360 miles there, 360 miles back – and for what?  Well, I’ll tell you!

For those of you that haven’t been, it doesn’t get much better than this anywhere around UK waters….

I’m sure you’re not bothered about the journey to get there, so I’ll get straight to the point – the diving!

The next day brought us more sunshine, flat calm and hot again – is this really the UK or have we been magically transported to the tropics?  Well it’s definitely the UK because we’re off to Bishops Rock Lighthouse to dive the wreck of the Eagle.  The Eagle went down in 1707 and is a protected site so we were very lucky and privileged to dive it.  As you can imagine there isn’t much left after over 300 years on the seabed, except for what she was carrying!  Did I mention cannon?  You reach the bottom of a long gully at about 35m and see what look like long boulders, but if you pop up a couple of metres you can see that these boulders are in fact cannon – big cannon!  There are over 60 cannon scattered around the site and nearly all have been tagged and (so no trying to hide one away in your BCD!).  A truly spectacular dive and in more ways than one!  The lovely Lyn decided she would have a race with Phil to see who could get to the surface first and yes, she won, her prize being a trip in a helicopter to Plymouth (some people will do anything for a two-centre holiday!).  But joking apart, Lyn was fine after her mishap and being very positive as always (an inspiration to us all) will be back in the water with us very soon.

Tuesday, yes more good weather (I promise I won’t mention the glorious weather again!) and Colin’s favourite dive in the Scillies – Gilstone Rock.  This is a wall dive that disappears down to in excess of 60m, you obviously don’t need to go that far (too deep, too dark, too cold!) so a max of 30m then weave your way back up is the best option.  What makes this dive another exceptional one is the colours, it really is a marine patchwork quilt.  For those of you who have dived in the Red Sea you’re probably thinking “colours? he must be on drugs”, well all you need is a torch and the colours of the Anemones and other “stuff” are truly amazing.  Next we went seal hunting (no clubs of course!).  After a quick look at bits of the wreck of the Zelda that went down in 1874 after hitting Maiden Bower Rock (5miles west of Bryher) head-on, we went back to the shallows (about 8m) to see if any seals wanted to play.  Unfortunately we only saw the odd one, but hey, that’s better than none.

Ok, did I mention the weather?  Sorry, same again!  So off we go to dive the Isabo, quite a deep dive if you want to see anything and you’ve got a good torch!  Next we went back to the Zelda for some more Seal hunting, this time with more success.  They were a bit timid, but very inquisitive and kept us entertained for over an hour!  It’s more of a squat than a dive, hiding in the kelp (Colin’s favourite place) and waiting for them to come and say hello.  There was one very big old seal that just laid behind a large boulder and kept an eye on us the whole time, only popping up to the surface for air and then straight back down again.  Other younger seals kept coming closer to have a look at these odd creatures blowing bubbles and then disappearing into the kelp, superb.

Well, two fantastic old wrecks were our objectives for our penultimate days diving (weather changed – a bit choppy).  The first being the Firebrand, a purpose-built fire-ship that was launched at Limehouse on the River Thames in 1694 and wrecked off St Agnes in October 1707.  The wreckage consists of areas of exposed oak timber, several large anchors as well as eight iron guns.  The seabed is covered with concreted ironwork as well as a number of exposed small items.  A striking exception is a gun and anchor standing propped against each other at the northern end of the site.  The second dive was on HMS Colossus, a protect wreck requiring permission and all our names to be registered to allow us to dive the site.  This was a 1,703 ton British man-of-war that went down in 1798 and lies at only 11m and is something not to be missed.  In fact you couldn’t miss it, straight down the shot to the seabed and then follow another line that leads you to a concrete plaque marking the wreck site.  There are numbered markers with an arrow on pointing to the next numbered marker, so all you have to do is follow the markers and you’ll find everything there is to see and probably more than once!  There were cannon, timbers, parts of muskets and to make things even easier there was a waterproof map with pictures for you to take on the dive if you wanted to, knowing what you’re looking at always helps.

OK, last day and off we go for our final dives of what has been yet another really great week in the Scillies.  First was Deep Ledges, a nice wall dive that drops off to about 70m.  Similar to Gilstone Rock, a very colourful dive with lots to see.  And now sadly onto our last dive of the trip, the big crack at Men-a-Vaur.  This is a great dive through a huge crack in the Men-a-Vaur rocks, with the bottom at about 20m and shallowing up to less than 3m.  With huge boulders to navigate and a couple of tight squeezes under them (if you were brave and slim enough!) you then had a good bit of surge at the shallow end (about 2m) which spat you out like a cork!  After that it is a nice bimble around the left-hand side of the rock and back to the boat.  A really great dive to end the trip.

That’s all for the diving, well nearly.  I forgot to mention a couple of things (no names, you know who you are!) – like the weight belt that appeared in front of Bob and Sue (Hess) in a cloud of silt!  Its amazing the speed those things pick-up when dropped from the surface!  And finally, “the hat”, on our way back to the harbour each day, there it was in the distance on the quayside just like a beacon!

Truly a trip never to be forgotten, thank you all for your company and a big thank you all for your company and a big thanks to Colin for organising it (and of course being my buddy for the week).

See you on the next one,  Roland.