Christmas Trip 2005 - Wastwater

See the photo gallery for this trip.

For everybody who hasn't already sampled the merits of the Wast hostelry, the trip began shortly after 5.30 on Friday evening. Whilst not willing to dwell on the drive itself (which has to be the closest I've been on any LUUSAC trip to being chopped up and turned into cattle feed) its worth pointing out that Wasdale locals don't take kindly to Royston Vasey references. So nice one there Fiona. Finally arriving at the haven of one of the nicest youth hostels I've ever stayed in, beers were drank, stories told and the evening wiled away before the next day's diving.

As ever on these things, we started the next day at some ungodly hour and embarked upon the five minute drive to our dive site for the day, the Pinnacles. After kitting up and finding out our buddy pairs, the diving could begin. Surprised at how warm the water was, we all had a nice tootle about the local landmarks; a rather festive Christmas tree at about 10m sticks in the mind. In what would become a regular motif of the day, my buddy and I finally came up at the opposite side of the lake. A rather nasty surface swim was turned into an absolute killer when we decided to make it a race (in which Fiona conclusively beat me). One bruised ego and a cylinder fill later, I went on my next dive of the day with Karen. After a bit of a kit kerfuffle, we finally set off with the intention of repeating the dive that it turned out both of us had done earlier, but with a bit of navigation this time. Cough. One surface swim later and we were back, ready to return to the hostel.

The final dive of Saturday was at night outside the hostel itself. People have assured me that it was their favourite dive of the trip but unfortunately by the time Jenny and I got in, the vis was very poor (thanks guys!). Silt by night looks very much like silt by day so I don’t really have much to say on that one.

Anyway, we all made our way down to the various pubs in the village for food and drink. Much banter followed and the remainder of the evening was passed very pleasurably by the fire in the youth hostel.

If anybody who dived the Sunday has anything to say, please add your bit, but for me all that was left was packing up and driving home. Battling through swarms of sheep we made it back to stores at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable trip. Cheers Ally.

Trip Report by Sam "Iceman" Jones

Ally says...

I'll add my bit about the Sunday diving then. Amazingly (or possibly unfortunately), 8am of the morning after the night before saw 13 bright-eyed keen beans up, dressed, breakfasted, highly caffeinated and raring to go diving. As Sam says, hats off to Lou for getting up and driving us when I'm sure bed was a happier option (although I'm not convinced a room with Paul “snores-a-lot” Beal was particularly restful).

Due to my distracting chatter about buddy pairs our slightly tired driver took us on a little tour of all parts of the lake we weren't going to dive (although why everyone else decided to follow me I don't know - bunch of sheep! Lou), until we finally rocked up at our patch of grass, which had turned into a great big boggy trench in which the van kindly embedded one of its wheels. So the Bivins machine was called upon to don his string-vest and single-handedly pull the transit van, complete with 20 cylinders, 5 twin sets and all the rest of the kit to safety - our hero.

So anyway, the diving was great – much better visibility than the day of the mob. Everybody did the diving and surface swimming they'd hoped for, and everybody also got frostbite. I don't know much else about it as I can't read the marshal sheets due to the running of the ink and fragmentation as a result of the torrential rain and mud.

On return to ye olde hostel, we were met with the site of a heap of very hungover people and a big tray of pizzas. The journey home was somewhat of a blur as I think I'd gone into standby mode. Roll on Christmas!