Clevedon Marine Lake: Popular swimming spot to close for maintenance and cleaning

Clevedon Marine Lake will close for ten days for maintenance and cleaning later this month.

The closure from Sunday 11 March to Tuesday 21 March will allow for the mud, which has accumulated from overtopping tides, to be removed.

The works will prevent the silt building up and eventually making the lake very shallow and unsuitable for swimming.

It will also allow for volunteers to carry out a litter pick and recover any lost property at the bottom of the lake.

They will rescue any fish and eels before dredging the lake.

A statement from Clevedon Marine Lake on their social media page reads: "Every overtopping tide fills the lake with turbid water from the Severn Estuary.

"The suspended silt soon settles and deposits several millimetres of mud on the lake bed. If we do nothing about this the lake will eventually become very shallow, muddy and unsuitable for swimming, as indeed it was before it was renovated in 2015.

"The draining is timed carefully for the diminishing flow to meet the rising tide to prevent fish and eels leaving the lake becoming stranded.

"A digger will be working throughout the week to scoop up the mud and dump it over the wall, back into the estuary from where it came.

"We expect the lake to partially re-fill with the high tide at around 6pm on Monday 20 March and the morning tide on Tuesday 21st will finish the job."

Maintenance and cleaning is scheduled every March and October.