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Got a phone call from Matt at 7:20 just as I was leaving the house. He and Darrell were already at Churchill. I was going to miss out on breakfast at Telegraph Hill. The drive down was fine until I realised that I didn't have any cash.... a quick detour at Cullompton sorted it out as I wasn't keen on parking at St. Marychurch and walking to the town centre !
The cafe and shop on Babbacombe beach was shut so Matt kindly did the honours and drove the three tanks up the hill to the main Divers Down shop. The whole place was deserted apart from the odd couple of people walking along the shore to and from Oddicombe.
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We had a party of about 50 schoolies looking on from the top of the wall as we did our kitting up and safety-checks. We then headed for the sea
| The first dive was a surface swim out to the nearest orange buoy to the beach. The plan was to take a bearing to Oddicombe but not get there as it was a long tiring swim back or the walk up those stairs back to Babbacombe ! The terrain was sandy and apart from a few hermit crabs and a monster spider crab that Matt took delight in saying 'Hello' to, there wasn't a lot else to see. After 20 minutes of undersea 'desert' we surfaced and decided to surface swim back to shore so we could begin the next dive. |
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| After the 20-minute surface swim, which was very relaxing and peaceful, we descended about 30m from shore. Darrell took us on a bearing that would bring us back to Babbacombe beach. The rocks and gulleys between them were full of weird and wonderful plants and the occasional fish. (I don't know what they were but I will buy a book shortly). I didn't see any dogfish or pipefish - which I CAN recognise now but it was good buoyancy practice to use breath-power to float over the terrain ! Incidentally, Darrell's nav. was spot-on, we made a break to the shore for lunch ! |
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| The last dive of the day was different. After chatting with the fishermen on the end of the jetty, we got the okay to swim under their lines into the bay to the right of them (see picture above). The visibility was 3-4m here which was a lot better than the main part of the Babbacombe Bay. We set a bearing straight out to sea and were surprised that the bottom dropped to 8-9 metres almost immediately. There was not a lot to be seen at this depth so we turned back and had a quick surface to find our bearings (as there were fishermen on both sides of us!) Soon we were back in the 2m area with huge schools of silvery fish swimming past us in their thousands. This is definately worth a dive !! |
Dive 34. A bit sawtooth due to mask-leakage. Darrells hood is going for a trim |
All that could be done now was to get out of those wet things (for Matt anyway as Darrell and I were wearing drys (tee-hee). It is quite a neat thing to be able to take of the suit and just put your shoes on to go to the pub. ANyway, it had got a bit colder and Matt was feeling it a bit after removing his semi......
We trekked to the pub only to find it shut !! (Damn these off-season visits !). Anyway, after a quick logbook signing session, we were back up the M5 and home.
