Plymouth
Our annual bank holiday visit to Plymouth has, once again, been a great success.
A reduced number this year, only ten divers but a good mix and it was great to have old friends and new friends alike.
With people arriving from Cambridge, Manchester, Ilfracombe etc, we all arrived at differing times and arranged to meet in the Mountbatten centres bar or in the morning at breakfast. By the time we arrived the bar was closing (they close at 10!) so we had enough time for a pint and then headed off to bed.
An 8:15 meet meant that we had an early start to organise our kit get the boat loaded and make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything and then ropes away and off to our first dive site.
We left
Over the weekend we completed six dives in total with the visibility getting better as the days progressed. Diving off InDeep’s Panther, with Hugo and Robin doing an excellent job as our skippers, we had some excellent dives catching all the regular sea life, congers, rays, lobsters, sea bass, etc.
Saturday
- Hand Deeps – A classic and amazing pinnacle dive with walls of jewel anemones. Hand Deeps – Plymouth Sound Divers (plymouthdivers.org.uk)
- Eddystone Lighhouse – 12 miles out and stunning reef dives around the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. Eddystone – Plymouth Sound Divers (plymouthdivers.org.uk)
Sunday
- Persier – A wreck dive that has large schools of fish and amazing boilers. Persier (plymouthdivingcentre.co.uk)
- Fairy Land – Reef Review (prima-sub-aqua.co.uk)
Monday
- James Egan Layne – My personal favourite, a stunning wreck from WW2 that sunk carrying a lot of it’s cargo, never disappoints. James Eagan Layne 25m Wreck Dive (plymouthdivingcentre.co.uk)
- Glen Strathallen – This is a wreck that is now a boiler and plates after it was blown up but always delivers, a good way to finish. Glen Strathallen 16m Wreck (plymouthdivingcentre.co.uk)
With a return to shore at about 3pm we had the opportunity to relax and have a few walks around the area and also a couple of beers before the evening meals. A good meal at the Mountbatten Hotel (next door to the dive centre) and then a curry delivered to us from Lacky’s made for good communal evening entertainment, followed by a couple of beers t the centre.
Overall a couple of leaking suits didn’t put a damper on, what was, an excellent weekends diving.
In Deep Diving Centre, Plymouth, Devon, South West, England, UK
