A NUMBER of youths and even a few adults are risking their lives by breaking into a quarry at Snodland, near Rochester, to skate on a frozen lake. Wardens at the Holborough Quarry have put up fences and warning signs all over the site, only for people to break through them in an attempt to get onto the lake's icy surface.

Now they are dreading someone will fall through a patch of thin ice into the 30ft-deep water, which could freeze a person to death within minutes. The Ladds Lane quarry, owned by Trenport, is not manned 24-hours a day and warden John Dixon fears an accident may happen when he is not there to help.

He said: "Very often we have groups of teenagers, around 14 or 15 years old, messing around on the site and I am worried that they will try to skate on the ice.

"We keep fixing the fences, but every time they break through. Once I put up warning signs around the lake and within 24 hours they had all gone."

He added: "I try to break the ice up so there is no way anyone could skate on it, but it freezes again straight away in this weather."

Mr Dixon has found it is not only children and teenagers who are unaware of the dangers at the scenic quarry. He said: "Sometimes there are parents there as well because they don't realise how dangerous the water can be.

"The quarry is 10m deep in the middle, which is about 30 feet. But when it is this cold you would only have to fall into water one metre deep to be frozen straight away."