Just thought i would write and tell you all about this little known place..

The Diver Centre is in a village called Appleton Roebuck just off the A64 nr York. It specialises in scuba diving the old fashioned way and is a great day out for divers and non divers alike. ( I am a non diver). We went yesterday with the local diving school (Rob is a Divemaster there) to try a Hard Hat course and a go in a Decompression Chamber which simulated a dive down to 50m, the effects of narcossis and then recompression again (to avoid getting the bends). All very important for scuba divers to know from a safety point of view.

It cost £45 for the day and involves a go at both actvities and a 2 course meal. There is also a bar there. Our group did the Hard Hat diving in the morning. It was a tank full of cold water, 7 metres deep and they dressed you up in this suit and old copper helmet ( like the divers of yesteryear) and you had to strap on these lead boots. The whole kit weighed 12 and half stone and literally crushed your spine and then they screw on the front of the window on your helmet and feed the air in through a valve at the top, then tap you on the head and you are expected to stand up and then climb down this ladder into 7 m of freezing water! The kit was very claustrophobic and i must admit i nearly bottled out ( especially as i am a non diver) but decided to see it through. I was amazed that as soon as you get into the water, the kit almost becomes weightless and you tend to lurch around in the water like those spacement on the moon. There are a few things for you to do at the bottom and all to quickly it is time for you to resurface ( but as our group was smaller we had about 20 minutes each underwater). Getting back up the ladder in kit that weighs so much is so strength sapping and when you get to the top of the ladder to step back on the platform, you can hardly lift you legs up they weigh so much.

We then stopped for lunch..a basic meal really and i understand it is the same week in week out (jacket spud, mince, peas and carrots and some sort of veggie pasty and then jam spnge and custard) but welcome anyway.

In the afternoon, we went into the Deco chamber after a long safety brief and an explanation as to why they are so important. Again, they are very claustrophobic as they are small and there was me and 3 strapping blokes and we each had an activity to do to test the effects of pressure. I was given a tennis ball and a piece of neoprine suit to monitor. As the dive starts, you are rapidly clearing your ears and if you can't do it straight away, the pain is incredible..6 times worse than the sensation you get when you are flying. One bloke had to have it stopped at 3m depth and abort but they compressed the second chamber and he got out. Me, Rob and Assen carried on but i had to have it stopped at 11m and 16 m so i could catch up and clear my ears. ( both the lads admitted they were struggling but didn't want to say anything and were glad i did!) by the time we got to about 25 metres down, the tennis ball imploded and sort of crushed itself and the suit became half it's thickness. It became very hot and humid and by the time we hit the bottom of our scheduled simulated deep dive, narcossis had set in in the 2 blokes and they were in fits of hysterical laughter and talking about booking window seats and extra leg room amongst other gibberish. We all had squeeky voices like Donald Duck which was even more amusing as everyone had narcossis and try as i did to get the guys to talk sense, i just made them worse and laugh even more. I had narcossis too but i didn't seem as bad as them..don't know why. Everyone is affected differently and maybe as i wasn't breathing as heavy or needing as much oxygen i fared slightly better. Anyway, we then started the ascent back to the surface and your ears were popping like machine gun fire constantly and you could see the water vapour in the air. It became cold and you could feel the air becoming less thick. We had 2 safety stops to allow the nitrogen disappear from our bodies and then ascended back to the surface. In total, the whole experience lasted 30 minutes but seemed like just 10. It is easy to see why divers can give themselves the bends as you seem to lose all concept of time. Rob took his Dive computer in the chamber and placed it in a bucket of water and it actually worked and registered that he had done a dive of 50.7m. The tennis ball popped itself back into shape at about 6.3 m and our voices were normal again by about 15m.

Although the day was fun, it had a serious side to it in terms of a safety exercise for the divers but for the non divers like me.. it was a great experience and i would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants a day out with a difference.