Guides
Howtown Pier and Bottle Bank
A second free freshwater dive site. I do dislike having to pay upwards of a tenner to dive in a mucky hole in the ground much preferring a free dive somewhere a little off the beaten track and using the cash I save to finance the air and a Little Chef breakfast, oh and not all free sites are desolate you have the chance of ebay goods and tourist trash at this site.
Latest Photographs


Another gratuitous 'bow shot' this wreck is real nice and in quite good condition!
A compressed air tank, as used to blow ballast from the tanks and enable the submarine to surface. There are loads of these dotted around the site, they are not torpedos, lost dive cylinders or similar and to date I haven't managed to find any with the brass valves in place.
Being a bit of a pedant I decided that I would need to fix a point where the fishing line could be secured.....
A shaggy mouse slug, or sea mouse or more accurately Aeolidia papillosa, this one was spotted quite early in the season.
The ships were built for speed, with plates rivetted together, the rivets will have been made from a softer material with less cobalt/manganese so have rotted away leaving rows of holes and allowing the paltes to start slipping.
Round sections......it looks very similar to the cross-member on the old admiralty pattern anchor that I lifted from SoP in 2015 but not sure
On the West side of the site towards the South, the bottom shallows slightly and changes from grit to fist sized stones.
You can get all manner of brass raging agents, I went with a vinegar fume bath and I am more than happy with the results.
On one particular stone there were loads of Candy striped flatworms (Prostheceraeus vittatus), not sure why as adjacent areas were devoid.
A typical north east wreck dive, plates, boilers n bits. In this case probably Jan Van Ryswyck although a few vessels have foundered so the bits are somehwhat mixed!
Fan worms, (Bispira volutacornis) loads on this site and many others but getting close enough for a reasonable shot without having them snap shut can be a bit of a chore
In the actual 'submarine hole' it is an absolute mishmash of bits concreted onto the bottom, in this case a heavy gauge cable has been concreted onton steel and rock
Arty-farty shot of a pinnacle
Dropping into the main gully one of the first things that you notice is the rust stained sand and then larger pieces of wreckage start to appear.
As is my wont a scenic shot of the bows.
Flat bits of plate, be that deck or hull are all over the site, I think they are deck as they are flat with very little in the way of thick metal ribs, but I do get things wrong.