Diving- a family activity? We made it so at Porthkerris. September 12, 2006
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, UK diving , trackback
Diving- a family activity? We made it so at Porthkerris.
Diving on the whole it can be argued, is not a very child or family friendly sport. It is not easy to be able to marry the two together. Recently we have seen there are a couple of dive centres abroad that advertise crèche facilities but upon closer inspection we have found that the crèche is only available for a morning or an afternoon or the times don’t tie up with the boat times for day trips. In the UK I have not found anybody yet actively advertising facilities for children whilst parents are diving. This doesn’t however mean that there option isn’t there.
Both Lisa and I dive and having four children under 7 means that diving together is not always possible. This is one of the reasons why we enjoy going to Porthkerris so much. We can make it a family trip and all can get involved. Granted we need to take babysitters with us but there is enough to do to make it enjoyable for the children as well. So this summer we took our second trip of the year down to Porthkerris, off the Lizard in Cornwall and this time we took the children with us. We did this last year aswell in May but this time with it being August it was a wee bit warmer.
We arrived on the Friday evening and set up our tents, camping along the beach is what makes Porthkerris so inviting for bringing the children. Because we arrived quite late it was tents up and straight to bed. As we had a late ropes-off on the Saturday we spent the morning, having a campsite breakfast and playing on the beach with the children before sorting out a bit of lunch for them and handing them onto the babysitters who had come down with us camping. We were booked onto the Celtic Cat, skippered by Mike, and the plan for the day was the Pen-Win Wall and then onto the Corellia Rivers
Entry from my log book – MAX Depth 28.7m Dive Time 53 mins. Water Temp 15 deg. Nice wall dive on the manacles reef off the lizard. Wall reaches from 8m to 42m, we set our limit at 25m so that we could do our second dive on Corellia River. The shot was sat at 20m , we finned from the shot off onto the wall and made our way up and along the wall, fantastic colours on the wall from all the plumose anemones, although very small. Saw a few wrasse and crabs around.
Corellia River – Max Depth 25.44m Dive Time 50 mins. Temp 15 deg Fantastic rummage dive on the corellia river, sank when it hit a magnetic mine it was trying to sweep from Falmouth bay. Blown to pieces but lots of plates and holes to have a look around and try and tempt the very large congers out of. Really good dive, lots of life, big shoal of fish, not sure what. Near perfect ascents from Lisa, even though she nearly ran out of air!!
After two very enjoyable dives we headed back for the customary beach BBQ. Another reason why diving from Porthkerris beach is so good for families. The children really enjoyed the BBQ along with all the others from our group who were there.
More on this weekend can be found on Yorkshire Divers, click here
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