Diving - My Continuing Adventures underwater
Late Season UK Diving
While my Red Sea trip had been a huge disappointment, it wasn't the end of my diving in 2026.
Surrey Hills
A week after our return, we made our first club trip to Surrey Hills.
Sadly, it was very busy with trainees from various dive operations and the vis, as a result, was far worse in the shallows and close to the entry/exit platform than when Phil had done our reconnaisance visit.
For my first dive, I dived with Paul, who rarely dives with the club and I'd only dived with once before, when he'd seem to be quite frightened of Seals (or maybe concerned they'd bite into his drysuit!) at Lundy, pushing them away quite aggressively.
The site was very busy, but we dropped in from the platform.
Paul had a new mask and it was continually flooding and after a while, when he seemed quite stressed, he said we was going to abandon the attempt to dive.
We swam back to the platform and, after a bit of a rest, some adjustment of the strap and removing his hood, he finally said he was happy and we set off for the dive.
The vis was quite bad near the platform, but as we swam away and along the wall, it became better in the main, although as we passed over the rocky section, we came across another huge cloud of silt, which seemed hard to explain unless someone was lying on the lake bed and rolling around!
There's little in terms of landmarks and after only a short guided tour of the lake, it was very hard to be sure how far I went, but I think we'd made it to the beginning of the drop off into the 30M+ area.
At that point we turned around and headed back in shallower (and warmer) water.
The vis got very poor again on the shallow sandy level leading back to the platform, so we swam off the wall slightly and found vis there of around 8M or a little more.
We continued along and the wall became a solid sandstone wall and surfaced after a little while here.
As we did our safety stop, I could see a number of fins ahead and above us and it turned out we were just a few fin strokes from the platform, which we exited.
Paul elected not to do a second dive (He'd said he probably wouldn't do one beforehand),so I paired up with Rob for a second dive.
Only Rob and I wanted to do a second dive, but Leon had lost his GoPro when entered the water, so we decided to spend the first few minutes looking for it under the platform.
Whatever its limitations below the water, Surrey Hills is set in a very attractive landscape
Remarkably, Rob found it (and someone else's DSMB and reel) within a couple of minutes, after which we dropped over the low wall a little way out and then turned right to explore the sandstone wall a bit more.
Like most of this location, there's not much to see, although there were signs of the workings in the wall and quite a few little indentations, where crayfish of various sizes were living.
After about 15 minutes, I turned around and we headed back along the wall, staying shallow to avoid the cold water at depth.
When I thought we'd swum back far enough (or even a little more), we surfaced, but we were still some distance short of the platform, so we dropped back down again and continued, finally coming up pretty much level with the platform where we exited via the steps.
The site's not an exciting one to visit due to the lack of 'attractions', but it's different to Vobster or Wraysbury and a lot closer than Vobster.
Given time it could become a good place to dive, although it's clearly always going to be chilly at depths below 10M and I fear that Caroline, our training officer, is too enamoured of Vobster to give Surrey Hills a fair crack, so this may have been a first-and-last visit for most of us.
