National Instructor Dave Woodward discovered diving at university and today runs Instructor Training Scheme events across the north of England . Interview by Kristina Pedder
VOLUNTEERLIFE
National Instructor Dave Woodward is a member of two of his local clubs in the north-east , Tyneside 114 and Hartlepool Divers . He got into diving at university , where he encountered the Manchester Metropolitan University club at Freshers Fayre in the mid-1990s . “ I thought it would be interesting to try . It went from there ,” he says .
It seemed as if he had spent hundreds of hours in the pool before he headed to Anglesey for his first dive that spring . “ All I had was a 3mm wetsuit , so it was quite a refreshing experience ,” he says . “ Then , when I moved up to Newcastle I joined the uni club there , NUSAC , and I went crazy for it ; diving almost every weekend , anywhere we could get a dive in .”
During 10 years spent living in Asia , Dave experienced some great diving in the South China Sea , Bali and the Philippines . “ We would come back every Christmas to meet up with our old dive friends from NUSAC and go up to Oban for a few days to get cold and wet , which was always good fun ,” he says . Nowadays , he dives anywhere around the north-east of England , with regular trips to the west coast of Scotland , and a few other choice places .
Does he still log dives , I wondered . He says he remembered almost every detail of his first couple of hundred dives , and enjoyed logging them , but stopped a number of years ago when he got well past a thousand dives and ran out of random notebooks .
Dive ! Dive ! Dive !
National Instructor Dave Woodward discovered diving at university and today runs Instructor Training Scheme events across the north of England . Interview by Kristina Pedder
FACTFILE
Name : Dave Woodward
BSAC role : Instructor Trainer ( ex Regional Coach )
Area covered : North East , North West , Yorkshire
First dive : 1995
Teaching highlight : North East Dive Leader Expeditions
Hard hat fun at York Diver Training College
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