Two weeks that changed my life!

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So (following on from my last post, http://www.mylot.com/post/3070042/learning-to-scuba-dive) I determined that I would get through two weeks of ‘ET’ in chilly Cornwall in March order to get the qualification I needed to visit those wonderful exotic coral reefs. After a long drive in a crowded car to the Lizard (Britain’s most southerly point, with a rugged rocky coastline) we were booked into a caravan park where we were to stay in vans of 6 people. It got off to a bad start as several of the people I was sharing a caravan with didn’t really know the two novices they were grouped with and decided they would rather be with their friends, leaving me and the other novice, a pleasant but slightly over-friendly guy, alone together and too shy to go and knock on someone else’s door. Luckily after a few days the DO realised and moved everyone around and then it was a lot more friendly. The diving started badly too, as I fell over on the shingly beach wearing all the heavy kit before I even got to the water and had to be helped up like a beetle stuck on its back. But the first dive beneath that grey, uninviting-looking water was a revelation; there was a whole new world under there! And the instructors, who had themselves been the novices only a year or two before, were so lovely they made everything OK. Previously I always disliked swimming in the sea because the feel of seaweed wrapping around my legs gave me the creeps! Now though it was totally different, seeing what was really there – and it was amazing! So much more interesting than I had ever dreamed, I couldn’t wait to get back in the water! It wasn’t just about the diving though; there is nothing like spending 24 hours a day with people to really get to know them. And we were not just sitting around waiting to be taken for a dive; we did everything ourselves as we were based at an isolated shingly beach with no facilities whatsoever. All the club members pitched in to tow the boats down the extremely narrow roads, launch them, drive them, find the dive sites, drop off and pick up the divers, help each other in and out of the water, as well as do our own dives, fix broken kit, compress our own air, make our own sandwiches for lunch, and at the end of the day recover the boats, clean everything up, refuel, drive back to the caravans, cook and eat meals together and then party until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any more. Some people did get through the fortnight without doing much but they were the ones who didn’t get much out of it and didn’t come back. It was a real work hard/play hard ‘holiday’ but it was amazing, somehow more intense than ordinary life, and many of the ‘old hands’ who had moved away from the club came to ET knowing that everyone else would also be there. It’s not an overstatement to say it changed my life. I've added a montage of some British marine wildlife. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2017.