Dene had arranged this trip with 2 boat dives on the Saturday and 2 on the Sunday. Dave and I had taken the last spaces on the first dive Saturday and the last dive on Sunday.

The 2 of us travelled down on Saturday morning, as we had to be at the quay at 11 am. The plan was to dive the wreck of the Bretagne which involved a 40 minute, (9 miles) trip aboard the boat that we had chartered, the Atlantis 2, skippered by Nick Bright.

Nick told us that the shot was on the bow and that there was quite a strong current running from stern to bow. So we dropped down the line, through a plankton bloom, and arrived at the bow. This was my first experience of an “intact” wreck and it was a very nice sight, covered in anemones and the marine life was terrific. Viz also good at about 6 metres.

Unfortunately there was a lot of fishing line on the wreck, so caution was necessary.

Having done a tour of the wreck I had to call the dive after 22 minutes due to losing 45 bar of air prior to the dive when my O seal blew.

As Dave and I were not booked for the afternoon boat dive we headed off to Brixham for a shore dive. We followed the harbour wall out and had good dive which lasted for 48 minutes. Quite a few large crabs about, and some fish nearer to the shore.

At the end of a good day’s diving what else could we do but meet up and talk about it again. I was staying at a hotel in Paignton while Dave and some of the others were staying at a caravan site on the outskirts. A good evening but a 3 mile walk home later was not what I had planned.

We didn’t have a dive booked for the Sunday morning so we had a walk around the town before returning to the harbour ready for the boat at mid day. Despite being fully booked only 4 of us turned up.

We were dropped at Horsestone rock and then had a slow drift at 14 to 15 metres for 50 minutes. There was quite a lot to see: anemones, dead men’s fingers, several types of flatfish, and lots of dogfish. Prior to surfacing Nick had asked us to send up a DSMB. This was the first time that I had deployed one and so Dave and I performed a joint effort. A very relaxing dive to finish off the weekend.

All that remained was to stop at a pub near Taunton to fill in the log books.