The beach
Paddling the south coast of Menorca. Image: Karetta Expeditions.
I love sea kayaking.
I really only got into paddle sport properly when I was persuaded to race the Devizes Westminster marathon in 2009. I trained solid for 2 years in a racing K2, burning up the canals and waterways of Dorset and Wiltshire. We were finishing mid division in the warmup races and doing really well. Then disaster struck. 4 weeks before the race I suffered a herniated disc in my back, which rendered me unable to walk, or even sit in a car. It was almost career ending. I sold all my kayaks (I had 5 in my garden at one point!) and vowed never to set foot in one ever again.
Racing K2 in 2008
Time passes and after almost a decade, my back started to heal. I was still nervous of it but missed being in a kayak.
I didn’t think I could ever cope with a tippy racing boat again, but during covid I needed a new passion to get into the outdoors. I watched a video on social media of a friend of mine and his wife, paddling in Scotland with crystal waters and surrounded by peace and serenity.
The beauty of sea kayaking is that it is not competitive, so you can take it at your own pace and as much or as little as you choose. I figured if my back wasn’t feeling it, I just wouldn’t need to go. I bought 2 second hand, barely used Dagger Stratos kayaks for little over £1000 and have had nothing but fun and adventures with them ever since.
I’ve paddled in Dorset, Cornwall and the Outer Hebrides – but never anywhere particularly warm
Circumnavigating Mull, Scotland, in my Dagger Stratos.
I kept seeing adverts popping up on social media for ‘Much Better Adventures’. I generally ignored them. I was quite capable of organising and running my own kayaking adventures and was loathe to use a guide.
The thing is, I very often end up going alone. I bought two sea kayaks so I could take my friends out, but they lacked the time to progress their skills and experience, so I couldn’t take them very far.
My mates just don’t have the spare time, cash or freedom to just drop everything, up sticks when the weather comes good and set off to any corner of the UK for an adventure.
With no ties and 6 months of the year off, I could do this. But inevitably it means it is a solo venture.
I missed company of like-minded people. So, I signed up for a 4-day camping and kayaking trip in Menorca. It promised a leisurely few days on the water, camping on sandy beaches, sunsets and excellent guides who make your food and take care of the housekeeping.
It sounded a bit easy compared to the sort of thing I’m used to, but I decided that, given the tough few years I’d had, I’d give myself a break and let someone else take the weight off for a change.
Going on holiday with strangers is not really my cup of tea, but I figured a good guide would keep everyone in check and if anyone annoyed me, I’d just go and get in the sea and swim or paddle away from them.
I need not have had any of these worries at all.
From the outset we created a WhatsApp group and on the first night, having checked into our own hotels, a gang of us met up in Mahon, Menorca, for supper and some wine. We mooched around the bustling market as dusk fell and the vibe was good.
It was a mix of people, some from as far away as America, some with kayaking experience and some with none. It didn’t matter, we’d be well looked after.
In the morning the minibus picked us up and took us to the depot, where we would be given dry bags and set about packing. Travel light and go minimal was the order of the day.
I was seizing the opportunity to try out stuff I hadn’t had the opportunity to until now, such as dry shampoo and seeing of my solar panelled power bank actually worked…
Packing seemed to take ages, and it was well past lunchtime when we finally made our way to the kayaks that were waiting for us at the eastern, southerly end of the island.
There we met our guides Lucas and Jan, who walked everyone through a lengthy explanation of how to paddle a sea kayak. We had decent boats and paddles and loads of storage space, mainly owing to the ginormous double kayak which acted as the ‘hospital’ boat. It also contained lots of food, water and camping equipment and weighed a tonne. It turned out to be a godsend for one lady who was terribly seasick. Once in the more stable boat and plied with a cocktail of drugs, she overcame it and enjoyed the rest of the trip, much to our relief.
We finally got out on the water and very soon we were forced to settle into Menorca time. Nothing was hurried and dinner time wasn’t until around 9:30pm.
We paddled gently for around an hour in glassy, calm conditions before stopping for a late lunch at a busy, sandy beach. We had ample opportunity to lay about, swim, and eat lunch. It was a lesson in slowing down and enjoying the vibe, but it took several of us a day or two to adjust to this new pace of life.
The plan each night was to put our tarpaulins up as dusk fell. The beaches were therefore cleared of people, and we would have them to ourselves.
We arrived at our first overnight stop of the trip, a secluded sandy cove, and set up our tarpaulin wigwams and groundsheets. Thermarests were provided but most of us brought our own sleeping bags.
Sand. It just gets everywhere. There is nothing more irritating than gritty sand in the bottom of your sleeping bag. The humidity overnight added to the issue, to ensure that the sand stuck to everything, and our bags never really dried out throughout the whole trip.
This aside, we were treated to some super starry nights from under our canvas, complete with shooting stars and arguments about whether or not it was Orion.
“That’s Orion, there…”
“No that’s Ursula major. Or is it minor…?”
“That’s the Scorpion isn’t it?”
“No, it’s the saucepan, look there’s the handle”
“I’ll get my app”
“What’s that noise?”
“It’s my app….it plays music when you use it…I can’t turn it off”
“Look, I told you that was Orion…”
“Oh look a shooting star!”
“Make a wish…”
It was like being on a school camp again. And we loved it! We woke early to a cool sunrise. It took some adjustment to realise we were not against any tides or the clock. We could have a leisurely wake up, without being hurried. I did some yoga on the beach at sunrise, which frankly is something you only ever see on Instagram and never do for real!
We were starting to live the dream.
Each day, we made our way along the south coast of Menorca, stopping for long, leisurely lunches with sea swimming, sunny snoozes and bobbing about, chatting in the water. We went snorkelling, I had a chance to practise my self-rescue skills and on the odd occasion we snuck off to a beach bar in the evening, feeling guilty, but not for long, for making the expedition less of an expedition by joining civilisation.
We worked out that we were all on a well-deserved break and opted to make it easy, rather than harder than it needed to be.
I managed to sneak some early morning drone shots of the camp one day and these really did the trip justice. We were treated to warm, clear waters, rocky cliffs, sea caves and pine forests as we made our way along the entire length of Menorca.
The sea state picked up over the last few days, but the gang coped with it really well and nobody took a dunking. We were starting to get the hang of things and eating simply, enjoying the local produce that Lucas fed us from the never-ending Tardis of the giant double kayak.
All too soon it was over. We pulled into a rocky beach with swanky beach bar and emptied the boats, piling kit into Ikea bags ready to be taken back to the depot.
We were all a bit sun burnt, desperate to shower in fresh water and we all took turns to stand under the beach hose pipe to get the salt off our skin.
We all sat and drank cold beers, half pleased to be back to some normality but half sulking that it was over.
We all decided to meet up that evening for one final supper at a pizza place. I grabbed my hire car ready for the rest of my trip, as I was staying on for a few more days on the island. Then we had supper and said our final goodbyes.
