Katy gave us a huge piece of pond liner left over from when she did her pond in the garden, and we had tried using it to enlarge the plastic pond that we got from Barry. Unfortunately, the result was a smaller pond than we expected and loads of leaks.
Emptying the pond was fun especially as there was a thick layer of sludge at the bottom. Not something that you want to smell on a warm spring day, but I am sure it will do wonders for the compost bin.
The ducks helped with digging the new hold and filling in the deeper bit left by the plastic liner. They also made sure that there were no young green tasty weed shoots and no worms or bugs. Which I am sure is a good thing in the base of a pond! They also loved mud wallowing where the water had gone from the pond.
Eventually, once their work was done, Nick could move in and create a dish with lovely sloping sides for easy access.......
We then lined with carpet. I know old carpet is now banned from allotment sites in many areas, but this is only for crop use not as a pond liner. (Just had to cover myself there in case we were reported).......
We then put the (washed) liner back in, and started to fill with water. This is the reason why we have such strong arms as the water source is from a trough and the only way of moving it is by watering can. We have two each and it didn't take as long as we expected to fill but we did have a well earned cup of tea at the end of it.
There is still quite a bit of tidying up to do but the ducks don't seem to mind too much that there is liner showing on the edges. At one point there were eight ducks in the pond and they soon discovered that they could leap about, flapping like mad, dive under the water, and do a running jump in from the bank. 
You may have spotted our new little yellow duck. He usually lives in the greenhouse but heard about the new pond and wanted to give it a try.
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