Silt

I have often seen boats passing through the lock at Portishead Marina, but I never expected to see a digger and a dumper truck!

Today, at a very low tide, the bottom lock gates were opened and the digger was lowered by crane into the bottom of the lock to clear out some of the accumulated silt.  It was loaded into the dumper truck which then dumped it outside the lock to be cleared by the next high tide.  The silt was, apparently, almost up to waist deep in some places. They probably had about an hour and a half of working time before they had to be lifted out again as the tide came in.

The work will continue tomorrow.