I am working down in Bristol just now near Vobster or Chepstow or even not that far from the south coast or south Wales.

I’ve got my dive gear in the car and well I got an invite to do a wee night dive at Stoney Cove.

Stoney Cove I hear you say! euch why bother…..

Well didn’t see a reason not to do it, Id either be in the rented flat in Bristol buying and selling folk on facebook, doing a internet diver speciality or watching some crap TV.

I left Bristol at 5.30pm for the 118 mile trip to Leicester.
About half an hour away from Stoney I got a txt off my buddy to say he had arrived and was going in for a quick dive with his real mates not me.

I think cheeky barsteward.

Anyway, I get to Stoney and well its my first visit, its bloody busy.
I get stung £15 for a guest diving session and I have to be out the water for nine pm. (its 7.15 pm when I arrive so only chance of one dive).

I set up the twinset (its got a mix of EAN26 - basically it had EAN33 (usual local lds super accurate mixing ) that I used and then got topped off with a hydrocarbon free air fill)), tie some random knots in my guage housings with thicker bungie and fettle some stuff (that’s techy talk, don’t worry about it if you don’t understand it )

Get the new Sub Xero undersuit on and work out how to attach the crotch straps. Its more like a gimp suit (allegedly)

Now what the hell do I do for weighting?

Its been suggested that a sub xero adds about 3-4kg to your sea water weight requirements (over arctics).

Well its the first I have diver fresh water so thats -2kg from my weight requirements.

My cylinders are full and I have no chance of emptying them, so thats me heavy anyway……

Argh right so I shove on my normal 4.5 kgs (3 x 1kg v weights, 1.5 kg in a tail pouch) weights (Im probably about 1.5kg over anyway) thinking 3+4-2=5 So its a starting point.

I also put on the fin retainers straps I managed to find locally as I had a bit of a floaty feet feeling with the turbo soles last dive at conger. (you should have seen the looks on dive-tech, aquatron and splahsports faces when I asked for them)

As im diving the cove for the first time, its night and I have no primary torch, I have no idea of my weighting and my feet where floaty last time oh and my buddy has already done a dive, I convince him to stay in the shallows and let me play with my buoyancy.

So thats it twin 12’s for a 6 metre guddle, woot! I could suck on my long hose like a Russian hooker and still get a decent, mmhh not decent, er I mean long…… dive in

So Martin’s mate Steve and his buddy are going to lead while Martin and I follow in the silt trail behind them.

We are in the car park, its mobbed, ive never seen so many divers at a shore dive and im reliably informed that we are in the very empty bottom car park that is normally trple parked, while there are two overspill carparks up the road, bloody hell, this place must rake it in. I reckon there was easy around eighty divers on site last night, maybe more.

So Im parked near the entrance and the shop, with a long walk kitted up to the area we are going in at, bloody hell twin 12’s are not good for this, humph!!

http://www.stoneycove.com/beneath.htm

I show Martin round my kit as he hasn’t seen a twinset close up before, I explain about donating from my mouth and we do a cursary buddy check, We put our fins and masks on, do a giant stride entrance at (B) we agree some basic torch signals in the group of four.

DIVE 240: 16/04/2008 20:26 EAN28 Max depth 7(don’t forget the .2) Metres.
GAS IN 230 bar, GAS OUT 190 bar.
Dive Time 27 minutes

My descent is not smooth, I manage to get a wee kick in the direction of Martin (oops), equalise and descend to 5 metres.

There are already some signs of life, the underwater landscape reminds me of furnace, its very rocky here some perch, some fresh water cray fish.

We bimble around with Martin hovering above me in my blind spot most of the time and the other two guys in front of us.

I have a reach for my valves, mmmh cant quite get them with one hand, maybe I don’t have enough air in the suit, my drygloves are pretty shriveld up…

Some nice big easy torch signals given, I don’t think Ive ever seen a torch so orange that Steve is using, ( its got some suunto neoprene cover thing on it, weird) it must have an amber lense on it, it cant be that orange naturally.

I try reaching for my vales again and am slitghly distracted when…

Bloody hell! I nearly cack my pants! A blood great huge four or five foot long pike is right at my face, f**king hell! That was funny, I can hear myself laughing like a clown now, god that’s one ugly fish. I take a breath in and rise above the pike, lets just say he wasn’t for moving.

Plenty more other fishes, some smaller pike some more cray fish, actually this aint that bad a dive for a shallow bimble.

We come across a big concrete structure a metal “attraction” shaped like a science fiction submarine. We bimble around near a drop off and head back in, nice and shallow.

I only just went to seven and a tiny bit metres. It was a nice relaxing dive.

I would do that again although next time I go I want to make sure I get two dives in cause at £15 plus a 240 mile round trip you need to make the most of it.

Off we head to nemos dinner and get some refreshments before I do the return trip to Bristol.

It was good to catch up with Martin who the last time I dived with he was doing his open water course in Spain and I was his DM, its good see he has kept up the diving and last night logged his 31st dive in less than a year of which 26 of have been in UK Quarries, I need to get the lad up Scotland and get him in the sea.