UKDIVING
Cuttlefish on the Glen Strathallan
booking because they didn ’ t have sufficient bookings to open the place ! Hardly an enterprising policy , but we had been rehomed at characterful pub in the area .
Saeed , whose usual habitat is the lobby of a five-star beach resort , got there first and texted me : ‘ It ’ s a pub , bit grim ’. And in truth it was a bit ‘ boarding house ’, and everything smelled of chips . The lumpy twin beds were conspicuous by the absence of a dinky box of artisan chocolates and ‘ Welcome Saeed ’ rendered in local flora . But it was home .
What couldn ’ t be improved was the welcome we received from the
Burntwood guys , who were most accommodating of the two idiots who took up half the boat with their cameras . Then we hit the Scylla , and I had my best dive of the year . You see , for all the stories I ’ d heard from everyone on the UK diving scene , no-one had ever told me just how beautiful the wreck had become since it was sunk back in 2004 .
We descended in glorious sunshine and 8-10 metre visibility ; I saw that the deck and port side hull were festooned with Alcyonium digitatum soft corals , plumose anemones and golden tufts of hydroids . The wreck is a coral paradise , with all the attendant life that comes with a healthy ecosystem - there are supposedly 250 species of animal and plant life on the Scylla today .
Next up was the James Eagan Layne , almost certainly the most dived shipwreck in the UK ... and she looked it . Even though the James is only 500 metres away from the Scylla , the wreck has conspicuously less encrusting life – perhaps as a result of all that diver traffic . Nevertheless , it is a wonderfully atmospheric wreck , with light filtering in though its ancient ribs and little schools of bib flitting around in the shadows .
Soft corals on the Scylla
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