Vobster Quay is a Dump

Don't get me wrong - Vobster Quay Inland Dive Centre is a well-equipped dive location.

But there's no getting away from the fact it's a dump. Not that it's very different from other dive centres I've been to or heard about. They're all dumps.

It's curious how an old car, disused aeroplane or a boat that's past it's sell-by date suddenly become more interesting when it's sunk in an equally redundant quarry. Every weekend a fair proportion of the UK's diving community head for one of these holes in the ground, spending their precious recreation time swimming around flooded junk yards.

Today was my first dive in Vobster. During my hour underwater (two 30 minute dives) I encountered several sunken boats, a sliced-up aeroplane, the bridge section from a ship and a garden gnome with a fishing rod, complete with fish. According to their website and map I missed out on various other features including submerged cars and an industrial tumble drier.

The only aquatic life I encountered were hordes of trainee divers, mainly clustered around the many underwater platforms.

I didn't take up diving to see everyday objects in a slightly unusual environment. A disused boat or car isn't any more interesting, to me, for having been sunk.

To be fair, the main function of inland dive centres is to provide an opportunity for diver training and practice. They tend to be old quarries, filled with water, and without the various pieces of discarded machinery they'd be featureless pools where divers would quickly become either bored or lost. Or both.

The apparently random assortment of random rubbish is in fact a collection of carefully placed landmarks, allowing divers to navigate their way around underwater while giving them something to look at. It's also a great way of re-using old stuff, although I don't know how environmentally friendly it is. I assume the stuff is cleaned of toxins, such as oil, before it's tossed in.

I'll probably have to go to Vobster at least one more time to complete my training, and if I keep diving I might dip into an inland site once in a while. But I'm much more interested in diving in places where there's lots of marine life to look at, or interesting underwater features to explore.

That said, our seas have also been used as dumps for hundreds, if not thousands of years!