Lyme Regis
by Juliet Ansell

When you go diving in Lyme Regis in the middle of April you take your chances on what the weather is going to do. We did and had the best weather you could possibly imagine, the sun was shining, the sea dead flat calm, perfect diving conditions albeit around 9 degrees!
The 12 that went were, John Rapley (alias Mr Grumpy but more about that later), Mark East, Brian and Shirley Deluce, Pauline King, Bret Champion, Jon Wilson, Paul Sutton, Ted and Lorraine Sutton and me! We arrived almost all together so after booking into the B&B we headed off for dinner at the "Mad Hatters" restaurant. It was the first time we have been in there and it comes thoroughly recommended!
This is probably the most relaxed diving weekend I have ever been on as we didn't have to meet the boat until 11.15am so we able to have a leisurely breakfast on the terrace before strolling down the road for a spot of shopping (we had John with us, and he does like his shopping)! Then it was off the meet Dougie, our skipper on Blue Turtle. The set up is that you have to unload your car at the quayside then go a park it in the car park and walk back. Bit of a phaf but most people manage this without it causing too much of a problem - except John of course! There he was in the car park, waiting patiently whilst the little kiddies were being lifted up by their Mummy so they could feed their pennies into the parking machine, one by one, the smallest denomination possible..... then he lost it! He moaned and groaned and possibly swore, surely not, not in front of the little kiddies!!!!! Mummy said to the little kiddies "take no notice of the grumpy man" and continued to feed in the pennies whilst John looked on fuming!
The first dive was on the wreck of the St. Dunstan which was struck by a mine in 1917. I had been looking forward to this as I had dived this particular site 4 years ago to the day and the night before I was eagerly telling Pauline all about it before we went to sleep. I had kept my log book and had gone into great detail about who I was diving with, what we saw, what I had for breakfast, that kind of thing. The next morning, I had Mark and Bret telling me what I had done as well as they had overheard me, said I kept them awake..... me!!..
The second dive was on the wreck of the Baygitano, a steamer that was torpedoed in 1918. Paul came up with a very large crab which spent the night in the mask bucket..... By the time we had finished diving it was getting quite late and we were booked into the local curry house for 8.30, so it was full steam ahead to get back, washed and changed and out for the evening. Brian, Shirley and Pauline decided not to curry with us and had their meal in the pub which apparently was very nice. We spent a very enjoyable evening in the curry house where the food and banter was first class as usual.
The next day was another sunny day, again with breakfast on the terrace. At around 10.30 am Mark and I were walking down to the boat and passed Shirley walking in the opposite direction with a lost toddler that she had found wandering around on the Cobb. Eventually, after walking all the way round to the other side, the father turned up to claim the child, but it could only be Shirley that finds lost children just before we're due to go out on the boat!
The first dive of the day was on the wreck of HMS Landrail, this was a First WW gunship blown up by a mine. Again the diving conditions were excellent, I have never seen the sea so mirror flat that far out. Paul came up with an enormous lobster and we chilled out during the surface interval with soup and rolls. The second dive was on High Ground reef where there is an abundance of fish life and it's very pretty. All too soon the weekend came to an end, another perfect weekend at Lyme Regis. On our way back we stopped off at the Botany Inn for roast beef and real Yorkshire puddings, yum!

Kingston & Elmbridge Branch

SW England page
UK main page