Heading up the A1 to Northumberland to dive the Farne Islands is a fair old trip, but the rewards can be fantastic. The Farnes are well known to divers for the chance to dive with grey seals.
I was gratefully for the civilised start to the first day as we got up for brekky about 8 o’clock. Myself, Caroline, Matt, Jo and our very own DO Gav met up on the Friday morning at Stan Hall’s house in Beadnell, where we all received the standard greasy fry-up, served by Captain Birdseye himself - Stan! He’s a true character, funny and entertaining but can talk for England. It’s difficult to get away sometimes…
At Seahouses harbour we waited a little while for our boat the Hope of Life to arrive. The skipper was called Eddie, he is an ex fisherman, who worked the North Sea for over 30 years. His reading of the sea was second to none, but some of his seafaring terms were lost on our party. At one point on the trip Eddy said ‘the sea is freshening’ to which Matt replied – ‘does that mean it’s getting better?’ sadly a freshening sea is quite the opposite. A mix of thick geordie accent and old sailors terminology made Eddie tough to understand sometimes, but he was a good skipper with a sense of humour and a strong liking for the Only Fools and Horses series.
Our first dive was the wreck of the Somali. This was a steamship sunk in WW2 by German dive bombers. She lies in about 30m and it is a big wreck. I won’t go into the details too much as that is covered very well by the DIVER wreck tour No13 - www.divernet.com/wrecks/wtour130300.htm. We all enjoyed the dive and Matt found some old glass jars on the wreck intact and some with their contents still inside. Unfortunately they seemed to hold some kind of clear engineering oil, and his treasure wasn’t going to pay off the mortgage!
That afternoon we dived the Blue Caps, part of a small island. It was a scenic dive to 16m, with lots of life typical of the north of England – big sea urchins, large wrasse, and some creatures you don’t often see in the south – Butterfish (or Gunnels) and colourful Sunstars. Halfway through the dive Jo and I found some seals (or I suspect they found us). They really are wonderful. Although they are quite large animals, and before seeing them for the first time, some divers might be cautious in meeting a powerful animal in their natural environment. Somehow any such thoughts are banished from your mind as soon as they appear. Farne Island seals are used to divers and they seem to really love to interact with divers, in many cases instigating play and investigating the bubble blowing intruders. I got some video of one of the seals and I believe Matt will be able to post it on the club website – well worth checking out.
That evening, after filling our cylinders at Stan’s fill it yourself compressor, we ate at the lobster pot restaurant in Beadnell. A superb meal that cost £25, and washed down with a couple of bottle of house plonk, not a bad first day!
Day two, the sun was out but the wind was a blowing a touch from the South. That meant our first dive on the wreck of the Britannia was off, being too rough to pick up divers safely on the ladder. Instead we dived North Wamses, another very small island in the lee of the more sheltered Northern side. Another scenic dive, with lots of life – I found a starfish I’ve never seen before – it subsequently turn out to be a purple sunstar. The Farnes are the Southernmost tip of their range – they like it cold apparently. Also found a green Worm Pipefish, like a long green shoestring and another first for me. Whilst Matt and I got on the boat, Eddie got a call that two divers were last seen flowing at a fast rate though a small gap in the islands, caught in the tidal stream heading into the Southerly rough seas! Low and behold, it turned out to be Gav and Jo. They managed to get on the boat whilst Eddie was getting a bit worried, in the end he seemed to actually enjoy the challenge of picking them up, but told them both ‘you’re very naughty!’ Suitably chastised we headed home to Seahouses for an early finish, as the tides and wind were preventing any further diving that day.
We headed for Bamburgh castle armed with kites bought at Seahouses and went flying them on the superb wide sandy beach. Windy weather has its benefits!
Day three, Sunday, started much earlier and we dived the Knivestone in the morning on a calm but foggy sea. There are many ships wrecked on the knivestone but the most likely wreckage we dived on is what is left of the Jan Van Ryswyck. I dived with Jo again and swam from the rocky edge of the island north east until we picked up a debris field. We followed that until we came across a large iron box some 8ft across. It was heavily corroded and encrusted with dead men’s fingers. I little further on was a dark shape at the edge of our viz. This turned out to be the boilers, sat on their ends, like huge oil barrels, with one leaning on the other. We investigated the wreckage and I took a picture of Jo looking through one boiler. We then made our way up from about 20m slowly traversing the rocky wall up to 6m. Up went the DSMB and we were back on board in no time. The others seemed to have found the rest of the wreck – the engine, but not the boilers, so between us we covered the whole lot.
Second dive was just off of Big Harker Island. Here there were masses of grey seals. The dive consisted of a huge seal play session. We bobbed about just under the surface in around 2-3m watching and playing with the silver torpedoes. I caught sight of some tiny nudibranchs, and a hermit crab More seal video action and a dive time of almost 1¼ hours made for a great dive.
Final Day – well actually we didn’t manage to dive on the Monday. It was too foggy to even leave the harbour, and so we had an early journey back to Essex.
A great trip, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t been yet, or even those that haven’t been for a while. It gets the Chairman’s Seal of Approval. I see from the dive planning meeting Steve Barnes is looking at running a trip in September 2006, so keep your diaries free!
Stuart Wilson
Trip Facts
Diving with – Stan Hall (Farne Diving) – cost £45 per day per person including B&B and air. Suitable for Ocean Divers, apart from the Somali which because of the depth is suited to Sports Divers. Superb seal encounters!
Accomodation – Stan’s Stable chalets – all en-suite with tea/coffee facilities and tv’s.
Boat – Hope of Life, a hard boat with room for about 8 divers. Ladder exit and a head. Tea/coffee onboard, lunches bought from the corner shop in Beadnell.
Travel – about 5½ hrs up the A1 without any delays. We benefited from going on a Thursday and coming back on a Monday – thus avoiding weekend traffic.
This article first appeared in the September 2005 edition of Billericay Diver
