A Giant Stride for Man

I've made no secret of my dislike for water.

Okay, let's call it what it is. Fear of water. Which is why I've struggled with the 'giant stride' form of getting into the stuff.

Scuba divers employ a variety of methods for entering the water, depending on the setting. Weighed down with our gear, including heavy tanks of air, and wearing large fins on our feet, our mobility is impeded. Simply 'diving in' isn't as easy as it sounds.

As I mentioned in my very first post, I'd never jumped into water before taking up scuba diving. Which made my first practical lesson even more daunting, because I was asked to perform a giant stride to get into the swimming pool.

My preferred approach has always been to climb down a ladder or walk down a gently shelving beach. Or simply to stay away from the wet stuff. That way I remain in control.

The giant stride is exactly what it sounds like. You stand on the side, facing the water. You put one hand on your face to hold your mask and regulator in place, face straight ahead, and take a huge step forward. The result is a fall, feet first, into the water.

You crash through the surface and drop beneath it. I make a point of not closing my eyes and for a couple of seconds my vision is filled with a seething mass of bubbles. Then buoyancy takes over and, having filled your jacket with air before stepping out, you bob to the surface and raise a hand to signal that you're okay. Assuming that you are, of course!

I'd got used to the giant stride at the swimming pool, although I didn't enjoy it. But when we went diving at Vobster Quay it reached a new level of challenge, with the entry point a few metres above the water's surface. It looked a very long way down.

There wasn't a lot of time to consider the options. My dive buddy, much more experienced than I, was soon in the water and waiting for me. There were two extremely inviting ladders from the entry point into the water but they're almost impossible to negotiate in fins. No, my choices were to pull out or step in.

A fundamental of scuba diving is having faith in your equipment. For me the giant stride tests that trust from the very start, because only my artificial buoyancy is going to compensate for the huge weight I'm carrying.

And it does the job admirably, every time.

Vobster Quay is a Dump

Don't get me wrong - Vobster Quay Inland Dive Centre is a well-equipped dive location.

But there's no getting away from the fact it's a dump. Not that it's very different from other dive centres I've been to or heard about. They're all dumps.

It's curious how an old car, disused aeroplane or a boat that's past it's sell-by date suddenly become more interesting when it's sunk in an equally redundant quarry. Every weekend a fair proportion of the UK's diving community head for one of these holes in the ground, spending their precious recreation time swimming around flooded junk yards.

Today was my first dive in Vobster. During my hour underwater (two 30 minute dives) I encountered several sunken boats, a sliced-up aeroplane, the bridge section from a ship and a garden gnome with a fishing rod, complete with fish. According to their website and map I missed out on various other features including submerged cars and an industrial tumble drier.

The only aquatic life I encountered were hordes of trainee divers, mainly clustered around the many underwater platforms.

I didn't take up diving to see everyday objects in a slightly unusual environment. A disused boat or car isn't any more interesting, to me, for having been sunk.

To be fair, the main function of inland dive centres is to provide an opportunity for diver training and practice. They tend to be old quarries, filled with water, and without the various pieces of discarded machinery they'd be featureless pools where divers would quickly become either bored or lost. Or both.

The apparently random assortment of random rubbish is in fact a collection of carefully placed landmarks, allowing divers to navigate their way around underwater while giving them something to look at. It's also a great way of re-using old stuff, although I don't know how environmentally friendly it is. I assume the stuff is cleaned of toxins, such as oil, before it's tossed in.

I'll probably have to go to Vobster at least one more time to complete my training, and if I keep diving I might dip into an inland site once in a while. But I'm much more interested in diving in places where there's lots of marine life to look at, or interesting underwater features to explore.

That said, our seas have also been used as dumps for hundreds, if not thousands of years!