Oban diving
Sunday, October 29th, 2006I’ve been sitting with this blog entry for quite a few weeks now, but having come so far, I don’t want to leave it out, so here goes…
On the recommendation of a friend, we left on our Oban road-trip at 06h00… Which gave us plenty of time to see the sun-rise as we whizzed out of London on blissfully quiet roads. :yawn: Birmingham by 08h00 and Lancaster by 10h30, UK roads don’t get much better than that.
Aside from some minor navigational errors around Glasgow, and drenching rain most of the way, our drive went pretty smoothly and we made the entire trip in 10 hours! The last 15 minutes took us onto the tiny island of Seil (pronounced “seal”) over one of the narrowest and severest blind rises I have ever enocountered!
The Clachan Bridge (also fondly known as the “Bridge over the Atlantic”) spans a narrow finger of ocean that separates Seil from the rest of Scotland. And while picturesque, it makes for very nervous drivers as you can’t see anyone coming until you’re well over the hump and on your way down the other side!
(We braved this bridge 8 times in the 5 days we were up there because the closest place for air-fills was Oban on the mainland.
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Scotland has a bit of a reputation for having weather that is not particularly good – and it was trying hard to live up to it on our first day.
The weather report was predicting winds of gale force 9 so the boat wouldn’t take us out.
One of our number was an Oban veteran however, and had several ideas for shore dives. We all got into a huddle on the dockside and eventually picked out our site, then it was back into the cars for the long drive inland.
True to form, the sun came out and shone brightly on our 2.5 hour journey to Loch Fyne along plenty of idyllic “single-track” country roads.
The diving at the other end of the drive was pretty good – even if it did mean getting changed in our cars (because it was pissing down with rain again by then) and preparing our gear on the non-existent verge of a road barely big enough to pass as a drive-way in South Africa.
It felt pretty odd wading into what looked like a giant lake, but which was also – very definitely – sea water. *cough-splutter* It was very different to diving in the channel, the place was just crawling with tiny hermit crabs, and there were lots of big brilliant red sea urchins dotted around.

The next day’s weather forecast was a little better and we did actually get to go out on the dive boat.
But it wasn’t so good that we could go out to sea on that day or the one that followed…
So we did some other sea loch sites, seeing more of the life that’s unique to these slightly unusual environments (sea-inlet lakes), like squat lobsters, cup corals and sealoch anemones.
All in all, despite the lack of adventurous sites in the open sea, we thoroughly enjoyed the colourful and creature-rich places that we did get to visit, and came away with some really neat photos which I’ve put up onto Flickr if these shots whet your appetite.

This week, the peaceful citizens of Westwick Gardens were shocked by a heinous felony. Some time between the afternoon of Sunday 22 October and the evening of Thursday 26 October, this VW polo was broken into and ransacked.
We’ve enjoyed 

Tomorrow morning, early, we’re setting off on our longest UK motor trip to date.To




For all that, I think the building has a certain charm. It’s got a pretty courtyard in the centre, a lovely swooping curve along the New Change street side, and its location right next-door to
Details on the company’s new building (shown above) can be found 