Cardiff University Sub-Aqua Club

A lovely dive club outing – the sky was blue and the sun was shining – oh no sorry talking about Chepstow not the Red Sea – well, the sky was grey, there was no sun, it was raining, then hailing, then thundering, then the sides of the quarry started collapsing – yay British diving in December!!

A minibus full of foolish divers namely Alun, Ash, Em, G, Matt B, Matt D and Nick departed for Chepstow Quarry along with our dive manager, Bob - far too sensible to actually get in the water!

It’s called the National Diving and Activity Centre – sounds posh so although G said it was horrible and previously vowed never to go there again (quite rightly fined for stepping through their gates again!!) I was excited to discover this amazing centre.  Then we got there…parked up close to these death trap looking battered minibuses – then I discovered we actually had to get in them to get to the water!!

Down the scary hill for our first dive – which was rather enjoyable, not too cold and some big tubes, speed boats and trucks to have a gander at – on the second dive these could not be seen! After lunch, involving cups of warming tea and cookies out of the rain in a port cabin, we braved going back down the horrible hill in the minibus of doom to the water where rocks were falling in – the ‘kind’ safety officer ‘wisely’ told us not to jump in on the wall side of the pontoon!!  These falling rocks had caused havoc with the vis – like swimming in chocolate milkshake and that was after trying to do a brief in a hail storm!!

Bob took charge of the log sheets and the snazzy waterproof pop up clip board came into its own once again – for this job he needed to be on the pontoon but for our second dive all the life jackets were in use – so cunning thinking he donned an inflated BC and looked very special having seemingly forgotten his tank, regs and suit!!

A successful day all in all, checkout dive for Nick, assessments completed for me and even Ash eventually got an assessment done after joining the Swansea Uni crew on their mass training event with Aberystwyth Uni, who were very slow at getting in the water!!

All done by lunch time we packed up and headed home - here’s to the New Year and the sea!!

By Emily