Dive No: 52, Picnic Site 1, Loch Ness, Dores, Scotland

Had decided to do a cult-dive on Anders 100:th dive, and try to play with photo shop to make a fejk-pic of Nessie to have fun with family and friends with. Ok maybe not with tiny-cousin since it might be “liittle” bit inappropriate to make him afraid of monsters in the water So, now started the hunt for a suitably cheap plastNessie. *Wroom* oups, there we passed the first society of at least 3 houses, next perhaps?

After a lot of ifs and buts we began to wonder if it even was possible to find a land-dive site easily anywhere on the “tourist side” (30 m high edges sloping down with 60? Degrees?) And secondly, if we were able to get hold of our toy, ie if there were more communities: -) Well, we managed to find a Nessie in the “big” the village of Drumnadrochit, where the temple of the pier was closed to the public, would have been extraordinary cult/fun otherwise . The village actually seemd to exist of some few houses and the rest was extreme tourist traps. Now remained only to manage to come down to the water and as it turned out we had to drive to the other side of the lake to find that…

Traffic-danger! After a lot of stopping to check out potential places we finally found a picnic site / large car park at the tourist path by the lake with reasonable sloping (reasonable as in “we miiiight just survive going up and down if we take our small bottles and..have some luck!) path with a fence to hold on to for at least a bit. Of course it started to rain, just as we started to make us ready, but as the purified Scottland-travelers we were by then we knew that it was only to wait about a 1 / 2 hours and we would get different weather and we could always fix the camera inside the car while waiting.

Then went out and began to kit up and by that obviously put other drivers in shock (no, no bare skin). Saw all the cars åtminståne slow down considerably, mostly with very large eyes and surprised eyes and some people in great need of an exorcism like the woman who turned her head 180 degrees, I promise and a driver that had to slowly drive into the parking lot rubbing his eyes to really look if he saw what he thought he saw. Do not think they were accustomed to people who spontaneously stopping to do a land-dive there, especially not if not in a dive-club .. *lol*

Mission!
Went into the water and realized that this was rapid deepening and just a short distance from the beach Anders signaled he’d found a suitable place to go down. I went down some meters outside of him. This because I still shamefully have a tendency to turn around a lot and did not want to accidentaly kicking or end up sitting in Anders lap once down. What met me under the surface was therefore a what i felt like a pitch-black darkness… Boy! Did that make me wish i’d gone down with lamp lightned!

Guess that made me swallow more than a few bars within seconds and I had one hand on each inflator (west and drysuit) in order not to go down too quickly. Almost immediately it became much darker and as I went down, very gently and slowly, I could not first believe in depth-gauge which told me I was only 75 cm below the surface but where Anders, smartly enough not gone down over the edge but at about 1.8 m , it was much brighter (se first pic above. second pic from 2.5-3 m deph at limit of darkness told about further down). So, Get used to darknes and so fast to a place there at rockslope where we tested a variety of ways to shoot our Nessie on, some pics that we tried to be serious with and some we just joked around with before we realized that we needed some of the darker, darker waters and my weaker light placed right for photo, not for me to see…

“HEELP! I’m…”

“…drowning!!!”

“But..In the deep dark no-one can hear you scream…Muahaaa!!”

“Where are the HID boys?”
Slid down over the steep edge and around 3 m deph the visibilitty got better but there we almost got a knife-edge of where water turned dark fast (se first pics). Followed a log down to have something to squeeze because here it quickly became even darker and already at 3-4 m light was needed as soon as we’d photographed! At stoneslopes end at 6 meters, I began to wonder if it had not been a good idea to have a couple of “close-knit, extremely competent whatever happened, and especially good at boyancy” HID-guys to hide behind and get a free ride behind by holding on to their bottles (I weighs nothing in water, I prooomise!) to look up a bit so just enough from behind

“This is dark..VERY dark!”

“But..kind of cozy now when i’ve gotten used to it!”

“Stupid camera”
Once again, having drawn a few extra bars of air, I calmed myself down and discovered that it was really quite cozy actually! Then Anders looks at me with a questioning face and signals “up” and “something is wrong” and seems to point to me so when he repeats it I thought it was due to my recently stressed look and my fear of the dark so I signal that I’m ok but he insists and since it’s not a sign to ignore and it’s after all easy to go down again so..

Goes up, a bit over irritated, and learns that his arm for the camera-flashes broken by so just to trudge up with the camera in his arms like a baby. Anders offers to go down again after since we both lounged for this dive but I declined because I feel well a bit hungry and tired and we both agree that it probably was an idea to get some food before it was too late. So, quickly scrable up the slope or, as it feels like mountainclimbing.. (o please don’t let anyone see us, this looks patetic, like babies learning how to walk!)  and pack gear to go for a hunt for food. And yes, if you guessed that also took awhile to find you’re correct, had to go all the way back to village we started from! And after all that climbing and wobbly rocks, guess what we found on backside on the inn, 100 m from our B&B? Yepp! A nice beach with fast slooping bottom, a dream to dived from! *doh* Oh well, it still felt amazing to actually have DIVED LOCH NESS!, JIPPIE!!! and even if short so did we had lots of fun!

What it also contained was some filming device looking stuff, weired.. But who cares, i want food! Once fed the most wonderful meal, wine and whisky our super-nice waitress, that got to know what we’ve done when asking how come we where wet and so cold, ask embarrased if we would mind some company? Was a bunch of Nessie-monster hunters that she told and they would love to ask us about what we’ve seen down under. Off cause we accepted and got to know they’ve sat up a device to film automatic if anything moved over surface and had a good time. Afterward though we regretted even more not checking the Inn out first, just think how fun it would have been if us visable under surface, with bubbles would have caused a new Nessie-roumor! Yes, we miscievous! *lol*

Oh, and the food and choices and place was something i’d expected in a smaller town at least and absolutly not in this tiny place with just, as we where told, 100 persons living, kids included! Photo from window of our B&B at one end of village and there you almost can see the end of it!