Back towards Wales...

Only two weeks after Newport is was heading there again. I had spent one night in Luxemburg (the country, not the province of Belgium), but for the rest i was actually home for a while. Most important thing to do around that period was a lot of administration since i had just bought a house in Ghent.

Before i actually arrived in Newport, i planned to follow a 3-day course on Underwater Archeology, at Stoney Cove, Leicestershire, England. It is a quarry, rather a big one, maximum depth only 36 meters, but with great facilities. In 2000 a new diveshop annex classroom and swimming pool facility was built and it is magnificent! In the picture below, you can see the big building in the background where classrooms, swimming pool and shop were located. The picture was taken from the pub/restaurant Nemo's at the far end of the quarry, so it gives an idea of the size of the quarry (as compared to the ones in Belgium).


I went there together with Jan Bruggeman.
The course was organised by NAS : Nautical Archeological Society.

The main focus of the course was on 2D and 3D survey techniques. That included 3 dives in the quarry to actually do measurments and survey a archeological site. The site was of course put there by the people of NAS. The conditions in the quarry were good: 17 degrees water temperature and some 6 to 7 meters visibility. We didn't go deeper than 6 meters, which gave us excellent conditions for doing the survey. In the picture below you see me busy writing down measurements.


It was all in all an international group, with two guys from Spain present, one girl from Hawaii and the two belgian guys of course, believe me they will remember us, i think we made most of the suggestions, interruptions and posed most of the questions :-) Sue who co-presented the course with Ian made a remark when i said goodbye that i "really enlivened the course a lot" (i took it as a compliment :-) ).
Most of the people had a diving background, although there were some who approached it more from a pure archeological approach.
I hope to keep some contact with some of the people since they also possess a great knowledge and experience of diving in the UK.

I drove towards Newport a bit more coming form the North and went through an area that had suffered from the flooding that was going on during my stay in Stoney Cove (so that was were all that rain was going to!).

The week in Newport was quiet. But one special occasion should be added here. While sitting in an Italian restaurant in Cardiff, i decided to become a vegetarian. Not a full blown one from the beginning, but a pesco-vegetarian as they call it (still eating fish). Hope to first settle on a diet including fish, later i can still think about removing that from my diet as well, we'll see.

On the journey back, i didn't stop at any special places, since i was rather keen on seeing whether i would be going home on saturday. During my stay in Newport, there was a fire in the Chunnel, so there nobody getting through at that time. Luckely, everyone who had already booked with the Eurotunnel, got a ticket on the ferry. In the end, it was a nice experience. All and all it doesn't take that long from Dover to Calais. And seeing the white cliffs again was nice. And i was early on the main deck, rushed towards to bar at the front and took up seat with a nice view, enjoying the trip. In the tunnel, you don't exactly see a lot :-)