Members of Mid Herts Divers, Potters Bar and Stortford Divers enjoyed a great expedition to Lochaline, Sound of Mull on Coast of Scotland last week, with some really good wreck diving, lots of marine life, comfortable boat, great accommodation and food.

We stayed at the Lochaline Dive Centre’s newly refurbished Dive Lodge on a bed, breakfast and evening meal basis and thanks Rod, what a great choice that was! Not only was the accommodation very good but the Dive Centre’s Cordon Bleu chef, Gordon cooked up a superb range of food including a small amount of shellfish freshly “harvested” as appetisers on a couple of evenings. The Dive Centre's boat "Sound Diver" was very spacious and was with a lift was very stable and comfortable to use. In addition, an on-board compressor meant we could get top-offs between dives, although some in the party did make use of the 300 bar nitrox and trimix available from the Centre. The boat was skippered by Lee and crewed by Steph who were more than willing to help out with Chartwork and Position Fixing training that was done whilst we were there.

The highlight of the trip were the wrecks, which were very accessible and also generally covered in a complete carpet of marine life, mainly Plumrose Anemones thus satisfying both the “wreckies” and the “marine life divers” in our party. The wrecks were brought to life by Mark who runs the Lochaline Dive Centre who took time out to present 3D visualisations of the wrecks using WreckSightsoftware courtesy of ADUS to aid dive planning. Wrecks dived included The Hispania, The Shuna, The Rondo – the classic wreck on a near vertical slope running from 9 to 54 metres,   The Thesis and The Breda.   Mark and his wife Annabel are both Underwater Archeologists and have been involved in the exploration of the wreck of a small warship lost in 1653 that lies against the rocks beneath DuartCastle where we saw cannons and anchor. The site is a designated site and can only be dived under licence. Mark gave us a talk about the history of this wreck and we then took advantage of a tour DuartCastle exhibition of the wreck, possibly “The Swan” to put our diving in context.

Naturally, whilst in Scotland, we had to sample some of the local “produce” at the Tobermory Distillery in the picturesque town of the same name on Mull whilst we had a break between dives!

Many thanks to Rod Reeves for organising the trip including the minibus