Farne Islands - 29th - 31st October 2021

Trip Organiser – Ian Hollingsworth
Dive Manager – Alison Brammer
Diving with Sovereign Diving

This trip had been postponed twice due to Covid and sadly Ian couldn’t make the rearranged dates due to work commitments. Fortunately, we were able to get a full quota of divers and just needed some good weather!


Having checked with the skipper on the Friday morning, the forecast looked favourable for the Saturday and so we set off for Seahouses as planned. Accommodation was at the B & B run by Jo, the skipper’s wife and was very good.

On Saturday morning after a good breakfast, we met at the harbour and loaded our gear onto the Catamaran, the Mara Mohr. We headed over to the Farne islands in drizzle and a fairly big swell but with the promise of better weather later. Toby, the skipper, got us into a sheltered area with lots of seals on the rock, before all the bigger dive boats got there. We dropped in and swam in towards the shore, through the kelp looking for seals. We had some good encounters, with David getting the best video footage of the day of a seal nibbling his fins!

After a surface interval and coffee and cake, the sun came out and we kitted up for our second dive. We decided to do a scenic wall dive which was very pretty at depths of 14-20m. The rocks were covered with deadmens fingers and sea urchins and we spotted Bloody Henry starfish, velvet swimming crabs and a huge lobster.
We all had a fun evening meal and drinks at The Bamburgh Castle on the Saturday evening with a lie-in on Sunday due to the clocks changing. Sadly the weather had deteriorated and we woke up to strong winds and poor visibility which meant that diving was cancelled on the Sunday.

Thanks to dive buddies Loz Broome, Clive Byrne, Cameron Liddle, Ken Burrows, Rosy Ball. David Henderson, Sue Wainwright, Tim Porter, Wilf Wooldridge, Vesta Charleshouse & Jo Watson.

Comb Jellyfish – Vesta

Nibbling Seal – Dave

The Farnes – Alison