Diving in the UK

Diving in the UK
Burntwood Divers are very active indeed when it comes to putting into practice what we teach. This is unlike some other clubs who do most of their year round diving at two local quarries and very little else. Local quarry diving is ideal for training exercises - but we find that most members prefer to get out and about around the coast and abroad as well.
Between April and September you will find an immense amount of diving events being organized. You will find that their are dives on most Sunday mornings at either Dosthill in Tamworth or Stoney Cove and that these sites are used in the main for training. Apart from that the club members organize a lot of weekend trips to the coast and these tend to involve three or four sea dives. A selection of weekends away are on a Bed & Breakfast basis, with the dives taking place off a chartered hard boat onto our choice of site. These dives allow us to get further out to sea than we might go with our own boats and this allows us to see more rare sites.
Most of the weekends away however, involve camping out because it is so inexpensive. Don't worry if you haven't camped out before as we usually stay on very nice, well equipped sites and if you don't have any camping gear you are sure to find someone who will give you a place in their tent. Typical UK dive sites are: Weymouth, Plymouth, Hope Cove, Farne Islands, Anglesea, Cornwall, Ireland, Lyme Regis, Paington, Exmouth, Mull, Tenby, Bridport, St Kilda, Scapa Flow.
We take one and sometimes both of the clubs boats away on most weekends as it gives us complete freedom to choose our own dive sites, and because it keeps costs down to an absolute minimum. The boats can be towed by most saloon cars, although in most cases a trip will involve one or two members who own four wheel drive vehicles and this makes boat launching and recovery much easier. It is not unusual for a dive weekend to cost just £30 or so, even having paid towards boat fuel, oil and harbor launching fees (not including you beer money!).
Diving Abroad
Diving in foreign waters is absolutely superb, not only because of the wide variety of locations we have, but because we have what most other countries don't have - thousands of ship wrecks littering the seabed. In recent years however, the club has organized trips to sunnier climates for members and their families to go on. The number of countries which have been visited and dived off by the club members over the years is quite outstanding: Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Corfu, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Florida, Dominican Republic, France, Fuerteventura, Gozo, Gran Canaria, Guadeloupe, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Martinique, Menorca, Mexico, Monaco, Normandy, Pemba Island, Portugal, Seilly Isles, Scotland, Sipadan, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Martin, Spain, Tenerife, Thailand, Turkey. f there is somewhere you want to go diving, but would prefer to go with people you know, just put a note on the notice board to raise interest.