Why I learnt to Cave Dive..

20 08 2009

The formations on this video are mind blowing, I hope to go here some day. For those of you who know me and ask why you would go cave diving, check out this video and all should become clear.. Apologies for the shite music (you know where the volume button is)





Fontaine du Truffe

10 07 2009

I took a deep breath and ducked my head under the water, the visibility was terrible, I couldn’t see my hands, nothing but a milky vista filled my vision. I ran my hands down the root of a tree and let the air out of my dry-suit. My video camera was running and I was conscious not to let it bang against the stone.. (after all I was using my “cheap” lens) as I descended downwards towards a place I had been told was there and that the visibility would improve.

Just as I was beginning to consider I had descended in the wrong place or had perhaps moved away from a vertical descent the water began to clear and a semi-circular dark opening loomed up at me. I flicked on my hand-mounted halogen light, checked my helmet-mounted Q40 and kicked my way gently into the little opening. The beginning of my first ever cave dive in France and the end of a long journey.
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I’m still alive…

21 05 2009

…just been really really busy at work and going on holiday.

This is an amalgamation of two dives on the Thistlegorm wreck in the Red Sea, earlier in May 2009. Things have changed a lot since my first dive on it in 2001.

I would imagine that those lucky enough to have dived on it much earlier than me would be horrified at the state of it now. This was brough home to me when I recently watched the Jacques Cousteau movie Le Monde du Silence which contains footage of the wreck in 1955.. Very very different.





Dinas Silica Mine

16 04 2009

If you read my trip report about extended range cave diving with Martyn Farr then this video will interest you. It’s taken inside the same mine where I did my extended range course..





Noxon Park Iron Mine

16 04 2009

I’ve been in here.. It’s actually a much more interesting place to dive than the Silica mines, but, it’s harder to get to. There is a little hike from the car park, but then there is a long trek inside the mine to the waters edge.. This footage is shot in the passages over to the right, where it is possible to dive a loop. Max depth on that dive is approx 22-25m