Trip Report - Deep, dark and wet....

As the summer drew to a close a few of decided to take advantage of one of the last opportunities to do a bit of depth before the water got too cold for such excursions. So we over-loaded our cars with tents, huge amounts of dive kit, various other "essentials" and set off for Wastwater. We'd booked a camp site that we'd stayed in over the summer and this time it was much quieter. We set up camp and got dinner going on the stove. A little later Nick and Megan arrived and we wandered to the pub.

(I think it only fair to mention at this point that for the first time since I have known him Nick was not wearing his LUUSAC Malta t-shirt!)

A little later Dave, Dave and Hannah rolled up and after a beer and some chit chat we headed back to the luxury of our 5 star tents for an early night.

Saturday morning arrived and it was cold. Dave Skinner had been forced to wear 4 pairs of socks to stop his toes falling off and the only reason I hadn't done the same was because I couldn't be bothered to look for any. However being brave souls with excellent quality thermals we set off for the lake.

As we arrived and began to un-pack our gear a car of tourists paused to stare at us in puzzlement. "Are you going diving?" one of them asked. When I told her that we were she asked me if it wasn't too cold for that... too cold in September? I think she'd be amazed to find out that we'll still be leaping into lakes in February!

Wastwater (in Summer - it wasn't quite like this!)

And on to the dives...

As agreed Paul and I went in first, we followed the rope out to the Pinnacles dropped down and said hello to the gnomes and then returned doing lots of lovely stops on the way. Arriving back at the thermocline at 20m was lovely. It was just like getting into a warm bath! We even saw some fish. After that Dave, Nick, and Nacho did pretty much the same thing.

In the afternoon we went for a pleasant stroll to the nearest village to buy supplies for dinner. The evening was then spent in the pub, happy in the knowledge that we had no plans to dive the next day.

All in all it was a nice, relaxing weekend away, surrounded by beautiful scenery, including a nice dive and topped off with some delicious beer. Perfect!