I cannot recommend Much Better Adventures and Karetta Expeditions highly enough. On my final day I booked a sea kayak rolling lesson with Lucas and progressed a lot. Karetta were friendly, professional and highly skilled. I’d been a caving instructor myself for 10 years, so was able to see the way things were run from a slightly different angle. I could not fault the guys and wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.
Lundy
Arrival on Lundy Island
I live only a few hours’ drive from the North Devon coast. It is shameful therefore that in my 20 or so years of diving, I had never visited the island of Lundy.
But perhaps not that shameful.
Lundy is a small island, only 3 miles long, that sits 10 nautical miles off the North Devon coast. Day trippers sail on the regular ferry MS Oldenburg from Ilfracombe to visit the protected and preserved island, which is home to puffins and seals, one campsite, a pub and 3 lighthouses.
Lundy is protected under a Marine Conservation Zone designation as well as a Marine protected area and the reefs surrounding the island are a strict ‘no take’ zone. This has allowed the underwater flora and fauna to flourish.
Dive boat for the weekend
Situated where the Atlantic meets the Bristol Channel, big seas meet a large tidal range and consequently, boat rides to Lundy can be ‘bracing’.
It is for this reason every trip I have ever attempted has been ‘blown out’. There just wasn’t a safe weather window for the dive boat to transit.
So, after a Facebook message from a diving friend, making an attempt at a trip in August – seal pup season – I thought I’d have another shot. As the date approached, the weather forecast deteriorated and I envisaged yet another failure at trying to get to Lundy Island.
It turned out that the Friday was a no-go. But Saturday and Sunday looked promising, if a little wild.
Whilst we would be too late for the puffins, it was optimal time for last year’s seal pups to come out to play.
On board with Kirsty Andrews, top drawer underwater photographer.
I drove down to Ilfracombe the evening before to stay with a friend, Caroline Bramwell, who has competed in Ironman distance races with a stoma. She also featured in Louise Minchin’s ‘Fearless’ and it was great to catch up with her and spend an evening overlooking the harbour, putting the world to rights.
The next morning the heavens opened. Sideways rain greeted us as we tried to get our cars as close to the boat as possible to unload diving cylinders, camping kit and tonnes of camera equipment.
Boat loaded and cars parked up for the weekend, among throngs of anorak clad tourists, we set off towards an island that we couldn’t even see.
Bone dry diving with my trusty Santi Elite drysuit
As soon as we left the harbour, we knew it would be a rough ride. The catamaran took off out of the water as we battled waves all the way out to the island and it only really settled after 90 minutes of not being able to stand up.
Divers hunkered down with looks of concentration on their faces as they tried not to throw up.
As we arrived, whilst still windy, the island looked wild, with blue skies and turquoise waters. We passed all the camping gear up onto the jetty and it was loaded into a landrover to be taken up the steep hill to the campsite, where we would be staying later.
Now it was time to dive.
Smiling for the camera. Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
As the boat swung round and chugged into a sheltered bay, there they were. Waiting. You could almost see them tapping their watches; “Where have you been?”
The Lundy seals were in full chorus and at the sight of the dive boat, they flopped their way ungracefully off the sloping rocks and into the water to bob about, and wait.
We kitted up, cameras checked, buddy checks done and in our own leisurely time owing to no tides, we jumped off the boat and into the turquoise, clear, cool water.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
“Don’t go looking for them….they will find you” was the instruction, along with general seal encounter etiquette.
“And if the come up and cuddle you….don’t cuddle them back!” Apparently, they can be covered in all sorts of bugs and nasties.
Seals are endangered and their behaviour suggests they know it. It wasn’t long before we caught glimpses of large, white and grey bodies flashing past as they sussed us out.
They are behind you - always behind you - as this is where they feel most on control. If you turn around to make eye contact, they vanish, quick as a flash.
Knowing this, I decided to experiment with my relatively new toy, an underwater housing for my Insta 360 camera.
My buddy Matt and I went through our pre dive checks and jumped into the inviting dark blue-green water.
My buddy, Matt
Dark round heads popped up and howling could be heard from the beach. You could almost see the seals tapping their watches and telling each other “The divers are here!”
We swam slowly towards the rocks, staying pretty shallow and fiddling with our cameras, getting the settings right, making sure the strobes were firing. I unravelled my selfie sick for the insta 360 and filmed a little bit of us swimming just to check it was all working. There was no sign of any seals just yet.
When I got back home and checked the footage, swinging the camera view around to look behind me, there were three seals quietly following us the whole time!
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
It wasn’t long before they started to get more inquisitive and flashes of large white and dark grey bodies shot past us. We milled about, not really sure what to do or where to go as we were now pretty much up against the rocks where the waves broke the shore below the tall cliffs towering above.
Then, it began.
Whilst I was looking the other way, a turned my head back and came face to face with a large, whiskery head. He was sniffing out my camera housing, able to see a reflection of his head in the port.
As soon as he’d been there, he was gone.
This game of cat and mouse continued for the next hour. I tend not to move much in the eater and can hang motionless without moving my fins at all. The seals seemed to love this as they could swim up behind me, grab my fins and hug them with theirs whilst having a good chew of the rubber, my ankles and my drysuit pocket!
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
While this was going on, my buddies would get the opportunity to get some great photos while the seal was falling in love with my fins.
The downside for me was that this was all going on behind me and I wasn’t getting much in the way of photos! I used my insta 360 on the stick to film the shenanigans going on but eventually I put it away and chanced my arm at some stills.
These depend entirely on the seals. It is a matter of patience, being in the right place at the right time, the seals mood and the settings on your camera being ready for the photo that presents itself.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
Seals love admiring themselves in the dome port of your camera. In reality, they probably think it is another seal that looks just like them!
This presents great photo opportunities but also puts the fragile and easily scratched dome ports at risk – teeth and claws come out as they try to investigate. I didn’t want to spend my next few months polishing scratches out of acrylic, so I flicked them away when they got too ‘chewy’.
After a wonderful morning of playing with seals, we had a leisurely lunch and went on a dive around a reef pinnacle. I had the wrong lens for macro shots so mooched about a bit, trying to remember the names of the various squidge I was looking at from my Seasearch lessons.
We pulled into the pier and had some fun hauling cylinders up onto land. I think next time I’ll take my perfectly good caving rope and hauling system!
We opted to walk up to the campsite and we were treated to a stunning view as well as a puffy PFO test!
It was really quite windy and as beer time approached, there was some fun to be had putting up tents and blowing up air beds. I don’t know how I do it, but I always seem to end up on trips with people equally as bonkers as me!
The pub on Lundy fortuitously feeds the locals and those who work on the island, so despite being the only one and therefore a captive audience, the food was very good, the booze reasonably priced and the staff and service was excellent.
We made the best of it, interspersed with a very windy walk to watch the sunset from one of the lighthouses, before returning to the pub.
