The Ladies' Pool at La Vallette will be open for public use from Friday 15 April, following an extensive programme of repair and improvement works. These works have been made for the benefit of the community to this popular site and have included:
• Restored the concrete poolside surfaces and steps.
• Repointed the granite capping to the pool wall (to reduce leakage).
• Repaired and underpinned the pool walls where required.
• Dredged the pool, digging out silt and sand from the (shallower) northern half of the pool.
• Rebuilt the granite masonry inner face of the diving platform.
• Built a granite retaining wall at the foot of a steep grassy bank at the northern corner of the site.
Extra care has been taken to make sure the surfaces and edges are 'barefoot-friendly'.
Additional issues were discovered in some of the walls and surfaces requiring further repair and resulting in longer than expected completion times.
Both the Ladies' and Children's Pools will be open for the whole Easter long-weekend. The Children's Pool will then close on Tuesday 19 April so that renovations can start there. These works are currently expected to complete by July, recognising that large projects on historic sites such as this do have the potential to throw up unexpected challenges along the way.
The Ladies' Pool will remain open except for Thursday 28 April when it will be closed for cleaning.
Agriculture Countryside & Land Management Services (ACLMS) look forward to this work being completed later this year so that the fully repaired pools can be entirely open and available for use by Islanders.