From Cambridge to the National Diving Centre is about 185 miles and there are two routes you can take, either the south route of the M11, M25, M4 then across the Severn Bridge or the north route of the A14, M6, M42, M5 then A48. We opted for the north route thus missing the horrors of the M11 road works and M25 and also saving the cost of bridge toll across the Severn (7 quid apparently). The journey took us just two and a half hours and we arrived at the centre at 8:30.

In the car park area there is a shop, toilets, heated changing rooms, air fill station, snack bar for burgers etc and a recompression chamber, which is staffed at all times. The shop is currently fairly empty - presumably they are waiting to build up the business a bit before spending vast sums on kit - but it does have enough bits and pieces to get you going should you break or lose some vital bit of equipment. The air station is state of the art and boasts a very large air bank plus the ability to provide premixed Nitrox and Trimix. You don't even have to drain your tanks down for Nitrox or Trimix prior to filling as they can analyse the mix of O2 or HE in the tanks and pump them to the desired mix straight out of the system. This will save you the cost of wasting the expensive gases. They have both O2 and HE analysers and charge per litre only for the gas you receive.

The car park is situated above the quarry, which was closed down just 7 years ago, and to get to the water's edge is a fair hike - taking about 7 minutes to walk it. Luckily you don't have to walk as they have laid on transport for both divers and kit. When you are ready to dive you take your kit to the centre of the car park using a trolley (provided by NDC) and wait with it. Within 5 to 10 minutes a Land Rover with a large trailer and an Army truck (steady Cliff) arrive and you put all of your kit into the trailer then jump into the back of the truck. These then take you down the road to the edge of the lake, where you off-load the kit and go diving. When you are finished diving you wait for the truck and Land Rover and they take you back to the car park. This is a pretty good system but I think they are going to need more vehicles once it starts to get busy. Even with the fairly small numbers there by Stoney standards the truck was full most of the time and some people had to wait longer - not much fun in a zipped up drysuit on a sunny day - do it up at the bottom of the road, we did. You also have to be careful that some twit doesn't put his weight belt or cylinder on your reg or computer after you've got into the truck. Once you are unloaded at the bottom there is a short concrete road that leads you onto a floating pontoon. The pontoon is a couple of hundred metres long and allows you to walk to your required depth before getting in the water - no long surface swims - it also provides ample area to kit up and get in.

The image to the left shows the size of the lake - click it for a bigger image. The two buoys mark the 80 metre area - the two behind them mark 75 and 50 respectively. Everything this side of them i.e. most of the lake is deep. The pontoons are far left. See map below.

Our first dive was over the deep area and we planned to look around the edge at about 35 - 40 metres. At this depth the vis was pretty good - in the region of 10 metres - and we were able to look down into the pit that extended down below the range of our torches. The water is pretty cold at around 6.5 degrees and the lake doesn't appear to have much in the way of a thermocline so there is no nice warm bit to swim up into at the end of the dive. After 40 minutes we were both cold. The Quarry was originally to mine Limestone and the edges and the bottom are made of the stuff. It is fairly soft and appears to be a bit crumbly and the bottom is covered in about an inch of white powder. Once you kick it up the vis rapidly reduces and takes quite a while to clear.

Currently there are no man made attractions in the lake - it's just rocks - but there are plans for an underwater maze made from large sewer pipes and other items as funds allow. The Centre also offers a range of courses including Nitrox and Trimix.

In summary I think the National Diving Centre has something to offer all divers but will appeal more to the techies who want to do something a bit deeper than Stoney Cove. It is much better equipped and safer than Dorothea so will allow safer dives below 40 metres. It has good facilities for beginners but the dives will need to be done early to avoid the reduced vis that comes later in the day. Only time will tell how well it copes with lots of divers in the water but I for one will be going back from time to time to see how the development of the site progresses. Now where did I put that info on the trimix courses ........

The NDC web site is here http://www.nationaldivingcentre.com