I spent this weekend (5th and 6th November) at Chepstow dive centre (http://www.ndac.co.uk/) practising a few dive skills as well as eating bacon sandwiches, munching on mars bars and finding time in a local pub to watch QPR lose valiantly to Man City whilst enjoying a few local Welsh beers.
The Chepstow dive centre is great. It's very relaxed, the same person driving the bus from the centre to the quarry is likely to also work in the shop, do the air fills and give you local information. Having visited some other dive centres in the UK, its great to find somewhere that is serious about diving but actually makes you feel welcome rather than just after fleecing a few quid out of your pocket.
The best way to describe the dive site at Chepstow is that it is like a children's play centre for adults. There are tubes to swim through, tanks, jeeps, planes and helicopters, it's great fun!
So what did I learn over the weekend, well:
1. Diving in November is cold
2. Diving in November is especially cold when you leave your damp wetsuit in your car overnight ready for the next morning. Getting back into a cold and damp wetsuit on Sunday morning was, well, cold
3. Don't stay in a B&B in the centre of Chepstow on a Saturday night if you want to be up at 7am for diving! I learned a few local football songs though - a few drunk Bristol City fans seem to live in Chepstow
I took a few pictures from the diving, and a few photos of the Stowe sub aqua club fellow divers below.
1 comment:
err, diving in UK in November? Where is the Drysuit? I get cold diving in 20'C water over here. Thankfully we also have sharks to chase us and make sure we stay warm from the exercise.
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