Gildenburgh experience

For those of you who have braved Gildenburgh once, I write this article to confirm that the rumours are true, Gildenburgh does not mature over the years like a fine wine or mature cheese. Having completed my ocean diver training last year and returning this year to complete some sports diver training I can honestly say there was absolutely no improvement, it remains freezing cold, dark and menacing second time round.

I woke on the Sunday morning of 11th April with a heavy heart no bright sunshine to lift my spirits just the thought of what lie ahead. I had travelled up the night before with Alison who was also hoping to complete some sports diver drills and having seen the delightful accommodation Gildenburgh had to offer the year before we had booked into a B&B for the weekend. I mean after a days diving at Gildenburgh we deserved a little bit of luxury and there was of course always the risk that some very efficient Health and Safety Officer had finally got round to condemning those on site caravans.

After dragging ourselves out of bed and a good hearty full English breakfast Alison and I loaded our kit and headed for the lake. It is amazing what a large plate of fried food can do for a person, hell it was only another cold, dark lake and I must surely be used to them by now? With a belly full of bangers and beans I was ready for anything.

Once at the lakeside, with large cups of steaming tea John announced that my first dive of the day would be with Julia and Diane. The three of us quickly got together for a briefing and it was agreed that because I had lots of shiny new kit received at Christmas and for my birthday and because it was probably more or less the first dive of year for us all, we would jump in not worry about drills and just have a dive for the fun of it – yeah right, the good feelings of my bangers and beans was already beginning to wane.

Buddy checks completed, fins attached and my new computer lit up like the flight deck of concord I grit- ted my teeth and leapt off the pontoon to join Julia and Diane already in the water and looking as keen as mustard. Slowly and painfully my semi-dry suit filled with freezing water and as Julia cheerfully gave the decent signal I grimaced trying not to think of the pair of them in their woolly bears and dry suits, real divers get wet.

We descended down the shot line to the top of the double-decker bus and began our exploratory dive around its carcass. It is amazing how after a couple of months off during the winter it takes a while to get your kit sitting correctly, and your buoyancy neutral again and to be honest, I floundered around be- hind the pair of them in a cloud of silt for some time. Diane being as brave as a lion, in fact she is not that brave I just resemble a chicken when it comes to small dark spaces, penetrated the top deck of the bus whilst I clung to the side with Julia hovering mid-water, perfectly and with ease next to me (I hate her), obviously I am the only one that gets rusty during the winter months.

When finally I had lost the feeling in my fingers and toes and with the thought that I wouldn’t be able to hold my regulator in much longer if my teeth didn’t stop chattering I indicated to my buddies that I was cold and we began our ascents. Whilst ascending I experienced a ringing in my ears, great the cold had now numbed my brain as well.

I dragged myself and my kit out of water and headed for the warmth and comfort of the cafeteria, how stunning that wooden shack looks when you are soaking wet and freezing your arse off, it suddenly re- sembles a log cabin on the banks of Lake Geneva. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the cafeteria refuelling with more bacon and tea that I realised the ringing in my ears wasn’t in fact my brain in a state of deep freeze but the rapid ascent alarm on my new computer.

Oh well, just something else to remember and concentrate on as if getting to the surface in a fairly con- trolled manner wasn’t tough enough, I now have to focus on my wrist. Whose idea was the computer for Christmas?

I was happy blindly bobbing to the surface along with what I had originally thought were my smallest bubbles, clearly the smallest bubbles are so small you can’t actually see them and I have probably been rapidly ascending to the surface for the last year.

There was still no sign of the sun, palm trees or bronzed body boarders when I headed back to the lakeside for my second dive of the day. This time, new kit, freezing water, ringing computer and reels and drills to contend with.

We had a briefing and dry-run with our reels before kitting-up and plunging back into the water. Alison was going to start leading the dive with her reel and I would take over half way through which was a bit of a relief because I was still ploughing through the bottom of the lake churning up silt and was grateful for the opportunity to try and sort my buoyancy out undetected.

Alison was a legend with her reel and would be a hard act to follow particularly as my hands were al- ready shaking with the cold and for some strange reason I couldn’t lift my fins off the floor of the lake. I am convinced some supernatural force was holding them down, it couldn’t be my in ability at buoyancy control surely?

My drills were going well, the reel jammed immediately and I couldn’t even attach it to the platform, I then got that familiar feeling you get when the alarm clock fails to go off the morning you have an important meeting, the trains are delayed and it is lashing with rain. The feeling you get when you know everything is going to go pear shaped and that you should actually stay in bed for your own safety and that of those around you.

Yep, got the feeling and it all went pear shaped as expected. I don’t really want to recount the entire dive needless to say I got tangled in the line which resulted in Julia trying to free me while I battled to stay mid-water with a reel that had a mind of its own and continued to unravel despite my vain attempts to keep reeling it in and trying to keep everything taut. I think Julia may well have been the only thing that was taut that afternoon.

Back on dry land I congratulated Alison on passing her drills, through gritted teeth and with a false smile plastered on my face that looked vaguely like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. I am generally not a bitter person and can only assume that I must have been suffering from some sort of surface narcosis.

Back at the B&B that evening, Alison and I gloated over the fact we had en-suite facilities and had hot showers and decent beds to look forward to. I secretly chuckled at the thought of poor Diane and Kristian in their penicillin ridden caravan!

Everyone that was staying for day two met later that evening in the bar of our B&B for a couple of drinks and dinner, great news for Alison and I because it meant we only had to stumble upstairs to our beds.

John had arranged some pre-dinner entertainment which unfortunately wasn’t the Chippendales or a Full Monty take off as I had hoped, but a diving quiz. Hell spells I can’t even get my reel to work how the hell am I supposed to do air calculations in my head or answer technical diving questions?

Needless to say I was as successful at the quiz as I was at using a reel. Definitely a day to have stayed in bed and just to improve my mood Mark East walked away with first prize which was a huge Yorkie Easter Egg. Ahhh chocolate just what every failed female diver needs to boost her spirits at the end of tiresome day diving. However, according to Mark “Yorkie’s aren’t for girls” and he refused to share it. Trust me, if my reel had been to hand I would have lashed him to the chair and eaten every last mouthful in front of him, just to prove that any girl I know can take on a giant Yorkie. Then I remembered that my reel hadn’t in fact worked all day, oh well, I could have at least beaten him over the head with it. Reel nowhere to be seen though all I could do was hope he got spots from eating so much chocolate to himself.

I spent a couple of hours worrying about my reel whilst John and Mark dashed in and out of the lake completing various drills with those of us that were left and finally after drying up the urn of tea, I ventured outside and began kitting up.

Kit in place, buddy checks carried out, although god help me if I ever had to master or assist John in any shape or form, he wears more kit than the whole of Mikes Waterfront store and all I could do was focus on his octopus and inflate/deflate buttons the rest passing me by in blur, we jumped in and headed down the shot line.

Finding myself back at the bus, you never see a bus more than once in London so I count myself lucky seeing the same bus again in one weekend, I successfully attached my reel and we began our exploratory dive.

Don’t ask me how, it was more luck than anything else, but I managed to reel out around the lake to a platform where we practised some well needed fin pivots and buoyancy control and back again safely to the bus passing a rather bemused pike on the return journey, who was clearly as shocked at my control as I was. We had a look round the bus and then began our ascent back up the shot line, obviously a better dive because my ears weren’t ringing either.

An hour later the car was loaded, I had warm dry clothes on and we were all able to sit down to hot chocolates whilst John signed our log books and qualification records, another weekend at Gildenburgh was safely over.