Hello all you fellow divers out there, just a quick post with a few pictures of our weekend trip to the Farnes. Everything went as well as any budding dive marshall and trainee dive leader could wish for, it was a club trip organised around the new trainee's - Chris, Colin, Russ and Stan - 3 of whom were doing their first ever open water dive so conditions had to be just right for them, and suitable sheltered locations had to be found to test their buoyancy and equipment before finding the first actual dive site.

The weather was unusually kind to us, especially so late in the season with frost on the ground the week before we went up. The sun came out, the sky was clear and largely blue, the sea was flat calm (apart from a slight swell at Beadnell point which forced us to go round the corner for our kit test and change the plan for the day) and visibility good.

It was excellent for the trainee's, Chris is now due to be signed off as an ocean diver - well done to Chris and all those that helped train and support him up to now - and we achieved all the training we had set out to do over the weekend. Well done to the other trainee's for their first wetting of suits and lifting of heavy objects, winding of ratchets, raising of flags and all the other innumerable tasks involved with a club dive trip, I hope to see you on many more trips in the future.

We had unexpected luck for those of us not training or being trained, with the appearance of some playful and inquisitive seals investigating us as we dived off the outer Farnes, they seemed particularly taken with my (much maligned) bright yellow force fins, and led to some excellent photographs which I have hopefully attached to this post. Visibility was great for photography, again unusual, so I was doubly happy that the seals decided to appear and play with us this weekend!

I had a great weekend, thanks to all present, the only slight down side was our drubbing by South Africa in the world cup rugby final, but I enjoyed the game and had a good evening so cant say it was much of a downer. Very likely with the lack of numbers for Largs next weekend, this will be the last club trip of the 2007 season, if it is it's been a great year for Belper club with some fantastic and memorable underwater experiences, looking forward to lots more in 2008. Cheers, Henry.