The next morning we all managed to grab a coffee and breakfast roll from the pub which was most welcome, before eating it on the walk back down to the boat.
Luckily the tide was in, which made loading the cylinders a bit less necky.
Off we went for seal round 2.
They were there again, waiting for us to sort out gear out. They seemed a little keener this time, already in the water with lots of howling going on.
Their heads bobbed patiently while we tested our cameras, did our pre dive checks and stepped into the water.
As we approached the rocks, the familiar tugs on our fins began.
I assumed the position and got mauled while Matt and Daryl this time, who wanted to hang out with us, got their cameras in position.
It wasn’t long before the seals started to get the upper hand. They had worked out that if they got really close, the divers didn’t know what to do and fell over backwards, rendering them completely helpless like a turtle on its back.
The mauling began.
Mugged by seals. Images: Matt Emmerson
One rolled me over and I lost balance, my double 12s twinset pulling me onto my back. Now, fins up and fully exposed, the seal took the opportunity to just get a mouthful of whatever he could. Camera, drysuit pockets, bit of hood, glove…
My buddies were insanely helpful, getting right in with their cameras to film this loss of fabulousness, whilst I completely failed to right myself for laughing and flooding my mask.
Daryl thought this was hysterical, until the seal turned its attention to him and, whilst on his back trying to get the classic Snell’s window seal silhouette, he instead got a good humping and was left abandoned in the weed!
The seals were definitely more boisterous and were having serious fun at our expense.
Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.
Being only a few metres deep and with tonnes of gas, we had all the time in the world – and it seemed to stand still.
It is an amazing privilege to be approached by wildlife who just want to play and interact with you. The seals are not fed by humans, they simply seek out play with their curiosity.
In the afternoon, we set off on another reef dive but in my hurry to swap lenses, I didn’t quite put the dome port on the housing properly and flooded my camera and lens.
This was pretty devastating and despite my insurance covering some of it, this worked out to be an expensive mistake.
Fortunately, a brilliant outfit called Nemo Photo who now deal in Ikelite and underwater camera gear in the UK, have been very helpful and I have a new camera set up coming very soon, treating myself to an upgrade.
I can’t wait to get it into the water!
The Lundy Gang
Back in the swing
After 7 weeks at sea, you can imagine how desperately I wanted to see my diving gear!
I had been very much inspired while I was away by the south coast divers, taking their cameras on shore dives and coming back with amazing images of wonderful sea life around the UK coast.
I hadn’t dived since early March and lock down and work stopped play.
Finally at the end of July I was able to pack my Citreon Spacetourer, fill it with things I had bought from Amazon while I was away (neighbours thought Christmas was coming!) and built my single cylinder set-up which I hadn’t used in years.
I headed down to my favourite haunt Chesil Cove in Dorset and played it safe for my first overnight in my car, camping on my friend’s driveway!
My buddy was a regular at Chesil and I had never met him before, a lovely chap called Jon Bunker.
We kitted up at a social distance just after 10pm and headed into the darkness.
Darkness doesn’t bother me - after all, I’m a cave diver!
But there are bitey, stingy things in the sea and critters large and small tend to come ‘out’ at night!
We dropped under the waves into milky, awful visibility. Thankfully this cleared quickly as we headed deeper and we soon started unpacking the cameras.
Jon was quicker than me and spotted a dogfish which I completely failed to photograph, then a pipefish which went a bit better.
I soon started to get the hang of my Ikelite strobes and we started to see lots of cool stuff.
We came across a huge lobster who had caught a velvet swimming crab in his jaws.
He was extremely quick and very busy and didn’t care for us at all. Then the crab made a break for it and a fast chase began!
Cuttle fish. Image: Christine Grosart
Jon was only a few metres away and I could see his torch in the murk when to my utter horror - mixed with excitement - a massive few swimming conger eel passed right by me.
I watched it for a while…not sure to go and try and take a picture or run away.
I ran away and told Jon what I’d just seen before informing him I had chuffed quite a lot of gas in my terror and needed to leave!
I surfaced and lay on my back, paddling back to shore and watched the sparkling stars overhead.
I made my nest in my van with my new Rab Ascent 900 sleeping bag and had a quick flick through my images, chuffed with my first attempt at macro photography. It’s not as easy as it looks!
All images Copyright Christine Grosart. All rights reserved.
Cave Diving Group Anniversary
We had a great time in Wales recently at the Old Rectory in Llangattock for the 71st anniversary of the Cave Diving Group of Great Britain.
We spent the Friday afternoon diving in a cave called Porth yr Ogof in the Brecon Beacons, to take some visibility measurements and collect some data for our conservation project, Project Baseline South Wales Caves.
On the Sunday, Rich and I joined award winning cave photographer Mark Burkey and his wife Jess for a casual trip into a cave called Ogof Ffynnon Ddu. We played with video shots for an upcoming project and Mark showed me some tips and tricks to get more out of my camera underground – we think you’ll agree the results were stunning!
The secret cave
Before I go into details of our dive here, I should stress that this cave is not for public access and is indeed the water source for the town of Millau. Permission is required to dive here and we obtained this through a friend and a French cave diver before visiting the cave. Illegal dives here are quite likely to spoil ongoing attempts to reach an agreeable solution about diving the source, hence I have withheld its whereabouts.
The plan was to video the cave and as a result, will offer any footage we have to the local speleo activists to use in their quest to demonstrate how important divers are in the protection of caves and scientific hydrological research. At the end of the day, we are the only ones who can actually see what goes on under the water, under the rock, in the dark.
We drove almost 2 hours on nothing but winding roads and stunning gorges until we reached the village and after a little inventive French speaking and some friendly locals, located the source. We parked up but our French guide, Mehdi, was not there. Worried, I made a few calls back home to some friends who knew him but there were no such worries, as he showed up minutes later, having been diving in the Font d’Estremar all day!
We began carrying kit to the cave and we spoke to Mehdi in our best going out French and he spoke to us in pretty good English. He was to dive with us and both Rich and Joe had video cameras.
Joe's trailer, including the secret cave.
Due to gas logistics (there are no filling stations down here, so all trimix was pre-filled, as were deco gases – the rest is to be topped off by the compressor, courtesy of the Derbyshire Section CDG) Rich and I dived sidemounted as these were the only ‘backgas’ cylinders we had left which could be used, the rest still full of 15/55 for next week.
So we dived on 60m gas to reach pretty much the terminus of this cave, which ends in a jumbled, jagged breakdown choke at -65m.
The journey there however, was spectacular. Clive Westlake, my ex-CDG mentor was the last person to dive here 4 years ago and prior to that, the last diver had been in the cave no less than 8 years ago. And it showed.
Our exhalation bubbles sent bits of conglomerate and chert raining down on us and wafting past the video cameras. Anything you touched simply broke off in your hand so we dived it with kid gloves. The entrance is a narrow rift and we dropped off our deco bottles as we followed the winding, ‘diaclase’ (maze) to the head of a shaft.
