Location: Chepstow

3rd of March 2007 to 3rd of March 2007

Spring was sprung, the grass wuz grun, and dem birdies wuz definatley a singun’. Early March, and a glorious spring morning welcomed a band of hardy divers as they arrived on the English/Welsh boarder. The National Diving & Activity Center just outside Chepstow was to be today’s venue of choice.

Keith Abbot was Marshal for the day, being as he was the only person with any knowledge of the site. Under his watchful eye were Dave King, John Fowler and myself.

Arriving on site we entered the car park the first thing I noticed was the lack of water, later investigation found the wet stuff some 80-100 feet below the car park, and it did look most inviting.

The site has a large dive shop, toilets, a gas room that will fill cylinders with what appeared to be every gas known to man and various mixes thereof, from a control panel NASA would be proud of. A good burger trailer that even did curry fills all hunger requirements!

Divers and kit are transported to the waters edge by mini bus, due to the distance between the car park and diving pontoons.

We all kitted up and loaded our gear into the on site vehicular transport device, it used to be a Ford Transit, but now it’s just a bumpy, smelly old shell that prevents a long walk.

Once on the pontoons Dave and I readied ourselves for the first dive. I was intending to break the 20m mark for the first time on this dive. An easy thing to achieve at this quarry due to the fact that depth ranges from 6m to I believe, the center of the earth or there abouts.

Once ready to go, Dave was the first to take the plunge in to the opaque green water. However, within a matter of 30 seconds he was back on the pontoon with split wrist seals and a very wet arm. Game over for Dave unfortunately.

In a flash Keith offered to dive with me, what a guy! Leaving Dave as surface cover with John.

In we went, and after a short surface swim we arrived at a small boat moored in the center of the quarry. Beneath us was a drop to an Ex Royal Navy Devonshire aircraft.

OK signals exchanged, thumbs down and off we went. Dropping below the surface we found the shot line and started our trip to the bottom. 5m, 10m, 15m, and it started to get a bit darker. At this point I started to wonder if there is a bottom down there. Keith is in front of me. More OK signals exchanged and still down we went. At about 19m I looked down and could just make out the top of the plane coming into view, it still looked a long way off to me! Still no point in worrying now, slowing down was now the order of the day so as not to land on the bottom and kick up a cloud of silt. Brakes applied with a squirt of air in my BC. Then there it was in all its sunken aeroplane-ness. Check the computer and “Result!” 25m had been reached. I think I achieved my plan for the day.

Once we were down we started to look round the plane. Keith had a delusional moment and tried to pilot the thing by dropping into the roofless cockpit! We then headed off the plane and found a large metal box, which the site guide calls an explosives cabinate, with, wait for it, a cheese grater attached! Go figure, who wants grated cheese at 27m?

It was about this time my sense of direction made a dash for the surface leaving me at the bottom. “Plan the Dive and Dive the plan” is what they teach us. Find the plane then turn left and head round the edge of the quarry with the wall on our right. Yeah Well! Lets not dwell on my bad sense of direction shall we. Enough said.

Next thing we came across was a North Sea diving bell at about 17m, after a short investigation of the inside I signaled to Keith that I was going to deploy my DSMB. Attached it to the bell, squirt of air into the buoy and there it was gone with the reel spinning like a whirling Dervish. We left the bell and headed out towards open water rising slowly as we went. I glanced up and saw the underneath of the pontoon, “that’s not supposed to be there,” I thought.

I signalled to Keith to move towards the clearer water to prevent getting the buoy tangled in the pontoon. Then someone is pulling the buoy up from the surface, so I give it a tug down and it came free. It later turns out that John had seen the problem and had guided the marker under the pontoon, cheers John.

After a stop at 6m for what seemed like the longest minute in history we popped the surface. After a short surface swim and we were back at the pontoon ladder, and it was almost the same ladder we went in from, almost.

After providing surface cover with Dave for Keith and Johns dive we all went back up to the car park for a bite to eat and a well earned cuppa.

After lunch Dave and I headed home while Keith and John stayed on to give John a second dive.

All in all a good day, the site is OK with the exception of the bus trip to the waters edge.

Many thanks to Keith for taking Dave’s place and to Dave for being, as it turned out, taxi for the day.

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