supported by guy ropes.

From the bridge you can just make out the Archimedes screws which drive the water back and create a bit of energy to power the canoe slalom, which I guess was in part the river diversion.

There are toilets at the high ropes (check their opening times) and Cooks Café at the White Water Centre has a range of sustenance and ice cream!