SCUBA meets Emma and Gordon Taylor, BSAC divers who took on an ambitious project which has resulted in an inspirational new guide to snorkelling our shores
UKDIVING
Snorkelling Britain a passion project
SCUBA meets Emma and Gordon Taylor, BSAC divers who took on an ambitious project which has resulted in an inspirational new guide to snorkelling our shores
Thongweed in Lamorna Cove
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Where’ s the best place to live if you’ re into snorkelling big-time? Emma and Gordon Taylor and their two children do a lot more snorkelling than most families, but they live near Bath, in beautiful but landlocked Somerset. Despite that city’ s renowned Roman springs, it isn’ t exactly known for its watersports scene, but Emma says it’ s well placed for heading to lots of coastal areas. Just as well, as she and her family have just come to the end of a long quest in search of Britain’ s best snorkelling spots.
The resulting guidebook is Snorkelling Britain: 100 Marine Adventures, which will be reviewed in a future issue of SCUBA. For this issue, we spoke to Emma, who has been diving since she was 12, and Gordon, who met at the the University of Bath diving club and are both BSAC Open Water Instructors and Advanced Divers. In addition, they have recently qualified as snorkel instructors. They researched and wrote the book around their day jobs – Emma is a pharmacist and Gordon an aeronautical engineer. In this interview, they speak about how the book was researched and what they discovered on their British snorkelling odyssey.
You have produced an inspirational book on snorkelling in Britain. What prompted you to take on the project?
In summer 2020 we headed to the Isle of Skye in our campervan with the children, who were eight and 10 at that point, and pretty keen to give snorkelling a go. Skye is surrounded by inviting looking water but, as divers, we knew that some spots would be better than others. So we tried to do some homework but couldn’ t find any