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June 2010
Club Dive Lulworth
Cove
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On
Sunday the 27th of June 2010, a select bunch of keen divers
from SCSSAC made their way down to Lulworth Cove in Dorset.
It was an excellent day for the weather, with bright blue skies,
warm
temperatures
and no wind on the beach. This gave superb flat sea conditions,
assisting shore entries. We agreed to meet up about 08:30am.
The main driver for this was to avoid the tourists, and ferry
our kit on site whilst it was still high water.
Parking
was easy at this time, We quickly dumped off equipment and
trolleys as near to the path as possible before parking the
cars. A short drag with the trolleys took us to the the top
of Stairhole, a fantistic natural rock amphitheatre sculpted
out of the cliff. Pretty as it was, it was a difficult descent
down the eroded path onto the pebble beach below..
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Left:-
Stair hole, its entry points and pebbly beach. The descent to
the beach is off to the right.
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Above:-
Two minute video of entry and a shore dive around
the marine habitat of Stair hole and Lulworth Cove. All mannar
of underwater gardens can be found here. Filmed on a HERO GO-PRO
HD camera mounted
on my torch
handle.
Below:-
The interesting rock strata of stair hole.
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We
took advantage of the high tide, and carefully kitted up on the
large rocks and pebbles, then gingerly entered the water. There
was a large pool in stair hole which fed out through arches in
the cliff to the open water. We usd this to carry out buoyancy
checks, before rouding up our small group and heading out through
the eastern arch.
Underwater
visibility was about 5 metres, the seabed covered in a variety
of kelp, grasses and underwater plants. We glimpsed occasional
fish and spider crabs, but the fauna was surprisingly deserted
of undersea creatures. Our dive took us out to a depth of 9 meters,
before we began
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heading
east.
Our route took us over and through kelp beds, as we headed in
the direction of Lulworth Cove. Unfortunately due to a number
of minor issues, we didn't quite make it round to the cove and
ended the dive midway along.This led to a heavy surface swim
around and into the cove. Surface condtions were good for this,
and all 5 divers managed it in spite of a slight opposing current.
All that remained was to drag ourselves up the beach of Lulworth
Cove, drop the kit, and investigate one of those fine grokkle
Inns for lunch. Anyone for crab hotpot?
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Lulworth
Cove and the point we had to swim around to get in.
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Conclusions
Access
to stairhole is difficult and requires some determination. There
are opportunities to swim straight out instead of around to Lulworth,
large truck sized boulders are reported at the 10 metre depth point.
However, this would require a return back in through stair hole
and a climb back up the steep crumbly path. |
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