Plymouth 2005

We went to Plymouth for the May bank holiday. We havn't got any photos for the trip, though, because the wind was strong all weekend. We didnt fancy risking expensive cameras on RIBS being thrown about by the waves. Plymouth is a busy naval base, so the atmosphere was very different to a lot of the sites we normally dive. We don't usually hear messages over the radio warning about battleships firing live ammunition! The bars are sorta different, too. Lots of them are navy hangouts - genteel gastropubs they are not, so don't go asking for guacamole with your chips.

We also visited the aquarium in Plymouth, which is brilliant.

Heres what we thought of the sites we dived.

Scylla Reef

England's first deliberately created artificial reef , the Scylla is a former naval frigate which was sunk just outside Plymouth in 2003. The Scylla Reef, as it is now called, is intended as both an attraction for divers and a research site to examine how marine organisms colonise new sites. Thats the scientific bit. The description our dive club used was " Like an underwater adventure playground". Although there is not a huge amount of life on it yet, it was a clear favourite, not least because it has been arranged so that it is possible to penetrate any part of the wreck and still be within sight of a safe exit. We did three dives on this in a single long weekend.

More about the Scylla

The Rosehill

Mostly flattened. Viz was @*#*. In short, we weren't impressed. But we did see a huge conger eel lurking down under the flattened metal plates ... maybe its worth investigating in calmer weather.

James Eagan Layne

This used to be the most popular dive site in Plymouth, and we could see why. It was torpedoed in 1945, and by now it is absolutely covered in soft corals and anemones, and swarming with fish. It is only around 20 metres or so deep at the highest point, so on bright days you get stunning effects as the sunlight filters down through the superstructure. The James Eagan Layne is like a child's fantasy of what a shipwreck must look like.

More about the James Eagen Layne

return to dive trips 2005...