In January 2005 my Ashford Dive Club dive buddies, Chris Powell and Richard Everett and I dived Gildenburgh Water in Cambridgeshire. This twenty-three metre deep lake near Whittlesey, east of Peterborough, has been formed as a result of years of brickwork excavation and is considered to be one of the best lake dives in the country.

We began our first dive from one of four jetties, each of which has one or more training platforms below. I foolishly failed to ensure that my dry suit zip was done up and so as I entered the water a trickle of cold water entered my dry suit. The water temperature was a refreshing 6 degrees Celsius! Richard helped me zip up my dry suit and I continued the dive. There was only a small amount of water inside my dry suit but unfortunately as the dive progressed it gradually make its way around the inside of my dry suit, soaking my clothing.

The lake has many underwater attractions: a double-decker bus, car, boat, barge, coach, truck, double-decker bus, Shorts skyvan and a jet and we inspected many of these on our first dive. By the end of the dive I was feeling rather cold not to say damp and was relived to change into my "day clothes" which I wore under my dry suit for the second dive. We concentrated our interest on this dive on the south-east corner of the lake. A large pike lurked behind a dead branch in a "forest" of eerie-looking branches and trunks left behind when the pit was flooded. A shoal of perch played inside the double-decker bus and as we returned to a jetty to conclude the dive, a solitary perch posed for a photograph.