I've just looked up the middle peak quarry, it isn't the one i was thinking of, Middle Peak is what i know as the blue lagoon.
There are various entrance points, often see 4x4s rock crawlings around the upper parts. We used to go down to the water pools in groups of 20+ as youngsters for bbqs and the likes, one day whilst we were there, a young lad from Clay Cross was with his friends at another quarry over in Ashover, he was pulled under and subsequently died. The helicopters did a run around the local quarries and megaphoned down to tell us all to get out and leave immediately. Not been back since, the local lad was in a very small body of water yet it still took hours to find his body 😞
I believe that since then the access road to the water pools has been well cut off with palisade fencing covered in vandal paint. Not really worth the effort, there are fields around the top of the quarry accessible from the lanes and i'm sure these would provide a safe and beautiful landscape to paint or sketch out 🙂
"I got enough batteries to live down here indefinitely!"