I’ve seen some impressive underwater shafts, some pretty famous, but this was one of the more pretty and intricate ones. Mehdi dived a Megdalon ‘recycleur’ and stealthily crept along behind us, grinning in awe at the view he was presented with, descending above Rich with his double 18W filming lights, above me with my HID… he said it was pretty amazing! The visibility was infinite and sparkling blue.
I saw the line snaking off towards the breakdown terminus and thumbed the dive at 59.9m. We had a nice ascent and Mehdi began chatting to me through his RB and I felt obliged to waffle some crap in French back!!
We picked up our deco gases and Rich filmed Mehdi down some side passage while I wrestled with getting an ali stage clipped off to sidemount 12s, all the while feeling a bit underweighted; I soon realised that this was due to a sticking wing inflator valve which was filling my ‘Scoff-Bag’ at a rate of knots. Giggling at my stupidity for not noticing it sooner, I told Mehdi I was fine and that I would deal with the simultaneously freeflowing regulator later……
Such annoyances don’t spoil a great dive like this though and we surfaced at dusk, waffling in barely coherent Franglais at how good it was and how worth the drive etc etc.
I asked Mehdi if he would please join us for dinner, or a beer at least. One step ahead, he produced a bottle of delicately balanced local white wine which had been cooling in the resurgence all the while!!
We waited for the others to surface and giggled uncontrollably as they had stuck true to form, getting totally lost and taking the wrong line and ending up in some shit-hole about 0.5m high and full of mud, unable to turn around etc. They did make it to the deep in the end but they won’t live it down as it’s not the first time either!
The stars started to come up over the gorge and the white limestone cliffs were lit by the moon and we tore down the gorge after Mehdi who showed us to a very welcome pizza restaurant and made sure we were looked after.
An absolutely awesome dive, great company and a superb evening. Days don’t get much better than this. Thankyou guys.
The Dark Room
I won my first cave photography award when I was barely 21 years old.
Photographer of the Year 2001 (ish)
The image was nothing short of a masterpiece.
Using a canon 35mm film camera which claimed to be waterproof, I diligently choreographed my Uncle Phil Hendy and my friend Phil Short in all sorts of poses around a cave called Shatter, in Somerset.
Shatter is beautifully decorated and we took a lot of time and effort to make the photos work. Several hours, in fact.
Towards the end of the trip I lay down in a muddy puddle and shot the 27th image on my 24 exposure kodak film... (people under 25, I may have lost you at this stage...)
Worried, I asked everyone to turn their lights off while I fumbled in the dark to rectify the issue.
The issue was not to be rectified.
The camera was empty.
On a positive note, it was the most realistic image anyone had ever shot of a cave.
After all - they are completely dark!
The image of Shatter cave I took some time later…..
Recognition at Hidden Earth National Caving Conference
Thus, I was quite surprised and very excited to be asked to give a talk on cave photography at Warminster Camera Club in January.
I was slightly apprehensive as, whilst I do take photos underground and pride myself in the images I take for WetWellies Caving clients, I’m still loathe to call myself a ‘cave photographer’.
Fortunately and with some help from my talented friends, my photography improved a lot and I started to win prizes for it. I learned a lot from Clive Westlake and Mark Burkey, both with very different styles but I often feel like I’m yet to develop my own (no pun intended!)
My good friend and super nice guy, Paul Duckworth, persuaded me along.
I wasn’t sure how to go about this talk, so I decided to make fun of myself and it wasn’t long before I had the audience giggling up their sleeves and I think I enjoyed the talk as much as they did!
It is something I would definitely love to do again.
Here's what they said: The Dark Room - Christine Grosart
Three of the best - by Christine Grosart
"The China Shop" Boreham Cave, UK, 2012. Cave Diver: Dave Ryall. Image: Christine Grosart
"Cathedral Pitch" Lost Johns, UK. Image: Christine Grosart
Veronika from Canada on her first ever caving trip with WetWelies! Image: Christine Grosart, Owner WetWellies Caving
Wet Wookey
Christine aged 25 ish in Wookey chamber 20. Image: Clive Westlake. Image taken before a tunnel was mined through to allow public access to the chamber. At this time, the only way to see it was by cave diving.
Wookey Hole Caves will always have a very special place in my heart.
It is a weird, slightly crazy, slightly spooky tourist attraction in the middle of deepest Somerset. Many of my WetWellies caving clients have visited the 'other end' of the Wookey system, Swildons Hole, which has been dye traced to connect with Wookey Hole. When dye was tipped into the water in Swildons Hole it emerged TWENTY FOUR hours later at Wookey resurgence.
It has been the dream of every British cave diver I know to connect the two but alas, the connection has only ever been made by that dye.
Mark Burkey in Wookey Hole, right below the public gallery. Image: Christine Grosart
Swildons Hole ends at sump 12, a tight underwater passage which gets too small for humans and is a long slog to get to in any case. I've been to sump 12 twice and would take a lot or persuading to go back again...
Wookey Hole, at the bottom of the hill heading towards the city of Wells, is an impressive resurgence cave where a huge collection of water which has drained through the Mendip hills, comes rushing out of the cave mouth.
Divers conducted the very first hard hat dives in this cave in 1935 and Graham Balcombe and Penelope 'Mossy' Powell ventured upstream in Wookey Hole for the first time. It was from this underground chamber, chamber 3, now visited by tourists every day, that I made my first cave dive in Wookey Hole in 2005.
Penelope ‘Mossy’ Powell and Graham Balcombe in the 1930s, Wookey Hole Chamber 3. Image: Mendip archives.
Preparing to dive in Wookey Hole in the 1930s.
Modern day diving in Wookey Hole. Christine diving sidemount, open circuit. Image: Richard Walker.
On 17th February this year (2019) I took my Cave Diving Group trainee Mark Burkey on his first cave dive in Wookey Hole.
We were blessed with superb visibility so he could begin to get to know the place and he had the luxury of being filmed (for training feedback, of course) which meant bright video lights illuminating the large underwater passages.
Mark diving towards the 'slot' in Wookey Hole. Image: Christine Grosart
Mark is an outstanding cave photographer and I am very excited about the prospect of him being able to take photographs beyond sumps, as my mentor Clive Westlake once did, albeit mainly in black and white.
In 2009, Wookey Hole was the scene for my rather understated deep dive at the end of the system. Rick Stanton and John Volanthen of Thai Cave rescue Fame, had pushed the end of the cave signifiicantly in 2005 to 90 metres deep.
Christine preparing to dive the final 2 sumps in Wookey Hole, 2009 before her record breaking dive.
I had only just begin cave diving with the Cave Diving Group so whilst I was around to witness the aftermath of the record breaking dives, my only small part in the affair was to pick up the parachute after the run. Or rather, I was a ‘sump donkey’ bringing partially depleted exploration bailout bottles back to the show cave.
