ANGLESEY, MAY 2005

Travelling to Anglesey for a Bank Holiday weekend requires a certain amount of forethought.  Local knowledge clearly helps too – Ian, our Marshal for the weekend, left on Thursday to avoid the traffic.

 Those able to leave on Friday morning, before 11:00, had a fairly uneventful journey.  Those who left about 2:00 had interesting journeys (as in the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”).  Peggy managed to drive all the way from Newbury to Anglesey without using a motorway, while Patrick only used the M4 to Swindon.  Paul and Susan took an alternative approach, leaving Newbury at 5:00 am on Saturday morning, with a change of car at Birmingham Airport.

 Our meeting at the White Eagle pub at 8:00 on Saturday evening was not entirely successful.  Graham, Paul and Fiona were the first to arrive, at 8:35, quickly noticing that final orders for food were at 9:00, with Ian and Kevin C arriving soon after.  Telephone negotiations with the others led to placing of orders for six dinners on the dot of 9:00, which was unfortunate as there were seven arrivals at about 9:15.

 Saturday morning dawned wet, windy and rough.  Ian’s fallback plan of a day at the Vivian Quarry at Llanberis in Snowdonia was rapidly agreed upon, Paul and Susan diverting their journey to join us at the site.

 The Vivian Quarry forms a small part of the huge slate mines at Llanberis, the lowest 20m now being flooded.  As a dive site it is very family friendly with a huge car park for the adjacent Slate Museum and the narrow gauge railway, with further tourist attractions in Llanberis (including the railway to the top of Snowdon).

 Bedford BSAC had organised a similar trip and with about a dozen divers from each club the site was fairly crowded. 

 Being a slate quarry, the water is crystal clear.  Everybody except for Paul U and Graham chose to dive (twice!!).  Almost all of the group seemed to be closet high divers and chose to jump in from the high platform (2-3m).  We started the dives as pairs/threesomes, but being such a small quarry it was more like a group thing.  In the quarry were 2 small boats, a Landrover, a bicycle, a toilet and a small building which had been covered in gnomes.  Paul A probably missed these underwater attractions as he was lucky enough to dive with Ian and spent most of his dive performing OOA drills.  Exiting from the water was achieved by climbing out using a rather handy ladder.  All divers are now “members” at Vivian (and £10 lighter).

 In the evening we met up at the White Eagle again before moving on to the Agra Balti House, a take away with a small dining room.  A quick trip to the off-licence was required, given the absence of a restaurant licence, and the one other couple eating at the restaurant, better prepared than us, lent us their bottle opener (several times).  One might have expected service at a take-away to be fairly rapid, but this was not the case, the meal being served about two hours after ordering (by which time we were all fairly happy).

 On Sunday morning the weather was much better, though there was still quite a large swell.  We were beach launching from Borthwen Bay, below the White Eagle, to which access was obtained via a very narrow road between stone walls (150 mm wider than the boats) with numerous 90^o bends.  Kennet got away safely but, by the time Newbury followed about three minutes later a Council employee had turned up to enforce the new registration and launch fees (he even brought the new sign with him).  Even he felt a bit embarrassed to charge us £28 to launch across a beach with no facilities whatsoever while the car park was free.

 At near low tide on a fairly flat beach, launching was awkward.  It was a case of reversing the trailers well into the sea until the tow vehicle rims were in the water, half dropping the boats onto the sand bottom and then pulling the trailers out from under the boats.  Recovery was going to be more challenging.

 The first dive site was to be the wreck of the Hermine.  Unfortunately the wreck is at the foot of a cliff and with the heavy swell it was clear that this was not the place to put divers.  Three pairs were put into about 15m of water about 75m offshore to work their way in.  However, the swell was quite noticeable at that depth and closer inshore, at 12m, it was becoming hazardous and all pairs gave up and went on a drift dive.  While the scenery was not very exciting, the marine life was very different to Dorset, particularly the profusion of Sunstars, a starfish with 15 short (25mm) yellow legs attached to a pink (75mm) body.

