The day after I visited Vobster it is again bright and crisp, but feels warmer as the northerly wind has dropped. I set off across the old Severn bridge to Chepstow, then a few miles north on the A48 to Tidenham. I spot Dayhouse quarry from the road, a new partially dug entrance in the embankment.
Wrongly reasoning that the real entrance must be through the village, I follow a few miles of winding lanes before realising my mistake and backtracking to the A48 and finding it just 50 yards back from where the new entrance is being cut. I come perilously close to wiping out a nice shiny Saab in the process.
I find Neil Brock, Diving Consultant and Diving Safety Manager, near the bottom of the road. The construction crew are preparing a crash barrier to separate a turning space from a drop to the water.
Neil explains that they had drawn advice from a number of sources, and the ambulance service had requested a turning space at the waterside. In any case, it will also make life easier for the minibus and trailer that will be transporting divers and kit from the car park.
With no beach or quayside for divers to use, a long pontoon of marina floats stretches back along the waterside. Out on the floats one of the crew is putting the final touches to the scaffold frame for a training platform.
Neil explains that this is the shallow end of the quarry, with the flooded road sloping away, round the end and back along the other side to 25 metres. Shallow platforms for basic training will be spaced along the road at the appropriate depths.
Just past the end of the pontoon there is a lip, then a shelving pit to 80 metres with the roadway winding down it. Past the pit the bottom rises from 30 metres to 20 metres below the car park, but that area isn't planned for immediate use.
With such depth readily available they are planning support for advanced and technical training, though that won't preclude entry level training. From a safety point of view, only divers suitably equipped and trained will be allowed onto the end of the pontoon that stretches out to the deep water.
The prospect of deep training is also one of the reasons behind having a recompression chamber on site, but it is also a safety requirement for a marine trials business and associated commercial diving operations.
Again with technical divers in mind, the dive centre will have helium, helium analysers and booster pumps. A gas mixers paradise - top up fills for trimix.
The quarry was only closed down in 1998. The pumps were turned off and it slowly flooded until the water stabilised at its current level.
As we kit up for a dive Neil explains that there will be no metal structures in the water other than the training platforms. No cars, busses, aircraft or even a Wessex helicopter. Whilst such attractions are nice, as they age they could present sharp rusty edges, hence they have decided not to put any metal in. Even the scaffold poles for the training platforms are capped to avoid sharp ends.
They want to offer something different, and one plan for the shallow end is a jungle gym of wide bore plastic pipe. Wide enough to swim through, with exit holes cut in the roof and sides. Plastic because it won't rot and is slightly buoyant so they can moor it above the bottom to prevent silting. They can also easily re-arrange it. I admit to having thought of doing that with concrete pipe, but never with plastic.
We enter the water from the roadway, diving down and below the marina floats. Visibility is a good 15 metres and the sun sparkles from above. A shadow from the pontoon looks almost like a black column stretching to the just visible bottom.
The side of the quarry is sheer, overhanging in places and a just off-vertical slope in others. I deliberately test the silt with a finger. It is a heavy clay and settles quickly. Reaching the deep pit we drop just over the edge to a little short of 30 metres and cross the quarry. Neil points out where the only car wreck used to be - it had been removed as part of the no scrap metal policy.
We cross back on the inside of the lip, through a forest of small trees and across the bottom. Last week 1000 perch had been released into the water, though I don't see any. Before the dive centre opens there will be another 1000 perch, some pike, some trout and a flock of ducks. Nesting in the trees above the quarry is a pair of peregrine falcons.