The river Axe roars through Wookey chamber 24. Image: Christine Grosart
Roll on four years and I was heading down to the new bits of the cave myself and earned a new ladies UK cave diving depth record (64 metres, solo) in the process. To this day no woman has ever been back. Now that chamber 24 (dive base for the deeper dives into the system) has had a dry route created, I wonder if any future record would count as much. I certainly did it the hard way over several days and with the help of several resolute and valued friends.
Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart
Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart
Sea Doggos
Tag! You’re it!
There was a sharp tug on my fin and I turned around to catch the cheeky seal diving off into the distance, pretending it wasn’t him.
This never-ending game of ‘tag’ is a favourite of the seals in the Farne Islands, Northumberland.
Around August time they get quite playful. Global Underwater Explorers UK had a group trip going and on this rare occasion, Rich and I were both free.
I needed to keep my skills up with my rebreather so took it along with me, interested to see what the seals made of the bubbleless, silent machine.
After two days of boat diving, Rich took me on a shore dive from St Abbs. I had never dived here and seized the opportunity to do some SeaSearch recording, something that had completely transformed by sea diving.
The underwater scenery was simply stunning.
There were kelp forests and steep gulleys, adorned with fluffy dead men’s fingers and corals.
Nosey, territorial Ballan Wrasse pestered us and we dived through the most beautiful natural rock archway.
We had lunch in a café in the harbour and dive 2 was equally as stunning. British sea diving on a good day is as good as anywhere in Europe and I enjoyed filming with the new Paralenz Dive Camera.
Conger Conger
I've been trying to get to grips with some scientific names for various marine critters. They tend to be formed from genus, species and sometimes order and class.
The easiest one to remember is 'Conger Conger'. Not very imaginative and I guess, in a class of it's own.
This one in Lyme Regis, Dorset was in a cage of it's own.
It had got itself trapped in a large, lost fishing pot, doubtless looking for an easy meal. A spider crab cowered nervously in the corner and the eel was stuck fast through the netting, unable to go forward or back with no chance of escape.
The charity Ghost Fishing UK had been tipped off about two lost pots which had got their lines tangled up in an old diving shot line and subsequently snapped off, abandoning them on the seabed.
Now, both the shot line and the lost pots were threatening unwitting wildlife.
As part of a 5-day marathon effort by the charity and its volunteers, not aided by Covid-19 restrictions and ever changing legislation, a team of 6 divers set out from Lyme Regis to dive the Heroine. Consisting mainly of brick cargo and conger eels, this fairly flat wreck had snagged both a shot line and string of pots, the latter laying hopelessly on the seabed just next to the wreck.
I was on the camera again, using my new Canon 100D and Ikelite housing set up, with Ikelite strobes and snapped some shots of Andy Rath collecting up the old shot rope, made mostly from polyprop. Floating neutrally buoyant, it was a very real hazard for divers, cetaceans and boat propellers alike.
Once removed, the pots eluded us until the other team jumped in to join us. It wasn’t long before we found a large, lost cage just off the wreck and stuck fast, a resident conger eel.
The pots had been there an estimated week or so. The conger wasn’t in bad condition and his cellmate, a nervous spider crab, cowered in the corner, trying hard not to be his next lunch.
I got in close and set about the camera.
Scuba divers are the eyes of the ocean and without underwater images and video, the public remains completely unaware of what is going on beneath the waves. How can anyone care about something they cannot even see or simply just don’t know about?
Satisfied with my images, Fred gave me an OK question signal to which I replied ‘OK’ I was done.
I did not expect what happened next, as Fred immediately opened the lid of the cage!
I screamed through my regulator, climbed over Andy leaving him confused and dishevelled and hid well out of the way, expecting the conger to sense freedom and set about immediately biting me.
Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Fred spent the next 5 minutes trying everything he could to get the conger out of the cage.
He tipped it on its side, shook it about, cut away some of the net which the conger was ensnared in and even tried to remove it by its tail. He wouldn’t budge.
Eventually, after more persuasion the conger slipped slowly and unceremoniously out of the cage and swam nonchalantly off along the sand to head back to his lair in the piles of bricks.
The grateful spider crab also made a break for it at a significantly quicker pace and the team set about raising the pots to the surface.
The pots were returned to their owners in an attempt to work up relationships with the local fishing community. Without their trust, we will not be able to get information where fishing gear has been lost and won’t stand a hope of recovering it before it does untold, wasteful damage.
A Grotty Sergent
Rich wanted a day off. So I took him caving!
Grotte du Sergeant. Image: Christine Grosart
Somehow over the last decade I have managed to avoid this very pleasant little cave. I must have misread the instructions because 300m walking later we had not found a 'large porch' - or anything resembling a cave.
This is not unusual. I have been up many garden paths, gum trees and on several spectacular wild goose chases in this region. It is hot, scrubby bush bashing and the best you can hope for is some sort of cairn, bit of paint (which could mean anything really - like, a really long GR route.....) or a couple of contradictory arrows painted on trees.
There was some pleasant scrambling on grippy limestone river bed with dried up plunge pools and lots of lizards, before we finally got to a 'combe' where we couldn't go any further - the cave had to be here.
It was - a vertical but not difficult scramble up the cliff face!
Once in the cool entrance, we wandered off down pretty but not spectacular dry fossil cave with a sandy floor. It probably does resurge in exceptional weather, but it hadn't in a very long time.
I took the opportunity to take some photos with my new camera and see how I got on. I'm reasonably happy with them, especially given there were only two of us.
I get the feeling this is the Herault's version of 'Goatchurch' - but much nicer and would be a good starter cave for any led groups I bring here in the future. It has nice little climbs, abseils to protect the vertical bits and pretties. Plus a great view from the entrance.
Well worth the afternoon out.
Going Bubbleless
Learning to cave is the beginning of a whole new adventure.
Where else can you take up a hobby which can lead to exploring parts of this planet where literally, nobody else has ever been? All the mountains have been mapped and most of the ocean floor has been documented.
But nobody knows what lies inside the Earth until somebody goes there.
Many cavers spend their spare time ‘digging’ to remove obstructions in caves such as sand or boulders to open up new cave passages, or even dig open new ones from the surface. I’m far too impatient for that! In order to discover places no human has ever been, I took up cave diving in 2004 and never looked back.
I had mostly used conventional SCUBA equipment, reconfigured for appropriate use in caves.
Following my 2017 exploration in a cave called Izvor Licanke in Croatia, the logistics of using this equipment became a limitation. The cave was deep and we only had enough gas and bottles for one dive on the expedition.
Chris learns her closed circuit rebreather in Egypt
So, I bought a machine called a Closed Circuit Rebreather. It meant learning to dive in a slightly different way and I figured the best way to learn was to get lots of time in the water.
My partner Richard and I headed out to Egypt last summer to take a little break and spend hours getting used to my new equipment. Hopefully, this new rebreather will open up many doors and allow me to explore Licanke even further to discover yet more places unknown to humans.
