Discovering UK Diving: My First Club Trip to Swanage
I have been diving for over 20 years and have logged well over a thousand dives. Yet, despite living in the UK and having some fantastic diving almost on my doorstep, there was one thing that had always eluded me: actually diving here. Over the years,I had managed a few dozen dives in UK quarries and had a very small taste of British sea diving almost 20 years ago. But that was about it.
I had always wanted to dive more in the UK, but somehow it was never a priority. There was always work, home, family and the usual routine. Diving became something I did on holiday or on dedicated diving trips abroad. I would pack my bags, get on a plane and go diving somewhere warm.
My dive buddies had been encouraging me for years that I should join a local dive club. Eventually,in June 2026, I decided it was time to prioritise my diving a little more and joined Mid Herts Divers.
Joining the club
From my first meeting, I felt welcome. I came along to a few pool sessions, partly to get to know people and partly to learn more about the club and their diving. I even did a quick refresher dive in the pool. After all my years of diving, the team was very helpful in reminding me what it was like to be in the water.
After a couple of months as a member, the stars finally aligned with my schedule and I was able to join my first club trip: Swanage. Most of the group travelled down on Friday, but a few of us made the early drive on Saturday morning for an 11:45ropes-off from Swanage Pier.
We met the rest of the club at a nearby café for breakfast and coffee. For me, it was another chance to meet people I had already been chatting with on WhatsApp but had never actually met in person. Just as I had experienced when first joining the club, everyone made me feel welcome. After breakfast, consisting of a strong coffee and two bacon buns (don't judge me) we headed back towards the pier and started getting our kit ready.
A first dive, despite a thousand dives
I will admit that I was slightly anxious. This was effectively my first proper sea dive in the UK,and although I had done this more than a thousand times before, it somehow felt different. Luckily, I wasn't the only one having a "first". A club member had recently completed their Ocean Diver course and was about to do their first sea dive too. There was something quite nice about that. Our diving backgrounds might have been completely different, but we could still talk about the anticipation of doing something new.
We had two dives planned for the day. The first was on a local wreck, a short boat ride from the pier, followed later by a shallow dive underneath Swanage Pier. After the briefing, we loaded our equipment onto the boat and headed out.
It quickly became obvious how much of a mixture of experience there was within the group. There were relatively new divers alongside people with decades of experience and experienced technical divers. What stood out wasn't the difference in qualifications or experience, though. It was how little that seemed to matter.People talked to each other, helped each other with equipment and shared their experiences freely. There wasn't a divide between the new divers and the experienced ones. Everyone was simply there to go diving.
My buddy was a very experienced Advanced Diver, and on the journey out we exchanged stories about diving, places we had been and what we each enjoyed about it. Then we arrived at the dive site.
Welcome to the English Channel
This was when I discovered one of the differences between diving in the warm waters of the Mediterranean or Red Sea and jumping into the English Channel. I had decided to dive in my 7mm semi-dry, and the first few seconds after jumping in, as cold water made its way inside the suit, were certainly an experience. Eventually it warmed up. Naturally, from my body temperature, before anyone suggests otherwise.
My buddy and I made our way towards the descent line and disappeared beneath the surface. I have dived in poor visibility plenty of times before, but one of the first thoughts that went through my mind was simply: where am I? Diving in a quarry somehow feels contained. You know there are walls around you and, ultimately, it isn't that big. This was the English Channel, and psychologically it felt completely different.
For the first minute or so, I was very aware of it. Then we reached the wreck. By that point I had calmed down, the water inside my wetsuit had warmed up and everything started feeling familiar again. I was diving.
Meeting my first conger
We began exploring the remains of the wreck. The visibility meant I couldn't stand back and see the wreck as a whole, but I could make out individual sections and pieces of structure as we moved around it. After a while, I stopped concentrating so much on the wreck itself and started noticing how much life there was around it.
There were brown crabs everywhere, sitting between pieces of wreckage or slowly crawling across them. We found a couple of cuttlefish resting on the wreck, apparently completely unconcerned by our presence even when we came quite close.
Then I noticed something silver between the remains. At first, all I could see was a tail. It reminded me of a moray eel, except this was silver or white. The rest of the animal was hidden beneath some metalwork and I couldn't work out what I was looking at. Then my buddy signalled to me and pointed towards the other side of the frame. I moved around to get a better look, and there it was: my first Conger Eel.
After more than a thousand dives, it was a nice reminder that diving can still give you a genuine first. Eventually it was time to leave. We deployed our DSMB and made our way back towards the surface.
On the boat ride back, bouncing across the waves, the conversations continued over coffee, tea and chicken soup. I was getting to know more of the club and, more importantly,starting to feel like part of the group.
Diving under Swanage Pier
Our second dive couldn't have been more different. Instead of heading offshore to a wreck, we went underneath Swanage Pier. It was shallow, relaxed and absolutely full of things to look at. Again, there was far more life than I had expected,including some enormous brown crabs.
At one point I genuinely considered catching one. Then I realised I had absolutely no idea what I would do with it afterwards, so the crab was allowed to continue with its day.
After the dive, we packed away the equipment, changed out of our dive gear and headed to a local pub for another important part of diving: "decompression". This time involving a pint or two rather than O2. Some of the group were staying in Swanage for another day of diving, but unfortunately, I had to head home that evening.
More than just somewhere to go diving
Looking back at the trip, the diving itself was only part of what made the day memorable. What I enjoyed most was meeting so many people who share the same passion.
When I start talking about diving with friends who don't dive, there is inevitably a point where the conversation becomes difficult to continue. They can listen to the stories and look at the photographs, but it is difficult to explain exactly what the experience means or why we keep wanting to go back underwater. Within the club,that explanation isn't necessary.
People understand why you are excited about seeing a Conger Eel. They understand why somebody might spend a small fortune on equipment just to disappear into cold, murky water.They understand why you can spend an entire evening discussing a wreck, a piece of equipment or a dive you did years ago. And perhaps most importantly, the level of experience doesn't seem to matter nearly as much as the shared interest in diving.
My biggest takeaway from Swanage was that joining the club was absolutely the right decision. I am looking forward to meeting more club members, experiencing more of club life,learning new skills and organising plenty more trips together.
For someone who has spent most of the last 20 years thinking of diving as something that requires a flight, a hotel and a dedicated holiday, perhaps the biggest discovery from my first club trip was much simpler. Sometimes an adventure can start with a drive to the coast on a Saturday morning.
And if you have ever thought about joining a dive club but, like me, kept putting it off because work, family or everyday life always seemed to get in the way, it might be worth reconsidering. You don't always need to travel halfway around the world to give yourself a diving holiday. Sometimes there is one waiting much closer to home.
