Scotland won't let you do that. Ever. It gets under your skin and demands attention. And when you've finished with it, you leave a part of yourself there. Watch 'Local Hero' for details........
Louise drove. We picked up our friend Jason from Port Talbot and spent the night with another friend Mike at his home near Gloucester. Up at 06:00 and Mike drove the first leg, the four of us and four sets of dive it in his car. Drivers swapped, coffee was drank, and LPG (the car has a conversion) was filled. By 18:00 we were sitting in the loudest bar I'd ever been in. In Inverness. A dozen or so Inverness Caledonian Thistle supporters went through their repertoire before heading off to their evening game. We met Dickie and Ann, as well as Andy, from Neath SAC, and our diving companions for the week. Curry was eaten later.
By10:30 am the following morning we were at Scrabster, waiting to board the ferry.
Slight hitch - the ferry operator required photo identification. Something to do with the fact that Islanders get a discount, and 'outsiders' had been trying to claim this too, we found out later. Our 20 year old photos in our diving logbooks were all we had, and that was good enough. A strong Northwesterly wind made Louise look like a badly photoshoopped fake, as we passed The Old Man of Hoy, but it was genuinely this windy.
I got a more brooding shot of the sea stack later, as the others enjoyed a beer in the bar.
We landed, and offloaded all the diving gear onto our dive boat for the week; The slow, but strong, stable and warm John L
Stromness was beautiful. Narrow streets, floored with ancient flagstones, and just dripping with history.
Just about every house displayed evidence of the maritime history of the place. From Killer whale bones, museums, plaques to seafaring heroes, to ancient wells where historic vessels watered.
It was clear within an hour of landing, and well before we headed off to Lidl in Kirkwall to stock up with food for the week, that we were not just going to drop in for a couple of dives, as we'd thought before hand. There was a huge amount to see, above and below the waves, here in the Orkneys.
An early start on Sunday. We were due to be on the boat by 08:30. We left the house and walked the flagstones towards the John L.
The John L is a converted river tug. Extremely stable, with a dry area for between dives, plenty of seating and a galley. Below decks is a wet area for suiting up and storage. The deck itself is large and spacious. She has a compressor and carries Oxygen for Nitrox mixing.
As we readied ourselves for our first dive I didn't know what to expect. Seven warships from the German Grand fleet, scuttled in 1919 remain. Many others have been raised in salvage operations over the years. Those that remain are the three Konig class heavy battleships, the Konig, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Markgraf, and four light cruisers, the Brummer, Coln II, Dresden II and Karlsruhe II. We were to start with the Dresden.
It's impossible to put into words the feelings one gets when diving on something like this. Lying on her port side in 30m of water is a huge 100 year old German battleship. Her 6" guns pointing forwards. It would be easy to spend several hours looking into every nook and cranny, swimming down deeper, then up over her hull. Surrounded by fish, and with plenty of encrusting life. Quite frankly, I'd never seen anything like this in over 20 years of diving. Truly awe inspiring.
As this was our first time here, I wanted to make sure we didn't get lost, so once we'd relocated the shot line, we didn't stray far. With 8 metres of visibility it was difficult to get lost anyway. We made our way up the line and back to the boat. Buzzing. The others had seen it all before.
We dived the Karlsruhe, Coln, Brummer and Kronprinz Wilhelm too. Some of them more than once. We also dived the F2, a WWII german escort boat and a barge that sank whilst salvaging her, the YC21. I managed to get this shot of the 6" gun on the F2.
The conditions were not great for photography. Many of the wrecks lie with their superstructure facing North, and with largely overcast October skies, it was easily light enough to dive by without torches, but not great for the camera.
