Louis Shied

We got to Thurlstone and the car park at Milton Sands for ~9 and caught up with Geoff and Derek. Weather fine and sunny, ENE and ~10mph. Sea flat calm and vis looked great.

Geoff and Abigail dived together, and I went in with Derek. We set off from the corner of the beach snorkelling over to the front of the rocks. Eventually I located some frames and then one of the boilers. We went down and had a look around these. Nice lobster (perhaps the 'OAP' the parking attendant told me about later), and a great little clump of fan worms. I managed to scare the worms, but they came back out so I think Derek did eventually get his picture. One of the boiler pipes had 4-5 leopard spot gobies inside. Wrasse were everywhere, and bib beneath the metal work [Abigail saw a John Dory].

There's an interesting criss-cross structure; not sure what this is. And we looked around a few more big pieces and along the propshaft and then, after about an hour, decided to head back to the shore and look around the reefy bits on the way. Nice and light, plenty of colour and bright clean sandy patches. Lots of tiny prawns. Halfway, I found another lobster and lost Derek. I had a look round for him and sent a blob up. And that was about it. Short surface swim back in.

There's a little bit of a walk down from the car park and and across the beach but well worth it for lovely relaxed dive. Enjoying the lovely views and fresh air and so on, we walked over to Rocky's hut for chippies (there were 'nae pasties'!) and a cup of tea.