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1 Town Houses home page |
| North East September 09 There's also a collected index for the next four
galleries - as it's all Northern | |
 | Farnes 09 It was a long time since we'd been to the Farnes and what better way to revisit them than on an MCS trip. Fiona organised a great trip, great weather and picked a roomy boat which gave us plenty of space to stretch out. Stan Hall's base in Beadnell was excellent for the group and well placed for food and great sunsets on the beach. After three days of seal filled diving we moved North, across the border to St Abbs - for our first visit. |
 | St Abbs 09 We stayed at the Rock House which could not have been more convenient. The first day was great but the second showed that even shore dives can be 'tricky' so we went for a walk in the afternoon. A wonderful place for wildlife and I hope we get more than a day of calm weather next time. There was so much to look at we could have spent all our time around Broad Craig but just had to swim over to Cathedral Rock too. By the time we surfaced from our dive on the second day the conditions were marginal and we really didn't need the observant Lifeboat man to tell us not to go in again. (100 Images) |
| Norfolk in August There's also a collected index for the next four galleries - as it's all Norfolk | |
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 | Skomer fish survey, July After the hard work of the Scallop survey and the excitment of Urchin scissors in previous years we were looking forward to some simple fun with territorial fish... unfortunately the weather was 'a bit' wet and the vis faded as the weekend went on. As ever we had a great time thanks to Kate's slick organisation and the new improved Lobster Pot pub. |
| Norfolk in July There's a collected index for the next five galleries - as it's all Norfolk and all July | |
 | Saturday evening gullies This was our third course of the year, and the best we think. The vis off Sheringham was amazing and we had time to dive straight after a warm day of lectures and sea shanties. The gullies are the easiest dive off the Norfolk coast as you can swim out from almost any part of Sheringham and find chalk less than 100m from the promenade. |
 | Sunday morning gullies We were up early the next day for another dip on the gullies... for some it was too early even for a very easy dive but for those who braved traquil seas and warm clear water it was well worth the effort. |
 | Sunday afternoon Vera In the afternoon, after some ice cream, we moved on to Cley where we still had great vis and plenty to see. When the conditins are good you have to grab the opportunity |
 | Bonus Tuesday Rosalie The vis on the Rosalie was better, sitting higher off the bottom and out of the passing salad of floating weed. Graham and Barry joined us for another good dive. |
 | Bonus Tuesday Vera A great dive with a great new find - Little Cuttles, were playing in the sand, just around the big groups of tiny nudibranchs having wild orgies... North Norfolk is a great place to dive in Summer! |
| The East in June There's also a collected index for the next five galleries - as it's all East Anglia | |
 | Sheringham 2 Less than two weeks after our first murky dive we had the chance to walk in from Sheringham beach again, this time from the Esplanade - one groyne West of the Lifeguard station. The visibility was much better and we covered 150-200m from the shore, reaching an area where deeper gullies began after a low undulating plain of chalk. |
 | Vera in June We had an excellent investigative dive on the Vera, conditions were adequate but improving, lots had changed since last year. We found that the sands had moved to cover the rear of the wreck, almost up to the prop shaft at the stern. The ironwork was covered in Oaten Pipe hydroids (Tubularia indivisa) but not rich in slugs... maybe they will be along soon? |
 | Lowestoft - The Alto This was our first trip out on Drakkar, Adrian King's amazing hardboat based in Lowestoft. We had a great day and good vis. We found the wreck covered in hydroids and Dendronotus frondosus slugs but the most exciting thing I saw was a couple of Sea Snails (Liparis liparis) which despite the name are fish. After this trip we can recommend Adrian and his boat for a really good day out :-) |
 | Sheringham 1 The Sheringham chalk gullies are well known but we had only dived them as a drift by boat from Weybourne. Adrian from Learn Scuba in Lowestoft was one of the people who told us that you could simply dive them from the beach at Sheringham itself, and he was right! The gullies run past the town just beyond the ends of the groynes, just below the Cliff Road car park. It proved you can Seasearch in suspect vis (about 0.5m) and whetted our appetites for more! |
 | Dunwich Seasearch Our first Seasearch Observer course of the year was held at Learn Scuba in Lowestoft. After the theory day we had the rare chance to dive on the remains of St Peter's off Dunwich - the sunken village. The visibility is very rarely good here but we were just able to catch enough for a worthwhile dive. As you can see from the pictures it was quite murky, after an enticing week of 5m+ we got a weekend of 1m dropping to nothing if you found yourself with a trainee Divemaster resting on top of you :-) |
 | Babbacombe Bay April 09 We've been meaning to get to Babbacombe Bay ever since we found out about the cuttlefish breeding which happens there in the Spring. So we stopped on our way down to dive in the Scillies. Sadly this breeding isn't encouraged, as it is in Holland, but ruthlessly exploited by local fishermen. It doesn't take unusual intelligence to see that slaughtering a breeding gathering will heavily deplete the population in the future - it is the way to wipe it out! |
 | FIsh ID Course April '09 This popular course kicked off the 2009 year for sleepy East Anglia where we are just starting to look hopefully at the sea... it may still be a couple of months before it is diveable. |
 | Shoresearch with the NNNS April '09 We've been meaning to get Shoresearch up and running in the East for a while and Dave Leech's kind invitation to join N&NNS for an afternoon on West Runton beach seemed like the ideal opportunity. |
 | Norfolk Autumn '08 As Autumn arrives there's definite feeling of diving on borrowed time with each extra visit to Norfolk. This omnibus collects dives from September and October, including the wildlife on parade for our Norwich Seasearch course, the first outings for the Seasearch boat 'Dangermouse' and a day's diving which was disrupted by the discovery of a fouled net. |
 | Swanage October 08
In the end this was my last dive trip of the year, many thanks to William for
inviting me along. We had the last of the good weather and in fact some of the
best conditions of the year - flat seas for diving the Kyarra! As we came back
after the last dive all the boats in the bay were being pulled out in
expectation of a BIG storm, perfect timing William! |
 | The Isles of Scilly September 08
We'd wanted to go to the Scillies for years.
