Trip Report 

Beer, South Devon - 4th Feb 2005 
By Louise Skidmore

Louise, Neal, Alex and Karim go on a mini adventure! 

Thurs: Drive to Devon. Have a big dinner, and the boys drink too much! And play darts until 2am 'cos they’re rubbish! Kip at The Golden Hind, Musbury.

Fri morn: I have a great time waking up the boys, they do not look too happy at 8am! Soon cheer up with tea, coffee, and bacon sarnies! Check the wind on the Internet, but the outlook is not good. The original plan was to dive off of Seaton beach, but the forecast says that it will kick up with the wind coming from southwest, and we wanted northerlies! So, we go for our back up plan of diving out of Beer Cove. This is much more protected area, so the wind shouldn’t be a problem here.


Beer: Arrive down the long twisting road to the small cove. Hop out of the car to find not a breath of wind. Lovely. The water is dead calm. We decided it would be best to dive close to the head as it is more rocky and out of the way of the fishing boats. So we get our kit together. Alex, Karim and I decided it best that Alex and I go in first. Neal is the most hyperactive any of us have ever seen him, so we thought a time on the beach feeling bored would calm him down!


Diving: After a lot of faff (from Alex) he finally decides to join me at the water’s edge. Apparently, he had to make sure he fully siliconed his o-ring on his camera so that it wouldn’t leak. Sensibly I had done mine before arriving at the beach! I did consider going for a little swim while I waited.
We finally got into the water, with an SMB because of the boats, and swam out a little until there were a couple of metres below us. Down we go. Although very shallow, the scenery is similar to Porthkerris: lots of crabs, starfish and kelp. Alex was very happy clicking away with his camera, until….. It leaked! We had only been down about 4mins and to a depth of a couple of metres so we went back up and Alex swam back to shore, I lazily floated around in the flat calm. He rejoined me and we continued with our dive. The visibility was amazing, the best I have seen it (20M+). We swam out until our half-time point, and began the swim back, playing with crabs and starfish as we went.


Dive was wonderful (and my housing didn’t leak) but, climbing back up the beach was not so much fun. It is fairly steep and the pebbles fall away as you scramble up. (Thanks to Neal for pushing me up from behind!). The boys went in for their dive, and then we had the second wave. No problems were encountered, and with a max depth of 6/7m it was a very simple relaxing day of diving. We even had enough air to not need to refill after the first dive!
On the second dive, we were closer to the head swimming over a reef and were so shallow that at one point our computers didn’t even register that we were diving! (At this point it became obvious why a secondary method of timing the dive is necessary!). We were a little late back (timing in your head is not so easy we discovered – apologies to Neal and Karim.) So, they went in for their second dive. For the whole time, they kept swimming further and further out. They must have been very upset when they realised their time was up and they surfaced, at what looked like, miles offshore! They had a very very very long swim back. Of course, for Alex and myself this was a great source of amusement. They took a good 15mins swimming back to shore and were fairly tired. We were nice and helped them back up the steep beach.


Home: we took a little look around the small village, and bought some pasties and fudge –mmmm fudge! On the drive home Karim and Neal were so worn out from their long swim back to shore that they slept most of the way home – bless.

Overview:
Beer diving: pebbled beach, fairly steep. Shallow diving with a lot of life and good viz. Toilets and parking situated just off of the beach. Dive shop (Beer divers) just around the corner (with facilities for getting air fills and nitrox fills). For more info call Tim and Karen Stevens on 01297 22458. Plenty of food available; in pastry shops, newsagents and pubs.
Perfect for first sea dive, shallow with good viz and lots of marine life to see.
Could not launch boat off of beach, would have to go to Lyme Regis. Plenty of wreck diving in that area.