College Lake Nature Reserve Live Cam

Origins of the Landscape

College Lake occupies a fascinating niche in the Chiltern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Beneath its serene waters lies a legacy that began with ice age glaciation, leaving behind chalk and flint beds that would millennia later attract human industry. As you wander along the fringes of the lake, notice how the gently sloping banks reveal thin layers of sediment and chalk outcrops—silent witnesses to the valley’s Pleistocene past. This chalk valley floor provided not only raw material but also a unique hydrology: rainwater percolating through porous chalk springs forth as crystal-clear streams, feeding the lake and surrounding marshes.