Leybourne Lakes
25 April 2026
Breakfast & company
Dive Details
Dive Plan
Dive Conditions
We began the day with a delicious and incredible value cooked breakfast at the Blue Gem Cafe. One hour later, fully fuelled up and our dive plan agreed with the warm sunshine breaking through the light clouds, our convoy headed for the lake. Once kitted up, with buddy checks completed, we swam on the surface to the buoy marking the three metre deep training platform. Looking down, we could clearly see all the way to the bottom and beyond. After exchanging hand signals, we began our descents.
Having checked all our kit was working correctly, nothing was leaking and we were good to go, we followed the compass south east and found three or four abandoned cars in various states of decay. We also spotted a tench among the branches of a fallen tree and a shy meandering pike while there. From the upside down car we headed north, back towards the deeper area of the lake and the roped attractions. On the way, we passed several small statues and unidentifiable things covered in several years of underwater growth.
A few minutes later, we approached the second training platform where we checked out the gnome garden, standing a couple that had taken a fall back up again. After this we headed westwards, looking in and around the shipwrecks for any sunken treasure / dropped dive gear but it wasn’t to be our lucky day in this regard. Upon reaching the furthest platform we followed the line to go see Aphrodite, Venus, Apollo and their crashed scooter. They were accompanied by a tench digging up its breakfast that almost swam into another pike while making its hasty escape. We managed to get quite close to the pike, just chilling in mid water, not bothered in the slightest by three of the most graceful underwater bubbling aliens he had ever encountered.
After this, we started making our way back, following the bank on the opposite side we had come from and seeing yet another big tench. En route we found two large cable drums and a mk2 Vauxhall Astra. With about ten minutes left to go and our planned sixty minutes bottom time approaching, we needed to start thinking about finishing the dive. A couple of minutes later, we located the platform where we started and ascended slowly up the gentle incline and into the shallow area towards our entry point. By now the clouds had completely cleared and the sun was shining, making for a pleasant journey home to enjoy the rest of the day and prepare for the next adventure.
