The Cotswold Water Park

Cleveland Lakes was purchased by the CWP Society in 2003 with the aim of developing the site for nature conservation, public access and paddle sports (rowing, canoeing and dragon boat racing). The Society has developed a master plan showing how this will be achieved, of which a key part will be to alter the old restoration scheme to one that promotes both biodiversity and access. An application to do this has been submitted to Wiltshire County Council and has been approved.

Although the minerals company, Aggregate Industries, has agreed to work with the CWP society to deliver basic restoration of the site to the new plans there is no obligation for them to provide any specialist landscaping works or reed planting. Therefore, we needed to raise the funds to undertake the finer landscaping works and reed planting to complete the restoration works to our chosen design. Due to the size of the areas involved and the ambition of the project, the project has been broken down into a number of smaller phases, each one funded separately.

Phase 1 involves the creation of the new reed bed, wader scrapes and associated wetlands and improved lake margins, with improved access to the site, including new footpaths along the southern and eastern edges of the site and 2 new bird hides. Phase 1 commenced in Autumn 2007 and the reedbed will be complete in Spring 2008.

Time scales are tight but despite the weather, progress has been good! Much of the landscaping works for the new reedbed at the eastern end of the site is complete;  we will be planting 30,000 reed plugs in March. It may take a year or two for the reeds to establish for a “reedbed” to develop.

New Access

For the present the main access will be from the Thames Path at the North Eastern end of the site (SU 077 946) (close to the old hide location on lake 68a, past lake 72). Please do not access the site from any other point please respect the sites boundaries and the adjacent landowners. We are planning further access opportunities in the future as part of additional phases of restoration on the site.

The new footpath will run left down the Southern side of lake 68a to a viewpoint looking over lake 68b. The footpath will also run north, parallel to the Shire Ditch, along the eastern shoreline of lakes 68a and 74 to two bird hides. The first bird hide is the old hide, previously located on lake 68a; this has been relocated to a viewpoint that now overlooks lake 74.  The second hide will be a new installation, designed and constructed by artist Helen Shackleton and Lloyd Turner, inspired by reeds and reedbed. This new reedbed hide will be installed on the eastern shores of lake 68a and 74, built to overlook the reedbed and the heronry.

Wader scrapes

The new wader scrapes are under construction (partly viewable from Twitchers Gate) and some basic land forming has been carried out. As a result of extremely high water levels, works to complete the wader scrapes may not be complete for some time, but these areas will, in the meantime, comprise some great nesting areas for Lapwing and Little Ringed Plover!!!

For health and safety reason there is no public access to this area at present and for the foreseeable future.  New hides and access will be created during the second phase of restoration works (for which we will be fund raising). At present the scrapes  can be viewed only from twitchers gate. Please can we also stress that attempts to gain closer views of the scrapes will likely result in significant disturbance of waterbirds feeding, breeding or roosting on this area. Little Ringed Plover are a Schedule 1 breeding bird; it is an offence to disturb this species at or near the nest, or with dependent young, whether you can see it or not!

Pending weather conditions and water levels, we hope to complete footpath creation in phase 1 during April.  This site will be updated when further details are known or please check The Society website (www.waterpark.org) for more details and progress. 

Please use this link to see a plan of the proposed site

For more details, please contact Matthew Millett or Gareth Harris, Cotswold Water Park Society on 01285 861459.