Stoney Cove facts for kids
Stoney Cove is a big, flooded rock quarry in Leicestershire, England. It's a super popular spot for scuba diving and is located between the villages of Stoney Stanton and Sapcote.
Stoney Cove's Story
Stoney Cove started as a place where people dug for granite rock way back in the early 1800s. Imagine, they even built a train track in 1850 to help move the heavy granite! Water was always a problem for the quarry, but it turned out to be a good thing later. In 1958, they stopped digging for rock.
Just a few years later, in 1963, some of the first people to try scuba diving in the UK started using the flooded quarry. It was a great place for them to practice! For about 15 years, Stoney Cove was even used to train divers who would work on oil rigs in the North Sea. In 1978, a company called Stoney Cove Marine Trials Ltd was created to make it a full-time diving center for everyone.
Diving Fun at Stoney Cove
Today, Stoney Cove is used for lots of different kinds of diving. People come here to learn how to scuba dive, or just to enjoy fun dives. You can even find people doing open water swimming here!
On land, there are helpful places like a dive shop where you can buy gear, a diving school to learn new skills, and a place to fill up your air tanks. There's even a pub where you can grab a bite to eat after your dive.
Underwater, Stoney Cove is really exciting! It has different depths, going down to about 36 meters (that's about 118 feet!). The coolest part is all the amazing things you can explore underwater:
- Stanegarth: This is a big boat wreck, said to be the largest one underwater in the UK that's not in the sea!
- Aircraft parts: You can find the cockpit of a Viscount airplane and even a Wessex helicopter.
- Other cool stuff: There's a Nautilus submarine, a old-style galleon ship, a wooden boat, and even a bus!
- Hidden spots: Divers can swim through archways under where the pub is on land.
- Special structures: There's a deep hydrobox, submerged trees, a tower, and a 4-meter block house to explore.