What better way than with Sally masterminding the like-clockwork logistics
for a week of wildlife watching? Although the weather wasn't at its best we saw
lots of good stuff and we didn't miss a dive. The island was a great tranquil
base and it was very tempting to stay.There are two sets of galleries, one cheery set
with bad jokes and dodgey captions and a sneaky set of spotters guides where we
tried to name all the stuff we saw. |
 | Norfolk Survey Weekend August 08
We had high hopes for our Survey Weekend but all bets were off when we arrived to 2m waves at Cley... We went for a walk but William went in and the gallery telling that story is fun! By the evening things had calmed and David dragged us away from a baked Alaska to night dive the Rosalie... suffice it to say it was dark, surgey and mostly covered in crabs. Sunday was a different story, we were able to dive both wrecks and complete a GPS plot of the Vera - many thanks to Sarah for heroically towing the survey buoy. |
 | Skomer Scallop Survey August 08
With only happy Welsh memories we cried ourselves to sleep when Kate's trip was blown out earlier this year. Happily it was re-scheduled and we were set to survey scallops... god it was hard work! There were plenty of scallops, filthy old scallops, to clean so we could count their rings. The oldest were in their twenties and there were hundreds... Shellfish shaving apart there was a lot of interesting stuff on the seabed too, clingfish, porcelain crabs, mystery gobies and blennies as well as Pogges and a big Red Gurnard |
 | Norfolk in August 08 Part 1
By August the water was balmy... so we got in as many dives as we could. On this early weekend we dived the Vera and Rosalie twice each and the next Rob was treated to a dive on the Nubia off Sea Palling with GYSAC. Conditions were OK but not yet at their best but Dawn found some tiny new nudibranches on the Vera and we were able to take some wideangle pictures of the wrecks. As it turns out this was good preparation for our surveys later in the month - oh and Dawn insisted on including some topless beach shots to show how warm it was... |
 | Crab rescue Sept 08
Put online for the MCS and any press to use. Pictures of the rescue - taken by William Hutchins, and a selection of the net underwater and 'jagged wreckage is perfect for snagging fishing nets' background pictures. |
 | Salthouse long weekend land and sea July 08
In July we had to spend a couple of days invigilating at the Salthouse Art Festival and that seemed like the perfect excuse to spend a long weekend on the coast diving as well as acting as 'artists' |
 | North Devon July 08
After being cancelled last year this summer's wasn't all wine and roses either, cue bibical rain! After a couple of days of National trust sight seeing we eventually found the the vis around North Devon hadn't recovered... so our last day was a trip to Lundy - where we had much better vis than on our trip in May. Many thanks to Sally for arranging the trip and acting as our minder for a few days of surface tourism too.. |
 | Norfolk July 08 - Part 1
Our early July haul from Norfolk wasn't as large as we'd hoped as the weather has been 'mixed'. We got in a dive on the Vera on the day our exhibition launched in the Salthouse and Sam and Tony from Great Yarmouth bravely put up with Rob and freaky downpours so we have a couple of diving galleries. |
 | Norfolk Omnibus Edition - June 08 digest
June was a very busy month... We held a Seasearch Observer course with 19 keen divers and (unfortunately) no diving, a Nudibranch ID course with Jim Anderson who travelled down from Scotland to tutor and still (frustratingly) no diving and then we were invited out by Mick from NEDSAC and all of a sudden there was vis off Cley and impossible numbers of nudibranches off Sea Palling. At last the East coast was open again! These galleries show all of that... |
 | Lundy - Seasearch Lundy MarineID Course and diving - May 08
We jumped at the chance to join Sally's trip to Lundy, arriving fresh from Holland in time for a primer course on local marine ID. The course was hosted by Ilfracombe SAC who were a great bunch and dived from Obsession II. |
 | Plymouth - Seasearch Sponge Course and diving - May 08
It's always a pleasure to join Sally's well organised trips, the conditions in Devon are usually better than those up in East Anglia and you really can't find a more authorative source than Bernard Picton. It was a very enlightening and great fun.The microscope sessions at the MBA revealed the amazing, beautiful selection of shapes which sponges create to form skeletons but give little hint at from the outside. |
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Plymouth - November 07 Sally having some new seafans to investigate seemed like a great excuse for a trip to Devon - until we rolled up at Fort Bovisand to find the MOD police had locked the gates! But everything got sorted and we got 4 good dives in, with a free rollercoaster ride back from the first! Many thanks to Sally and Danny for a really enjoyable weekend. |
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Norfolk - Fun and Seasearch off Cley and Rosalie - October 07
We'd never dived this late in Norfolk before but the sea stayed flat and fun as we managed a dive weekend and a Seasearch Observer practical session. These six galleries include rare wide angle shots of the Rosalie, Vera and even one of Dawn - so Seasearch students know who their leader is ;-) |
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Cley
Exhibition Weekend - September 07
Norfolk Wildlife Trust publicising the Marine Bill was the ideal opportunity to introduce their mainly bird watching visitors to photos of the exotic wildlife which lurks just off shore. We couldn't resist fitting in a dive too! |
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North
