The Ice is Nice: Come on In - Part I
Posted By Steve Millard on 20 June 2005
In winter last year I was lucky enough to meet a group of divers who dive at Dorothea Quarry in North Wales. I had learnt the basics of Freediving from a course in the SETT in Gosport and had done an excellent open water course in the Red Sea. With the right kit, the right people and a bucketful of motivation even winter diving in the UK can be fun. [Editor's Note: "Mad dogs and Englishmen...."]
Up until now all of my diving holidays abroad (Free and SCUBA) have taken me south to places like the Red Sea, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean,and the Great Barrier Reef, but this year things changed. Alun George extended the kind offer he had received ,when diving in Dahab, from a group of Swedish divers: to visit them and go ice-diving in their winter months in Sweden at a place called Örebro. To give you an idea of where Örebro is in relation to the UK it is slightly further north than Scapa Flow in the Orkneys -you then head east just past Norway and stop before the Baltic Sea.
Three of us (Alun George, George Stoyle and myself) started our trip with a 6-hour car journey to Luton airport to catch our 2 pence return flight with Ryan air. It was an early morning flight so we decided to get there late evening and have a few hours sleep in the airport before we checked in. The floor was surprisingly comfy (quick tip: there are not many seats at Luton for sleeping). We got over the normal problems of trying to get a monofin on the plane (my last trip to Sardinia it got the best seat in the house - in the cockpit) and after a couple of leisurely hours flying time we landed at the tiny Vasteras airport.
The first thing I remember about Sweden was getting off the plane and taking in a nice big breath and filling my lungs with refreshing cold and crisp, clean air, none of that normal ‘recycled through traffic’ city stuff, this smelt like new.
- Bookmark with :
- what are these?
