Reserves

Chew Valley Lake

Grid ref: 570 582 / Area: 83.5 hectares

Chew Valley Lake is a large reservoir about 7 miles south of Bristol and is well known for its birds, including internationally important numbers of wildfowl. 83.5 ha of the southern end of the site is managed in partnership with Bristol Water, who own the site, as a Trust reserve.

How to get there
We encourage visitors to use environmentally friendly forms of transport wherever possible. Most of our reserves are easily accessible by bicycle, with many close to the National Cycle Network. Click here to view a location map of the reserve on the National Cycle Network website.

Alternatively, take the B3114 south from Chew Stoke, bear left for West Harptree and head north-east on the A368. Good views across the reserve from causeway at Herriott's Bridge where there is car parking.

Access
Hides with permit only, obtainable from Bristol Water, Recreations Department, Woodford Lodge, on an annual or daily basis. Woodford Lodge is reached via the metalled track which heads towards the lake about half a mile south of Chew Stoke on the B3114.

Wildlife and conservation
Chew is the largest artificial lake in south-west England. Its surrounding reedbeds are also amongst the largest in the south-west. It is extremely important for migrating and wintering birds including wildfowl, waders, warblers and swallows. Large numbers of reed warblers breed in the reedbeds which are also a vital autumn feeding station for both them and sedge warblers prior to and during their migration.

 View across lake at low water levels

 Great crested grebe

Wintering and passage wildfowl include important numbers of shoveler, gadwall, teal and tufted duck. Numbers of fish-eating birds such as goosander, great crested grebe and cormorant are also high, with the grebe numbers often the highest in Britain in autumn. The winter gull roost is a spectacular sight with up to 50,000 or more, and it is mostly black-headed, common and Mediterranean gull that are regularly seen.

Breeding birds include great crested and little grebe, gadwall, tufted duck, shoveler and pochard. Hobbies often feed over the area in late summer. When the water level falls, the mud can attract waders such as dunlin, ringed plover and green sandpipers. The exposed mud is rapidly colonised by annual plants which can include rare species such as golden dock. The seeds of these plants later attract finches and, when the area is flooded, ducks such as teal.

The locally rare water avens grows by Herriott's Pool and summer sees large populations of dragonflies hunting over the water. These include high numbers of ruddy darters and, later in the summer, migrant hawkers. The reedbeds are also home to two scarce species of wainscot moth.

Chew Valley Lake often attracts rare birds, including osprey, the scarcer grebes, and an American wader or duck appears most years.

Further information
There is a visitor centre and caf¯ run by Bristol Water at the picnic site near the dam.