Oban 1995

Having loaded the minibus the previous night so that we could 'get an early start', Karen woke us up at 3am. Up until then I never knew that early existed! On the road by 3.30am. An uneventful journey saw us at Oban pier by 5pm. There were a couple of large, comfortable looking dive boats moored up but where was Harry Slater? She turned out to be 'that small boat' moored alongside her grander companions!

After loading our gear, arranging who would sleep in which bunk and meeting Dave and Jan we set off to sample some of the delights of Oban (a meal was not provided on the Friday night). We were not then to see Oban again for a week.

First dive next day was the Rondo. need I say more? Other wrecks dived during the week included the Thesis, Shuna, Hispania, Aurania and of course the ubiquitous SS Breda. The wrecks were interspersed with scenic dives (to please us squidgy divers), although it soon became clear that Dave was more of a wreck man himself as some of the scenic dives did not live up to their build-up and it turned out that Dave had never dived some of them. Having said that there was lots of life to be seen and identified. The MCS id book was red hot all week.

On to the food! Any of you who have spoken to any of us who went on this trip will probably heard about the food. Sounds ominous? Not at all. We had been told befire we set off that the food was good so when on the first night Jan brought out roast chickens (this is not a typing error, there were 2 large roast chickens between 8 people) with all the trimmings - roast potatoes, veg etc. we were pretty impressed. the standard for the holiday was set and never wavered in either quality or quantity throught the week.

This was diving the easy way, all we had to do each day was give dave an idea of what we fancied diving and then get our kit ready. The boat was easy to dive from although the first couple of times up the ladder were a bit of a marathon until we mastered the technique. Once back on board Jan would immediately produce hot drinks all round. extremely welcome in the Sound of Mull in April!

Harry Slater will travel all over the Inner Hebrides, although when we were there owing to the poor weather we were largely restricted to the Sound of Mull. This was not really a problem as there was plenty of good diving available. We made it out as far as Coll one day and paid for our boldness with an extremely lumpy trip back to Tobermory!

We stayed overnight at Tobermory and Lochaline and were allowed shore leave every night. To get to the pub at Lochaline involved an extremely precarious trip in an overloaded rubber dingy powered by a 0.5 hp engine with the occupants' bottoms only centimetres above the sea surface.

Lasting impression: Cold (but what did we expect from west Scotland in April?), lots of good food, an abundance of Northern hospitality, great diving, beautiful scenery both above and below the surface, lots of sleeping (ask Dave Jones) and lastly but not least the Gillyspies.