Image of a clown fish: Christine Grosart, 2017
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Well…that’s what we used to say way back when I worked in horse racing!
But this time, I’m super happy that my image of a diver cutting away a Ghost net in Scapa Flow won an award.
Diver in Scapa Flow. Image: Christine Grosart
I headed down to Brixham with Paul Duckworth to promote Ghost Fishing UK and run a stand at the Brixham Marine Conservation day. We met some great people and I gave a talk on the project which went down really well. I was over the moon that my image of Colin Stratton and the Ghost net won the Underwater Conservation Photograph contest.
I came away with a Manfrotto camera bag and no less than four DSLR photography books.
Sunny Swanage
Tompot Blennie under Swanage Pier. Image: Christine Grosart
I woke early, still thrilled about the night dive the evening before.
The sea at Swanage was sparkling and there was loads of space to park up on the pier. People kept their social distance and I was able to kit up in peace, checking my camera over and over and hoping for a good hour or so to learn more about photographing critters.
I wasn’t disappointed!
Images: Christine Grosart. Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and DS160/161 strobes, Macro lens.
At barely 2 metres depth it was like being in an aquarium!
Swanage pier was my first proper scuba dive in the ocean 18 years ago and now I was back, taking photos I could only ever have dreamed of.
Tompot blennies posed for photos, a corkwing wrasse obliged as well and was very friendly.
Tompot Blennie. Image: Christine Grosart
I’d forgotten just how enjoyable it is to throw on a single cylinder and jump into the sea right from the shore. Of course, you have to get lucky with the weather and the visibility but this time both were in my favour.
After 90 minutes it was time to get out and check out the images.
I’m learning to love my Citreon Spacetourer which affords me privacy to get changed and somewhere cosy to sit and look through my images and write my blog - just as I am now!
Cuttelfish: Image Copyright Christine Grosart
Macro with Mustard
Sunset over the Moray Firth
2020 has been rubbish for everyone. Well, to be clear, everything from terror, bereavement to annoyance and fury and my favourite one, disappointment.
This year I lost one of my closest friends when she took her own life. She was one of the strongest, toughest women I knew. So there but for the grace of god go any of us.
I was joining in with a British Society of Underwater Photographers (BSOUP) online meeting where we oggle the winners of the latest monthly competition.
That is where I heard about an underwater photography workshop being run in the UK by Alex Mustard.
Alex has a long standing reputation for being one of the best underwater photographers in the world and for once, I was not only available on the dates but had the cash (just about!)
I ummed and ahhed about it, thinking that I was nowhere near ready to be attempting a course for seasoned photographers to hone their skills.
I was barely starting out and really had no clue what I was doing. Rich pointed out that I'd had a pretty underwhelming year and this was my chance to do something fun, for myself.
So, I contacted the agent at Scubatravel who were absolutely superb, especially with the ever present threat of 'cancellation due to covid)' and I signed up.
Scotland
The cool thing about this photography workshop is that it really was remote.
8 hours after I had set off from the Dales following some caving and diving, I was still driving in the dark, howling wind and sideways rain along a single track road with thankfully plentiful passing places and DEER!!!
I slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt.
There, in my headlights, staring right at me was a big, beautiful stag.
Nobody else was about and through the driving rain I could see him, staring right at me. He stood for a while until nonchalantly wandering off into the undergrowth and the dark.
Thereby followed a hairy drive in the dark and weather, dodging deer a plenty.
Obviously, I had all the wrong lenses for photographing Scottish wildlife above water!
It seemed to take forever to get to Kinlochbervie and then 10 minutes of complete darkness later, the bungalow where we were staying for the week.
We exchanged greetings in a covid fashion and fed ourselves, before Alex set out a plan for the week. We met Chris and Cathy from Kinlochbervie Dive Centre (formerly Northeast Dive) who were our hosts for the week. Cathy is no shabby photographer either! They looked after us well and we were never short of gas, hot drinks and biscuits.
The weather was not going to be favourable and the chances of getting outside the loch to photograph wide angle vistas, slim. But I was on such a steep learning curve I was secretly pleased to just be able to work on my macro.
Sealoch anemone, Kinlochbervie. Image: Christine Grosart
I'm no marine biologist and have a LOT to learn about marine critters. This is kind of cool for me because I get a lot pf enjoyment out of learning about their behaviour, making friends with them underwater and slowing down to a halt to watch their little worlds unfold.
I watched for ages as a hermit crab tried to climb a vertical 'wall' of encrusting pink algae...only to fall off as he approached the top and had to start all over again. He looked miffed.
I watched another hermit crab trying out a new shell for size and a very angsty pair of squat lobsters joining up to defend themselves against me while I tried to get a decent shot.
Then I spent a while photographing two queen scallops when the long arm of a large starfish came into view. My shot was being photobombed by a starfish! I knew as soon as the arm touched the queenie they would be off and, sure enough, the starfish prodded the scallops and they were gone, stropping off into the silt.
Scallop. Image: Christine Grosart
Alex has quite a hands off approach to workshops and you learn things without even realising it!
He ran a lecture most nights, expanding our horizons with ideas many of us hadn't thought of. I was in good company with well established and award winning photographers such as Kirsty Andrews, so we were able to learn from each other too.
Details such as giving as much consideration to your background as your subject, really improved my images. The workshop gave us 'permission' to try things out, make mistakes, get better and the real value was that everybody on the boat was aiming for the same thing and we all had the same agenda.
Thinking about the background. Image: Christine Grosart
In the evenings we'd have a talk from Alex and a show and tell of some of our best images of the day.
The logistics meant we could do two dives of at least an hour each day with a decent surface interval back at Kinlochbervie, whilst being back at the bungalow nice and early evening to have the time to go through our images and fettle them.
This was probably the biggest benefit of the workshops. Mostly on diving trips, I can be up until 1am still sorting images from the day, especially on Ghost Fishing missions where the media needs to be out and with the press the next day or even the same day.
My set up is relatively cheap and all but the camera is second hand. I use a cheap, small and lightweight Canon 100D which is use mainly for cave photography.
It is limited with things like ISO but I enjoy wringing out the camera's capabilities which still exceed my own.
I bought the housing from a forum for a steal and then spent the same again on strobes, arms, clamps and lenses.
For this trip I used a Canon EFS 60mm f/2.8Macro USM lens. I have a Tokina fisheye but as we were unable to leave the sea loch to to weather, never got to use it on this course.
Toady. Image: Christine Grosart
It didn't matter though as I had a tonne of fun with all sorts of creatures, getting closer...then closer still and looking for that all important background.
My photography definitely progressed in only four days and I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn with a true master of underwater photography. I am enjoying so much and cannot wait to get back into the water to get snapping again.
