This was to be my first time at Dorothea Quarry in North Wales. It is quite some distance from my home in South Wales so I was staying with Andy Cox for the weekend, in Aberystwyth..

After a 2 hour drive to the quarry from Andy’s home we had to negotiate the “road” down to the “car park”, where met up with some of the members of Andy’s BSAC club, from Aberystwyth..

For the first dive we went around to the right and dropped down to 8 metres then dropped off to 25 metres and then followed the crane down to 35 metres. The water was very clear with up to 10 metres viz, pity that there were no fish to see. I was also quite surprised that the water was only 6 degrees, in fact when I later downloaded the profiles my computer had even registered 4.5 degrees at one point.

For the second dive we had a general tour around with a max depth of 24.5 metres. Found a swim through at about 20 metres and then finished the dive by coming up the wall and offgassing in the shallows.

After another night in the local Wetherspoons we set off for Dorothea early the next morning. Today I was diving with Tris from the University BSAC club, as Andy was showing another dive the ropes.

For the first dive we had a surface swim out to a shot line, then descended further down to the gnome garden at 41 metres (my deepest dive to date). After this we had a general tour around, didn’t have too long as my buddy was on air, while was still on Nitrox, albeit a rather lean mix.

The final dive saw us visit the crane again, at 32.5 metres. From her we had a look around and found some old cars and old quarry huts. We finished off going through the swim through at 20 metres before surfacing as Tris was low on air. This meant a longish surface swim back.

At the end of the day we visited Eric’s café again, 4 times in 2 days, not bad. Then is was back to Aber to drop off the gear and then a further 2 hours for me to get home.

A long but very enjoyable weekend.