Pembroke - September 07 The Urchin survey seemed ages ago and it was great to see a lot of familiar faces from that adventure. Kate had (as usual) got the world organised on her side and we had a great time and will be back - if they'll have us! |
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Salcombe
Bay from Plymouth - August 07 Although we had been due to dive North Devon in June the had weather scuppered that plan so Sally (Seasearch Coordinator for Devon) worked hard to fit in another trip. We dived out of Fort Bovisand on their cool, black RIB, running around towards Salcombe to sites including Prawle Point and Persier Reef. We stayed in the Mountbatten centre which turned out to be inexplicably empty but handy for both Bovisand and food on the Sound front. |
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Norfolk
Twin Wreck Shore Dive Challenge Take 2 - The Vera and Rosalie again
August 07 The week before everyone had been busy but for this trip we had quite a gang ready to try the twin wreck challenge. Even better we had a good number of our Seasearch people who were ready to do some of their assessed reports and get well on the way to being fully qualified observers! It was a momentous visit as we saw the first Tompot Blenny reported off Norfolk (as far as we know) and I finally got some decent pictures of Bib! See our guide page if you want to take the challenge yourself :-) |
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Norfolk
Twin Wreck Shore Dive Challenge - The Vera and Rosalie August 07 Shore diving sounds easy, and the diving bit is... but even the shortest walk is complicated by carrying 35kgs of equipment. Walking across gravel makes it even more fun! However it was well worth the effort and no means boat there's no need to limit your dive time. Both wrecks have slack enough for at least an hour's dive most weekends - we were greedy and had an hour and a half :-) We have added a guide page for anyone who fancies taking the challenge themselves :-) |
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Cley
next the Sea, Norfolk July 07 We can't believe we waited so long to dive the Vera at Cley next the Sea, it was packed with pipefish and crawling with crabs. Our local half dozen were joined by a group who had come down from Nottingham. |
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Skomer
Urchin Survey, Pembrokeshire Jun 07 We really enjoyed taking part in the Urchin survey in the Skomer Marine Reserve. It was our first stab at practical underwater surveying and the discipline of making several passes over the same terrain certainly made for a thorough creature hunt. Many thanks to Kate Lock for organising the event. |
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Lyme
Regis - Sea fans and sunset coral, Dorset Jun 07 It was a pleasure to return to Lyme Regis, doubly so since we dived from John Walker's boat Miss Pattie. John helped the group with their mission to assess the impact of scallop dredging on the seabed fauna, particularly the pink sea fan - the UKs largest coral. We found fans and sadly evidence of damage but there was no shortage of other wildlife and a chance to see sunset corals.See the See the Seasearch news page for more information |
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Weybourne,
Norfolk July 06 Weybourne in North Norfolk is one of our favourite dive venues, there's a small wreck and some gullies which are both packed with wildlife. Sadly some club politics mean it was our last club trip but we were able to savour our memories of better times whilst hunting down nudibranches. |
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Southwold June 05 |
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E30 submarine I June 05 |
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E30 submarine II June 05 |
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Exmouth, Devon September 05 |
 | Felixstowe, Suffolk June 02 |
 | Falmouth, Cornwall July 02 |
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Dorset October 02 |
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Dorset April 04 |
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Dorset April 05 |
 | The Farnes September 01 (no diving pictures) |
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The Farnes September 03 |
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The Farnes September 04 |
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Littlehampton, Sussex May 02 |
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Lyme Regis 03 |
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Lyme Regis 04 |
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Portland, Dorset April 03 |
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Pembroke West Wales June 02 |
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Pembroke West Wales 04 |
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Scapa Flow, Orkney September 02 |
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Wells, Norfolk September 05 |
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Weybourne, Norfolk July 03 |
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Weybourne, Norfolk July 04 |
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Weybourne, Norfolk August 04 |
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Weybourne, Norfolk July 05 |
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Weybourne, Norfolk July 06 |
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Cley next the Sea, Norfolk July 07 |
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Stoney 12th Apr02 - Ancient history for the curious |
 | Stoney 28th Jun 02 - More old stuff |
| There are a few more trips to be added but the old Falmouth, Felixstowe and Stoney Cove galleries should keep you happy for a while... |