See, the RIB has been overhauled over the winter, spending a lot of time in reputable RIB place getting a brand new engine and hydraulics and suchlike, followed by lots of careful running in of the engine along the Medway over the last couple of months, and of the couple of times we’ve been out in it, it’s been beautiful. Therefore it was a little bit of a shock when the RIB zipped on out of Dover Harbour Sunday morning to a nice little spot around eleven miles out and along the coast, and promptly exploded it’s hydraulics.
Fortunately the engine was straight, so six exceedingly PO’d divers were able to run the RIB back to Dover using the oars to steer. And six more divers including yours truly being exceeding PO’d at having such ideal dive day cancelled because of one nut out of place *sigh* It’s been fixed now. Apparently. But it was a waste of a Sunday.
Or, it would have been, except we went to Tesco’s for some chicken wings from the Deli and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s (comfort food) and came home with a new Acer laptop, something I’ve been burbling about for ages as my Vaio has a huge crack across the back of the screen and is slower than a Nissan Serena. (I think it might even be slower than Clarkson’s Merc – the one with all the concrete inside from when he decided to redesign it to look like his front lounge.)
Monday we went to Chris’ mum and dad for a wander around a local craft fair. Realised on the way up that this was in fact a bit of really, really bad planning on our part since Ann and Dave live near Heathrow, and we were due to go and see them on Tuesday too, but hadn’t thought that far ahead. Still, day was glorious and fair was lovely. Thought about investing in the broomsticks that were on sale for £1 for xmas presents. Then decided not to.
Tuesday, after working most of the day, Chris picked me up and we went to Ann and Dave’s, and from there took a coach into the centre of London. Do not, under any circumstances, question the logic of going to central London, from Ashford, via Heathrow. For a start, I wasn’t navigating. (Altho please note that my underwater navigation with both PADI and BSAC is in fact very good so long as I hold the compass the right way up.) And most importantly, this excursion was a treat for us, courtesy of Ann. Anyway, having arrived a little early, we went into the only pub on Oxford Street for a drink, before heading off to the theatre to see We Will Rock You.
Which. Was. Brilliant.
No one was pretending to be Freddie, but the songs were true to their original format, with just a few words changed to suit the post-Apocalyptic/cyber-media rebellion type storyline. The cast were all excellent, the story line wholly unoriginal, but presented in such a way that it didn’t matter, along with some very clever and funny dialogue. And most importantly all conducted at a volume loud enough that the audience could belt out the songs along with the cast without disturbing anyone else’s enjoyment. I think Freddie would have demanded more lavishness, but other than that, it was superb.
I got back home at 1am, Chris was home at 2am. Therefore, Wednesday passed by in a blur of strong coffee.
Thursday came and went, as did Friday, up until 5.30 when Chris picked me up and we hotfooted it down to Portsmouth for the weekend.
Pompey has changed in the fifteen plus years since I was last there. It’s all cleaned up and *brighter* with this huge sail type pointy lookout thing on the seafront known as Gunwhale Wharf which houses more restaurants and bars than you can shake a stick at. Our accommodation was one of the rooms above The Sally Port Inn, which was very quaint, built entirely around a spiral staircase and gave Chris many entertaining (for me) encounters with low hanging beams. The landlord was lovely and quite bemused by our dive considerations. We had to get up and be out before brekkie, so he made us a tray both evenings with more cereal, fruit and croissants than an army could eat, and let us hang our wet suits out in the laundry to dry. The boat we went out on was a very nice little hardboat with one of those idolised contraptions known as *a lift* on the back. Makes getting out of the water *so* easy! The skipper, Steve was slightly nutty as I think most dive skippers are, and had more bouncy energy than the Duracell bunny. (But not quite as much as Martin Farr, because that would be silly.) Left the pontoon as we realised that one of the guys had nipped back to his car and hadn’t got back on board. Waved goodbye, but Steve spoiled out laughter by going back and picking him up.
First dive was 30 metres down to the Kurlan (don’t ask me about the history, that’s Chris’ department!), which carried rifles and things. Chris started off attempting to swallow the entire Solent, but once he got bored with that, we went down. It was very dark and we didn’t find any rifles, but did find a stack of storage barrels with a conger eel that said hello.
Second dive was 20 metres thru 5 metres around the base of the Nab Tower; one of a set of towers being built to make a submarine barrier, except by the time the first one was built, the war had finished, so they plonked it off the Isle of Wight as a beacon(?) which a ship promptly ran into and now it looks like the Tower of Piza.
And it was fantastic diving, with great visibility with massive tom pot blennies (which mum would like; very curious and funny), a huge spider crap that I hadn’t noticed as I was having a deep and meaningful with a tom pot until Chris pointed it out to me; I looked up and the thing was a few inches from my nose, with a body the size of a small football and very long bony spider type legs all out and walking and waving at me. I admit it, it made me jump and I squealed like a big girl. Well, what do I look like?!
We also saw lobsters, edible crabs inside holes they’d grown too big to get out of any more amongst other things.
Saturday night, we walked to Gunwhale Wharf. It’s just a few minutes from the hotel we were told. We decided to go for a wander and left at 6.30 in order to be there for 7.30. We followed the Millenium Walk as instructed, admired the scenery and found a pub with large outdoor area opposite Gunwhale Wharf, just one moments walk from the look of it, and settled down for a drink as the sun started to set. Finished drink and decided to mooch over to the wharf. Discovered very large marina containing the Isle of Wight Ferry inconveniently placed between where we were and where we wanted to be. Followed Millenium walk as it looped around on itself almost back to our hotel. Took one detour on the erroneous assumption we could cut through, but where we thought the marina ended, there was in fact more marina. Back to Millenium Walk, and followed it no matter where it lead and after a few twisty turny bits, we arrived at Gunwhale Wharf a little after 7.30. We had dinner at an Indian with the other 9 in our group and it took as less than 15 minutes to get back to the hotel.
Sunday morning, four of the guys got lost trying to find the marina. Arrived in the nick of time. Went to visit the Highland Brigade at 23 metres, which carried beer bottles and the (ceramic?) tops of telegraph poles. Great viz, and lots of holes to poke around in.
Second dive was the Luis, a pretty much flattened wreck, right next to the Isle with lead shot from anti-personnel mines littering places, one conger eel hiding in a cylinder, and some stunning white and electric blue nudibrachs (slug type creatures, except very very pretty.)
After that, came home, braving traffic jams, roadworks and accidents all the way, and half way home it rained. But it’s official; Chris and I are *Really* ‘Ard. Cuz we were the only ones diving in wet suits, and except for the last dive, we didn’t feel the cold at all. Silly photo attached.
Monday night, training session at the pool and disovered that Diving actually is a Sport. Previously undiscovered muscles have spent all of today informing me of this. Ran over a rabbit on the way home last night. I've never knowingly run over anything before, and the silly thing ran right in front of me. *sniffle*.
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