Fairy Dell is a small woodland walk with a small lake at its centre. It's popular with school groups, who look for tiny fish in the beck or identify different birds around the lake. Mallards and coots are common, and will normally come swimming over if they suspect you have food. Remember, need feed bread to ducks. Apart from it being practically nutritionally void, the yeast encourages water pollution. Apparently ducks love lettuce, oats, barley sweetcorn, and peas -- it's much healthier for water fowl to get your leftover veggies. Moor hens can be spied occasionally, and there have been sightings of a heron. I've seen it once: it was so still I didn't even see it until I was about twelve feet away, and even as I got closer I began to doubt whether it was real. After a few seconds, it spread its wings and took off, so at least I knew I hadn't mistaken a carving for a real bird!
There is carved wood in Fairy Dell, but primarily benches, which look very cool. The bench in the picture to the left looks across the path and towards the beck, whereas the picture to the right shows one of the benches that are elevated on top of a small hill. It offers a great view of the lake and towards the woods.
There are cute signs dotted around the Dell to help you identify trees, plants, and other creatures you might see on your journey, as well as eerie metal silhouettes: the witch on her broomstick is half-hidden by the lake, just a few metres from a wooden hide. Secret yourself behind the hide and see if the heron makes an appearance. Past the lake there's a more shaded path that continues to follow the beck. Try and keep your balance to walk across the snake log bridge, or forego the bridges. to walk in the shallow water
Fairy Dell also extends upwards out of the woodland to a park of primarily open green spaces with some clusters of trees. It's a great place for dog walkers, and you'll probably see a few old dogs pottering about, an excited dog racing after a ball, and a couple of pooches chasing each other. Like other parks in Middlesbrough -- I don't know if it's a nationwide initiative -- there is exercise equipment dotted around the park for people to use. These ones carry warnings that they shouldn't be used by anyone under thirteen years old, but there is a wooden climbing frame for children to clamber over. There is also a "Medieval Trod", the ancient remains of a path from the middle ages (more information in the link).
As I wrote in a previous post, it's easy to extend the Coulby Newham Farm Circular Walk to include Fairy Dell, either by detouring through Tollesby Bridge cul-de-sac or turning from the Farm Circular as if going towards the subway and passing through an open fence. Then it's a simple matter of following a rather steep path (which should be avoided during/after heavy rain, as it can easily become a mudslide) before coming out onto a path: left is an even steeper incline towards Marton (and Stewart's Park) or right over one of two bridges and left into Fairy Dell (or right up another steep incline to take you back into Tollesby Bridge).
Fairy Dell is easily accessible via Stagecoach 11 bus, but the park itself has no official parking. You could either park in one of the nearby residential streets -- such as Tollesby Bridge or Oak Hill -- or instead park for free at the Parkway Shopping Centre and walk over from there, which should only take five minutes.
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