 The others chose not to dive, so we followed up with a visit to the dive shop for refills and advice on suitable dive sites (the main advice being to throw away the book that Ian was using).  Ian’s sense of distance had deserted him and he sent most people off to buy lunch from a shop just round the corner (about a mile, or more).  He then took pity and followed by boat to pick them up.  Lunch was enlivened by close up observation of the launch of the inshore lifeboat (memo to the Committee: when are we getting such good launch equipment?) and by Graham disobeying the first rule of lifesaving by hurling himself into an unknown depth of water (about 400mm) and writing off his leg and his diving, but fortunately not his towing, for the rest of the weekend.

 The afternoon dive was on the wreck of the Missouri, a barque which sank in 1886.  There was a heavy swell and the cox’n was a bit worried about the visibility but the first pair (Patrick and Andy) said they would give it a go and immediately put up a delayed if the vis was bad.  Visibility turned out to be 2m but there was a heavy swell.  There was still plenty to see with many recognisable parts of ship, flat fish (unknown variety), bib and crabs. 

 Boat recovery was challenging.  With the tow vehicle sitting in the sea for several minutes while the boat was loaded, the wheels were already sinking before any towing commenced.  Patrick’s Discovery ended up on its differentials in the sand, but fortunately another 4-wheel drive was able to pull it out.  Graham had been stuck in quite enough sand in Saudi Arabia and chose to pull the trailer out with a tow rope from higher up the beach (he also wanted to avoid having to tell Simon that his Land Rover was 5m underwater, though Patrick had volunteered for this duty).

 Dinner was organised by Karen and Hannah at the Anchorage (Hotel), an excellent choice (at least for those who are not wildly enthusiastic about Indian cooking).

 Monday morning’s dive was to be the highlight of the weekend – the Segontium in 30m of water off the Welsh coast in the mouth of the Menai Straights.  With slack at 10:00 the timing was pretty good.  The weather was calm and sunny and the sea state could only be described as smooth, so the 11 mile journey, with the mountains of Snowdonia in front of us, was a pleasure

 Paul S took responsibility for the shot.  A 35m line was clearly too much for him, so he shortened it to 30m.  As he observed, the length was perfect: the shot was on the bottom but the shot chain wasn’t.  Unfortunately, as the shot was not in the wreck, the line drifted, so every pair went onto a slightly different site.  The third group (Peggy, Paul U and Louise), who had instructions to a circular search for the wreck, dropped straight onto the deck and didn’t bother to fix the shot, while the first two pairs and the last pair never saw the wreck, just lots of sand.

 Paul and Louise also thought it was the best UK dive they had done and Dave managed to catch himself a one clawed lobster and a crab!

 About half the party (those with work on Tuesday morning and only one driver) called it a day at lunchtime and headed back to Newbury with Kennet Diver. Six members stayed on, three of whom were staying overnight and three of whom had two drivers for the journey home.  A scenic dive followed on the headland outside the bay, enabling everyone to head home about 4:30.

 Graham and Paul U were staying on, but as neither was very enthusiastic about their (separate) B&Bs, they moved to join Peggy, taking over the rooms vacated by Kevin G, Louise and Jon.  Peggy’s recommendation was thoroughly justified, so if anyone is visiting Anglesey in the future five of us can recommend Gwynfrn House (01407 861107).

 On Monday evening the last three decided to go into Holyhead to find an Indian rather more upmarket than the Agra Balti House.  This was a pretty depressing experience, with street after street of rundown houses and empty shops, with numerous “For Sale” and “To Let” signs.  We ended up at the Shalimar, where we kept the three other customers company.  The sweets at the end of the meal were very good, but the king prawns can’t have been more than 10mm long.

 An excellent final breakfast, courtesy of Ann & Dennis and we headed back to Newbury at 0745.

 Thanks are due to Ian for organising the trip, to Patrick and Graham for towing, and to Simon for lending his Land Rover.

The team:  Ian McDean, Paul Usher, Paul Ashworth (and Fiona), Paul and Susan Sanders, Kevin Gamble, Kevin Crocker, Patrick Holmwood (and Karen), Andy Weightman (and Hannah), Graham Heald, Louise Waland (and Jon and Amelia)

Pictures can be seen here..