(Another) Rheola Lakes, Glynneath, South Wales

[lloydwatkin]

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Diving Rheola Lakes, Glynneath
Aug 2nd, 2008 by Steven Lloyd Watkin Edit |

Hearing about a new dive site through YD, it being cheaper (£5) and closer (well for Simon) than the NDAC we decided to head down to check it out. The site is north of Neath on the A465 and is an easy drive from the M4. The site is run by Steve of Quest Marine (site details on link).

There are two lakes at the site, one for powerboating and one for quieter activities (such as diving!). Parking is right up against the water and for the entire day we were the only two divers there . The smaller lake isn’t huge but an ok size for a smaller number of divers. There’s toilets at the site but not much else, although there’s a burger van a short drive back to the entrance to the site and a place you can buy junk food just around the corner.

The lakes were created as they were dug out for rock to build the heads of the valleys road and have naturally filled up over time, due to that there’s no fish life although plenty of plants. Adding some fish would be quite nice and would draw in some additional money from fishermen, although there were some kids fishing the bigger lake so I guess that there’s probably some in there.

The water was very clear with a good 5-6m visibility, although if you knocked the bottom lots of suspended matter was sent upwards and took a while to settle. The suspended matter was much preferrable to the black dust knocked up if you find a patch without plants. I did this to test what it was like but forgot to take some video to demonstrate

We were told that the max depth was 12m with the lake sloping down in 2m steps but we reached a max of 10.8metres. After about 20 minutes (+ 1 golf ball) we both got a bit bored of the site but pushed the dive to 40 minutes. The second dive we went in with a plan and did several run times with stops at 9m, 6m, and 3m both up and down.

In summary, a good cheap site at £5, not much depth but good for practice. I wouldn’t go for a pleasure dive, there needs to be a purpose, maybe if the site develops a few objects would go in but I don’t know what the owners plans are there!