Icebreakers January 8th & 9th 2005
This was the 5th consecutive UKRS Icebreakers
that I had attended, and now marks my only trip of the year to Stoney Cove. We
traditionally have this get together on the first weekend of the year. However
as this would have landed on New Years Day Dave Appleby the “organiser”
moved it to the second weekend. Dave was unable to attend his own trip as he had
to go into hospital to have his shoulder fixed, again!!
Maria again managed to get some of booked into the Ibis in
Rugby, however she was not well enough to come along, so that left myself, Danny
Burchett, Nigel Hewitt, Calum Scott, Adrian Smith and Daniel Taylor as the only
ones at this location.
When we got to Stoney on the Saturday morning it was quite
disappointing to see that there were only about another 8 or 10 known UKRS
people there. Of course there may have been more but as we didn’t have the
UKRS flag this year then we had no official meeting point.
I dived with Daniel and Calum on the first day and we were
fortunate enough to borrow Nigel’s underwater scooter. This was my first time
with one of these and a strange experience not to have to move your fins. Having
said that Daniel once branded me as the laziest diver that he has ever dived
with due to my lack of finning.
For the evening those of us at Rugby went to a local pub in
a taxi, I can’t recall the name of it but the food was superb, most of us had
Bambi steaks (venison).
On the Sunday Calum wanted to try out Nigel’s inverted twin set so Adrian and I volunteered to take him down to the hydrobox.
Maybe Calum should have mentioned before we went in that:
1) He had never been as deep as 36 metres before
2) That he has a very low narcosis tolerance
However all went well despite him seeing lots of pink
elephants swimming alongside us.
So that’s my only visit to Stoney until next year’s get together. As for the highlights of the weekend.
1) Calum’s chav drysuit
2)
A group from Cambridge Uni who inflated a giant snowman.
Nigel has put together a web page for this get together along with lots of pics which show both of the above.