King scallops. Images: Christine Grosart
Hermit crab, dressed for Vegas…Image: Christine Grosart
Dahlia anemone. Image: Christine Grosart
Squat lobsters. Images: Christine Grosart
Feather star. Image: Christine Grosart
Feather star. Image: Christine Grosart
Sea Loch Anemone. Image: Christine Grosart
Beautiful Babbacombe
Pipefish. Image: Christine Grosart
Shameful, I know...but I had never dived Babbacombe!
Either the wind was going the wrong way, the visibility too poor, too much rain, waves breaking over the wall into the car park, too many people...
The list of excuses is endless.
But finally. I had some time at home, in the UK and in SUMMER!
This never happens AND the divers from the Facebook group South Coast Divers had been putting up some cracking images of critters down at 'Babbers' as it's fondly known.
I was fortunate to be welcomed by three people I had never met before nor dived with but we all had something in common - squidge!
Squidge is a diver's slang for marine animals. As opposed to spidge, which is wreckage.
Someone once pointed out that with regard to UK wreck diving, you can get the same effect walking around your local scrapyard at night, in the fog with a rubbish torch, in the rain!
There have seldom been times when I could argue with that. Triple expansion engines don't interest me and why is everyone so obsessed about boilers?
No, despite trying to fit in with the crowd, I'm afraid I have to admit to being a 'squidge' person.
This was evident when I spent an entire dive in Scapa Flow photographing starfish on the seabed and making scallops swim - they are so funny!
That evening in the pub, someone asked me where I had dived. "Markgraf" I replied.
"Oh" he said "See any nice scallops?"
I digress.
Jewel anemones and nudibranchs. Images: Christine Grosart
Anyway, off I went down to Babbers and needed to find somewhere to doss overnight. Covid makes things tricky but I did find a prime spot where overnight parking is allowed and the morning view is to die for.
I woke to the most glorious sunrise and the waves gently lapping only yards form Agnetha.
I made myself a strong coffee and had light chit chat with passing dog walkers.
It was time to pack up and head round to Babbers to meet Tamsyn, who had volunteered to show me around. Lisa and Richard Frew from Dive South had also come along for their first time at Babbers.
I'd had some fun building a single cylinder set up as I rarely dive anything other than my twins, sidemounts or CCR. But as we were only going to about 6 metres all that seemed rather overkill.
The super-hard-to-spot Snakelock anemone shrimp. Image: Christine Grosart
The sea was sparkling, the coffee shack was open and although it was busy with families and anglers, the atmosphere was friendly and folk kept their respectful distances. For just a couple of hours, we could drop beneath the waves and leave covid behind.
After an excellent location brief by Tamsyn, we walked to the end of the jetty and were accosted by a grey seal who was obviously hanging around the anglers hoping for some fish.
He'd got too brave for his own good and was sporting a hook in his mouth. He was close enough as we put our fins on that we could smell his fishy breath.
We got in and he soon vanished.
The visibility was about 8 metres and it was great to be diving with likeminded people. I was on a mission to take some nice macro shots and so were they. I was also keen to do some Seasearch recording. I love the way that just a simple, shallow dive can contribute to citizen science and even go some way towards creating MCZs.
Pregnant variable Blenny. Image: Christine Grosart
The snotty water and kelp soon gave way to a shallow reef and this was teeming with life. The usual Tompot blennies made an appearance but apparently I photographed one special little critter without even realising it!
The Variable Blenny has apparently been absent from our waters for several years. At least, there had been no positive ID of one since around 2007.
The South Coast Divers group, many of whom were keen Seasearchers, had been doing plentiful shore diving during these covid times and Variable Blennies were seemingly back in town.
And they rather liked Babbacombe!
For those not in the know, Seasearch changed my life. Well, that may seem an exaggeration but for a cave diver who gets easily bored in the sea and disappointed on almost every dive by 'only' seeing just kelp or weed or rocks with 'stuff' on them then well yes, you can see why I got a bit disillusioned with diving in the sea.
It offered me very little challenge and I found wrecks creepy and a bit boring.
Double spiral worms. Image: Christine Grosart
Then I did a Seasearch Observer course and my whole world changed.
National Seasearch coordinator Charlotte Bolton once said to me:
"Call me sad - but I love ALL my dives".
Rubbish, I thought. You must have at least one or two crap dives.
"Nope" she said "I love all of them."
How was this even possible?
The Seasearch course opens your eyes. It makes you look, Then look again, Then look closer again and before you know it you are analysing seaweed 'feet' and arguing over the markings on a corkwing wrasse.
An octopus could be dressed in a grass skirt and playing the maracas right in front of you but you'd probably miss it because you were trying to decide what length of 'animal turf' to put on your form.
In fact, no, you wouldn't miss it. You would simply enter it as 'rare' and gloat about it on your cephalopod reports - complete with photo.
Oh, it changed my life alright and it definitely changed my diving. It gave me a new lease of life and I spent every day offshore dreaming about not only taking macro photos of cool stuff but sifting through marine critter ID books and filling out Seasearch forms in latin.
I don't know what has happened to me but I like it. Diving for a purpose rocks!
Velvet swimming crab in a snakelog anemone wig. Image: Christine Grosart
I still can't tell the difference between a crab and a wrasse but I do love pretending I can and it is quite satisfying when someone tells you that you've photographed something quite rare when a) You couldn't take a photo of a fish at all last week and b) you had no idea what you were looking at and thought they were just everywhere!
Tamsyn very kindly pointed out a pipefish to me once I'd packed my camera away. She felt bad so pointed out another one on our second dive post coffee and sandwich.
He obliged beautifully. Their snouts are so long they are a pain to get in the frame and in focus, hiding in all that weed.
Pipefish. Image: Christine Grosart
We headed for Mushroom Rock which is, no surprises, a large mushroom shaped rock right in the middle of the bay. Underneath, it is adorned with jewel anemones. These are my new favourite things to photograph. All colours, pinks, greens, purples, yellows...just stunning.
I inspected every damn snakelock anemone searching for the fashionable 'anemone shrimp'. This elusive shrimp likes to hang out in snakelocks and has kept macro photographers sane throughout covid.
I hunted religiously through every patch of snakelocks, going over and over in my head that it takes determination and hard work to get that photo you want and nothing comes easy on a plate and OH HELLO!
There he was.
I managed a few quick shots and signalled frantically to the others, at which point he turned his bum on them and hid in the most awkward place, almost impossible to photograph. I think Lisa got a few but he really was a bit camera shy.
The super-hard-to-spot Snakelock anemone shrimp. Image: Christine Grosart
Velvet Swimming Crabs like to wear snakelock anemones as wigs and they made for some amusing photographs.
I had a fantastic day with such lovely people and definitely got my photography and Seasearch fix.
I'm chuffed to bits with several recent purchases. My Ikelite housing was bought to accommodate my Canon 100D DSLR camera and I bought some second hand Ikelite strobes, DS160 and DS161.
I was debating for a while about a Cinebag Grouper, which seemed like a nice idea but quite pricey for what I thought was just a cooler bag with a badge.
I took a punt and bought one.
