Dive of the Week: Austria’s Green Lake

There are so many weird and wonderful places in the world to dive that it’s hard to keep track, from diving between continental plates in Iceland to pristine South American lagoons.

But this week’s ‘Dive of the Week’ is a little different, as you can only dive it at certain times of the year.

Green Lake in Austria’s Hochschwab Mountains is actually part of a hiking trail in the winter, but the snow melts in early summer and creates a completely clear lake for divers to explore – just look at that visibility!

The lake has a grassy bottom, complete with underwater trails, park benches, and bridges, so makes for quite an interesting and unusual dive – though the marine life is somewhat lacking!

Club completes first river survey

Yesterday’s river survey turned up not only the sandstone blocks thought to be the original abutments but also a further object of interest which has been sent for analysis.

Organised by Pete Forbes and Jon Prince, the dive team included Ed Lomas, Mark Hammond, Andrew Neale, Russ Buckley and Mark Pemberton.

The team carried out the first of a series of dives at Frankwell Quay to search for the original abutments around Welsh Bridge in the hope of building a picture of the archeology around the river and its significance to the history of Shrewsbury.

The first Welsh Bridge was thought to have been constructed from timber in around 1121 and was expanded during the 14th century to incorporate square sandstone bastions each side of the old gatehouse on the bridge.
 
Between 1793 and 1795, the New Welsh Bridge was constructed and a vast abutment riverwall was built from sandstone to form a barge quay. 
 
Pete says: “Thanks to all who turned out for the river survey today, especially the wives who so patiently waited for their partners!

“Many thanks to Mark and Deb, Russ and Cathy, Andrew and his family, Jon Prince, Mark Pemberton, Anne Trigg, Andrea and Lara, and especially Ed Lomas who loaned and drove his boat for safety cover.

“After the initial exploratory survey in the morning, a large area of sandstone blocks were located. So further examination took place in the afternoon on the suggestion of Mark Hammond, instead of doing another rope search we split into pairs and went solo.

“Fortunately I was with Mark Pemberton who had a metal detector and we located an object of interest which Ed is talking to his colleague about to have analysed.

“We’re hoping this will further the knowledge of Frankwell Quay and help to paint a picture of what was transported there and for what purpose.

“We’ll be doing further survey work will be done in the future, probably in the evenings aswell as weekends.”

To see the gallery of pictures from yesterday, just click on the ‘Read more’ link below!

Exploring an underwater Fangorn Forest!

I HAD to post this absolutely spellbinding video of a group of cave divers from Advanced Diver magazine. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!

Diving the mesmerising Abaco cave system in the Bahamas in March 2009, the group entered a narrow crack in the forest floor and dropped down hundreds of feet to discover this miraculous cave system.

Watch the video here.

Dive of the Week: Verzasca Valley

Welcome to our rather excellent new feature, where every week I’ll post a new idea on the weird and wonderful dive sites around the world.

If you know an inspiring, unusual or generally unknown dive spot, wherever it is, then please let me know! Just drop me a line to LaraPage@Live.co.uk

So, to kick us off - our Dive of the Week this week is…

River diving in Switzerland’s Verzasca Valley

‘River diving? Rubbish!’ you might think – until you see the crystal-clear visibility under the surface of this breathtaking freshwater alpine river, flanked by snow-capped mountains on either side.

There are several popular dive sites in this Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and the surrounding mountains are home to picture-perfect fairytale villages offering lots of other sports and activities too, from skiing to hiking. 

Diving is best from late spring to early autumn and there are plenty of good hotels offering special deals for divers. OK, so you probably wont see an abundance of life, but it would be a fantastic experience!

Read the terrific review on the ScubaBoard forums.

Now THAT’S hardcore!

It was an unfathomably chilly 3 degrees C in Capers at the weekend, according to the seriously brave bunch who took a couple of dips!

Gary, Solty, Suzanne, John, Mike P, Dave and Troy headed up to the chilly quarry on Sunday for what some like to call ‘Sunday Service in Capernwray’.

Sue says it wasn’t too busy and they each managed two dives. There were plenty of trout about, Troy got to try out his full face mask, and Sue discovered the brilliant trick of wearing two pairs of plastic gloves under neoprene ones (“Thanks to Troy and Gary, much warmer!”).

On the Saturday night, Sue and John stayed at a pub hotel in Bolton Le Sands in Carnforth – a good tip for divers who want to get some dives in before the quarry gets busy.

Click on the link below to see Suzanne’s pics from the dive.

A year in diving by Mark and Debbie

This week we’ve got a lovely piece by Mark and Debbie Hammond on the highlights of their 2010 diving.

Well, what a year 2010 was! Debbie and I enjoyed a wonderful year’s diving, starting with a trip to Hurghada, Egypt, in February to blow away the winter blues.

It was well organized by Troy and Richard, and we stayed at the Sinbad Resort where we were treated to wall-to-wall sunshine and incredible diving with Emperor Divers, including some beautiful reefs and the wrecks of the SS Carnatic and the Giannis D.

On returning home and reflecting on the welcome break away from a cold and snowy England, we started to look forward to the Spring and the joys of UK diving – and we were not disappointed!

Our first port of call was Holyhead Harbour – not quite the Red Sea but hey ho! The weather behaved and we all had a good time comparing our bountiful catch of scallops!

Spring was quickly upon us and as a Club we enjoyed some memorable times diving from the club rib boat at Porth Ysgaden on Wales’s beautiful Llyn Peninsular.

There were plenty of training trips up to good old Capernwray and even more memorable moments (remember that line in the famous Michael Caine film: “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”) and when June came, we were off to Pembroke.

This was a fantastic trip organised by Tim and Alison, diving with West Wales Divers. Again the weather stayed good for the most part, water visibility was good, Bruce dropped some of us off at the blow hole (wow!) and no Michael, we don’t have to climb out, we swim back (wink wink).

Later that month we were off to Egypt with Paul and Jane to meet up with the MV Gelen for a liveaboard safari heading south to the Brothers and Elphinstone reefs - what a treat we were in for! Hammerhead sharks, silky sharks, reef sharks, dolphins and the elusive dugong, and as always the company was excellent, the food was great the crew looked after are every need.

The summer was good to us weather-wise and we managed to enjoy a very pleasant few months more diving around the Llyn Peninsular, despite much discussion on high tide, low tide and who had the biggest dive computer.

In October I was off to Scapa Flow on Lindsay’s trip, a twelve hour drive there and a ten hour drive back! Again we were in luck with some fantastic weather and some jolly good company, and we dived the German scuttled fleet off a charter boat called the Radiant Queen.

November approached and we had a trip booked for a return to Egypt on the Gelen, but this time it was north to the wrecks and Ras Mohammed.

The weather could not have been better – 34C, the sea was like a mill pond! Our dive on the Thislegorm was very memorable, the Kingston wreck/reef was fantastic, and all in all it was a great year!

Thank you one and all, can’t wait for this year’s trips and outings!

By Mark and Debbie