Tale of two dive computers
On the left, we have my Cochran Commander. It's over 20 years old and is a bit basic by today's standards, but it's never let me down in those 791 dives and it does two nitrox mixes so worked fine as my backup last week.
Norway 2018
I was on Valkyrie in Scapa back at the end of 2016 when they had started planning to do trips to Norway, so I booked myself on Valhalla for July 2018. The only direct flight to Bergen was with Norwegian. After I'd paid for 40kgs of luggage, it was just over £200 return booked a long time in advance. A group of us organised to meet to get a minibus taxi into town and to the quayside where the boats were tied up. Between all of us, it wasn't so bad. An individual taxi would cost at least £50.
Tulum, March 2018
Deciding it was time to go back to Mexico and do some cave diving, I picked Tulum as the place I was going to stay. It's nearer the best cenotes for diving and it's much smaller than Playa Del Carmen, which I've seen get bigger and bigger over the years. Next I had to decide who I was going to dive with. I picked Eric "Budgie" Burgess who I used to know when he ran the Aqua Hotel and dive centre out of Portland many years ago. So I contacted him and he said he could pick me up from the airport and arrange some accommodation for me
Grand Cayman, January 2018
The easiest way to get to Grand Cayman from the UK is with BA. The flight touched down in Nassau on both legs, though you don't get off the plane. There's a full change of crew and the cleaners come onboard, so the turn around is not that quick, but at least there are no baggage or immigration hassles.
February Dive in Madeira
BA had a sale on, and flights to Madeira were £85, so I booked hand luggage only planning to hire kit and do one or two dives on the Saturday of a long weekend. I'd booked with Divepoint Madeira to go boat diving. They're in the Pestana Hotel Madeira Carlton which is a bit of a walk from downtown Funchal. We sorted out the kit and some 5mm wetsuits. Then we had to descend into the harbour, which did have a good ladder and rails down the steps and then swim the short distance out to the boat.
Shore Diving Around Falmouth
A rainy February day with winds blowing F6-7 south westerly is not most people's idea of a good day to go diving. The direction is a problem for a lot of sites in the south, but not parts of Falmouth where the shoreline faces west. So we headed off to Gyllyngvase Beach. Onstreet parking was free and unsurprisingly there were plenty of spaces.
Diving Torredembarra in Spain
During a long weekend to Tarragona, in Spain, I decided I should try to get a dive in so I contacted Ody Sea in Torredembarra. It's only 10 minutes on the train from Tarragona and then a walk to the marina. They've got their own cafe if you want breakfast before the dive or lunch after. I hired all the equipment and then I went out on one of their two RIBs to a site called Chaparo.
Do I Need A Drysuit in the UK?
Most people in the UK dive in a drysuit. I did my AOW in an ill fitting wetsuit in Cornwall in May many years ago and can still remember the water pouring down the neck where it didn't fit very well. Since then my dives have all been mostly dry apart from when my zip started leaking badly.
Diving the Lulworth Cove tunnel
Someone on a boat last year was telling me about how he had dived a tunnel near Lulworth Cove and he had video to prove it. So after the first dive on the Aeolian Skye this weekend, we went to look for it as a second dive. We were on a boat, but you could probably do it from shore and we were dropped near the west corner at the entrance to Lulworth Cove. We descended then came to the foot of the cliff in about 5m. Swimming westwards, eventually we found ourselves in a gully with the cliff on the right, and a ridge of rock going up to about 2m on the left.
The Philippines
On New Year's Eve 2016, I made my second trip to the Philippines. I flew direct from London Heathrow to Manila and then transferred onto a flight to Cebu. It was relatively painless as the terminals were adjacent to one another, both flights being with Philippines airlines. The other terminals are the other side of the runway and getting there involves catching a taxi which has to drive all the way round the airport on congested roads.
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