Without a care in the world and in an excited frame of mind, I set off on my first open water dive to Capernwray, just off the M6 near Lancaster on a cold February morning. In retrospect, ignorance and stupidity may have been the cause of a fair measure of bravery over the years; anyway I should have realised that when the air temperature was 2 degrees then the water was going to be cold, very cold, and I should have hired a dry suit that didn’t let water in.

Capernwray is a disused limestone quarry which has been filled with icy cold water into which a selection of artefacts like helicopters and statues of horses have been placed as a distraction to divers as they succumb to hypothermia; before this happens though you have to get into the water.

Where do I start with this story!?.... It has to go down as the most unique bizarre diving days I have ever experienced….. Having put my name down for the ‘hard hat and chamber’ experience some time ago I was very excited to be joining 11 other fellow Excalibur members, many of whom had torn themselves away from their other halves on Valentines Day to participate in what Dave described as ‘something a bit different’ …

 

So here I was, alarm set for 7am, waking up thinking… ‘If I am getting up at this unearthly hour on a Sunday morning it must be a diving day’… so with car packed, dive computer and log book in my bag I set off to Appleton Roebuck ready to experience my deepest dive yet….. 50 metres!!! …. And I was told I wasn’t even going to get wet!! …. There was definitely going to be something very different about this….. And combined with diving with hard hat & suit equipment circa 1902...  this was definitely going to be something out of the norm…. even for Excalibur’s standards!!!