It may still be six weeks before Oakwood Theme Park re-opens to the public, but staff are already hard at work preparing for the new season.

Earlier this week, ride engineers at the award-winning Pembrokeshire theme park embarked on the mammoth task of filling the lake and reservoir of Drenched - the UK's wettest ride.

Formerly known as Hydro, Drenched is the tallest water ride in Europe, contains an extraordinary 4.5 million litres of water and takes six weeks to fill up.

Oakwood Theme Park's Andy Hygate said: "Our ride engineer Peter Hughes-Jones is in charge of getting Drenched ready for the new season and we've provided him with his own bucket to speed things up a little!

"We worked out that we'd need close to half-a-million bucketfuls of water to finish the job! Fortunately we're not relying entirely on Peter's efforts - even so, it will take more than a month to fully fill up the lake," he added.

As well as refilling the lake, staff have installed four new water cannons on the newly named ride which will allow onlookers to give ride-goers an extra soaking.

Over the winter the entire park has undergone a programme of re-painting prior to reopening to the public on Saturday, April.

Opened in 2002, Drenched is the tallest, steepest and wettest water ride in Europe. After climbing more than 30 metres into the air, riders are faced with a near vertical 88 degree drop into 4.5 million litres of water.

Even spectators need to be on their guard to dodge the 45 foot splash wave on the wooden viewing bridge.