The first thing you ask yourself when you arrive at the main building at Gildenburgh Water is ‘Where’s old MacDonald?’ All his goats, chickens, and sheep are there wandering unsupervised and eyeing up your BC as a potential meal! Still, with all these animals about you should get a fresh chicken in the basket at the bar!

In point of fact, facilities at Gildenburgh are first rate - making a visit there a day out for the diver’s family too. You could quite easily lose the kids on the 30 acres of surrounding land while you go diving, then meet up with them in the bar for lunch (after visiting the shop air station and changing rooms).

Located just outside Peterborough on the A1139, Gildenburgh is the BS-AC’s Eastern Region Diving Centre, boasting a catchment area for visiting divers from Sheffield to London, and from Northampton to Norfolk.

These divers don’t come here purely to train though. Gildenburgh Water is an exciting dive site in its own right. It has been evolving as a sanctuary for large fish, notably pike, and an interesting variety of plant life since 1945 when the old brickworks closed down, shutting off the pumps for the last time and allowing the pit to flood.

Unlike some other inland sites, the lake is not shared with other watersports users, being devoted solely to diving: hence the feasibility of the training platforms.

These platforms are a marvel in underwater scaffolding. Someone deserves a logbook endorsement for that lot! They sit at various depths: 5m for Sports Diver drills; 15m for Dive Leader; and 20m for Advanced Diver.

Apart from the platforms, several artificial reefs’ have been created underwater in Gildenburgh. Cars, barges and huge galvanised water tanks, have been deliberately sunk to provide points of Interest

If you ever want some bricks to build a garden wall, you could pick up enough on one dive here to build several (providing you don’t mind scraping the freshwater mussels off them!). The shoreline of the pit is littered with bricks, and this could be a contributing factor to the consistently good visibility usually found here.

At first I wondered whether these bricks had been deposited deliberately for this purpose but according to Pauline, who runs Gildenburgh with husband Ian, they were rejects dumped long ago by the London Brick Company, who sold them the pit in 1985. The coarse material found on the sloping bottom here does settle a lot faster than the fine silt usually found in most lakes, especially gravel pits. The upshot is that, even during peak use, the Vis remains good.

During the long summer days the surface water warms up sufficiently to make hood and gloves unnecessary but in the centre of the lake at any depth below lOm the temperature never exceeds 5C, which is painfully chilly.

Anyway, the most interesting dives are at depths of 1-2m - in the reeds and overhanging trees around the sides. The route along the right hand side (viewed with the dive centre behind you) is the best bet to see large fish Shoals of perch congregate in the tangled branches there and the occasional large mirror carp can, after close inspection, often be seen hiding motionless.

However, most divers who visit Gildenburgh come to see pike. Gildenburgh Water boasts so many good specimens of this fish that the diver is practically guaranteed to see a pike or two on most dives.

Pike are found in fresh water all over Europe and North America, and are considered a delicacy in some countries. They are also prized as a sporting catch by anglers. (It is amusing to note just how often you see anglers with empty keep nets fishing within e couple of metres of huge specimens.)

Pike may be able to avoid most anglers, but they will usually allow divers to approach and study them, beating a hasty retreat only at the last moment. They are nevertheless frustratingly difficult to capture on film. As an underwater photographer, I have spent much time trying to get the pike shot - you know, the one that is a definitive expression of the popular image. Unfortunately I have not, to my own satisfaction, so far succeeded.

Kevin Cullimore, probably the country’s top freshwater u/w photographer, had long urged me to try my luck at Gildenburgh Water. He recommends a 28mm lens to capture medium to large pike on film - and plenty of patience

One aspect of pike behaviour that does work in favour of the photographer is their energy conservation. They do not live up to their reputation as voracious eaters, preferring to save energy instead. The manner in which they catch their prey is predictable. They lurk in the sonar shadow of underwater terrain and ambush victims using their impressive turn of speed. Consequently, you should look along branches of sunken trees (of which there are many at Gildenburgh Water) when seeking them.

Photography and text by  Benny Sutton