How wrong I was. The bag is sturdy, well padded and well thought out, with waterproof inner zip pockets and it is heavy duty. I keep an old sofnolime can full of fresh water in my car and you can use the Cinebag as a rinse bucket.
It takes up little space in my car and protects my equipment on the boats. I love it.
Blenny. Image: Christine Grosart
Lobster. Image: Christine Grosart
Tompot Blenny. Image: Christine Grosart
Pipefish. Image: Christine Grosart
Pretty Persier
The lock down hokey cokey was starting to take its toll this summer, I’m sure, for all of us.
I had booked some blue shark snorkelling with Indeep as a ‘salvage the summer’ attempt but the weather ruined it and we couldn’t go.
So, with Rich around for a couple of days we made a last-minute booking on a couple of days diving down in Plymouth.
I decided to take my KISS rebreather because I hadn’t taken it in the sea much and, well, I should really. It was only ever bought for caves, but I decided to expand my horizons.
To make life even more awkward for myself I threw the DSLR in as well and we decided to camp using my new van awning.
Of course, it rained. Non-stop. The BBQ coals that we picked up were damp and after 2 hours of trying to make fire (all the pubs were full, before you ask…) Rich finally managed a decent meal. It was cold and wet and pretty miserable. I was enormously grateful for my Fourth Element poncho which made putting up a tent in the rain significantly more bearable.
We rocked up at Indeep who provided the usual excellent service in gas and boats. We headed out to a wreck I’d never been to before - le Poulmic. Very small but teeming with life. The weather topside was what we call ‘lumpy’ and we were grateful to be beneath the waves rather than on the boat.
Christine diving the Persier
In the afternoon it was a classic bailout to the James Egan Layne. Each time I dive this wreck (mostly pulling ghost gear off it, to be fair) it looks different. Rich had a great time with his camera while I struggled with not-very-good macro.
After a damp night in the van, the weather had improved greatly, and we headed out to the wreck of the Persier. I was excited as I’d never dived it before, and the visibility looked promising.
I gave myself a break and took the Paralenz dive camera. I always find shooting video way easier than images!
The wreck was stunning. We could hardly see it for fish. Great for critter nerds like me but not so great for wreck photographers like Rich, who spent much of his time shooing them away!
The wreck is adorned with pink sea fans and made for great wide-angle shots with Rich’s canon DSLR and new Easydive housing.
Christine diving the Glen Strathallen
In the afternoon, we dived the remains of the Glen Strathallen.
In typical style, Rich and I got distracted by a lost creel that was still catching. He set about freeing the resident spider crab while I filmed. We just can’t help ourselves!
Fool de Lauret - by Rich Walker
If you had told me that I was about to drive for two hours in 35C heat around the south of France looking for a cave, I would probably have believed you.
If you had also told me that we would have to walk through some bushes and undergrowth, up a precarious limestone wall, and then descend into a cave entrance while hanging on a rusty chain over a 50m high precipice, I would have still believed you. If you then added a simple fact that I would be doing this while wearing a Fourth Element 7mm semi-drysuit, I might have started to question the sense in the plan. Never mind though, in for a penny, in for a pound as they say.
The cave is called the Foux de Lauret and lies near the village of Lauret. Thats how it got its name, apparently. I don’t know what Foux means though.
Elaine Hill in the Foux de Lauret. Image: Christine Grosart
Anyway, we arrived at the entrance, hanging on the rusty chain, to see a gate behind which is a small crawly tunnel. If you have heard me talk about caves before, you will know that crawling is almost my most favourite activity.
It comes second to hanging over a bottomless pit on a piece of wet string held to a slimy piece of rock by some sort of metal screw which looks a lot like something I had in a Meccano kit as a child. But I digress. The crawling is soon over and we arrive in large passageway. This is nice, impressive cave. I like it. Lots of meanders (s-shaped passage) follow where the water has worn it’s path through the rock and we end up at a clear blue pool. This is why I am wearing my semi dry suit. I jump in and try to cool off, but the suit is so good that no water comes in. I give the neck seal a pull and a pint of ice cold water shoots in.
Anyway, I swim over the pool to the other side, and carry on through the passage which remains very picturesque. There are more pools, which soon become canals requiring us to swim. Swimming in wellington boots sounds pretty easy (how hard could it be) but for some reason looks more like a valiant drowning attempt. I’ve swum a lot in my life, but the addition of wellies make me swim like a cat in a bag.
The French don’t seem to like getting wet, so there are lots of traverse lines hang in the roof of the cave. It must take hours for a group to cross these canals. Once out of the water, we soon come to a sharp left turn off the main passage, and rather than consider heading on a straight path, we turn off. We encounter rifts, traverse lines holes in the floor, and strange pegs hammered into the wall for us to stand on. You don’t to hang around on these pegs (or stemples as I’m informed they are known) as you can feel them bend under your weight. It’s not that there is a huge drop below you, just a gradually narrowing crack that with a decent drop would be sure to wedge you in good and proper. Keep moving.
Maybe we shouldn’t have turned off the main road. We come to a rather complex bit involving a rope and a long drop (see above). This was not supposed to be there, or maybe it was us that wasn’t supposed to be there, so we turned round and headed back to our turn-off point. And off we go again. This started to look more promising. More canals to swim in - great fun. I am developing a technique to swimming which resembles a cat that has just escaped from a bag, so I’m making progress.
People start climbing up out of the canal to try to find the legendary gour pools, which are apparently some of the most beautiful formations in the cave. Gour pools have been formed by crystalline deposits over millions of years, and resemble Asian rice terraces, but underground and sparkly. Water cascades down them when the river is flowing. Christine was determined to take photos, so we continue to hunt.
We come to what looks like the end of the canal, which makes little sense as these things don’t just stop. Further inspection shows that there is a tiny airspace over the water, maybe 3cm high and I fancy I can see the passage enlarging on the other side. I suggest that Jarvist goes through. I now know that it is possible for a human to make a snorkel with their lips.
I am banned from going through this delightful feature - I object for a moment to show some form of resistance and retain some level of manhood, then concede that I wouldn’t want to worry Chris. Ego intact, we turn and leave Jarvist and now Gerick to make snorkels with their lips and slither out.
My swimming technique is now so good that my trusty tripod that I have owned for 20 years fell out of my bag on the swim home. 10 minutes of touchy feely in the mud bottom of the canal failed to retrieve it. Oh well - it has served a long and useful life.
The exit was uneventful and took around an hour. The pools allowed us to flush the wetsuits from “heating fluid”.
Back out of the cave, up the rusty chain, down the limestone precipice and through the bushes put us back at the car and we decided to head off for a pizza. St Bauzille has a row of pizzerias along the waterside and makes an excellent place to stop for food, if you get there before 9pm.
9.05pm and you’re screwed, especially if you smell of heating fluid. There was one place left open that would sell us a takeaway pizza, on the condition that we waited outside in the garden.
We weren’t going to argue ;-)