Trip Report - Hodge Close

At 7.30am on Saturday 20 Jan 2007, only a mere 30 minutes late after trying to find Martin who had overslept and to accommodate late addition Si's self-organisation of cylinders and driving partners, a motley crew of 11 divers headed off at breakneck speed for Hodge Close in the Lake District.

The reason for the breakneck speed was that no-one was entirely sure where the site was, both Fiona and Steve, the two divers who had been before not having the foggiest. Instructions and co-ordinates were provided but the actual location of the quarry was proving strangely hard to find on any routefinder and this elusiveness was to be proved in reality, with Fiona, Martin, Ed and me arriving reasonably early (which has to be some kind of record for me and Fiona :-)) but taking ages to find the actual entrance to the quarry after being 50 metres above it for half an hour.

After we'd finally sorted this and apparently gotten away without paying the farmer to let us park, me and Fiona suited up to have a look round the site. On inspection of the entry to the quarry I felt that Fiona had been somewhat optimistic in her description of it as 'a little adventurous'. There was at least a 100m long, dark tunnel which was very low at times and with water thigh deep to wade through (and some people were on twinsets as well...) ending in a rickety 3m ladder to climb down. Hodge close is surrounded by sheer walls on every side which is why it is so difficult to get to and is prone to frequent land slides. Looking at the sheer walls made up seemingly of little pieces of slate balancing precariously on top of each other for 50m I could see why.

After looking around the site we staggered, climbed and waded back to the car park only to find that no-one else had arrived yet, which was starting to get worrying as it was 10.30am Eventually though everyone did manage to find their way and we set about hauling all the kit down to the site which rather miraculously, was done with no problems or accidents, although it did take Rich, Ed and Si a rather ridiculous amount of time to fetch the O2 kit.

After the brief the first wave then got in and had an explore round the site. The max depth for the day was 28m and as it is not a mainstream diving site as such there isn't any aeroplanes, horses, etc a la Caperwray to look at. Or any fish either. What there was was a transit van and a few cars, all very smashed up, all of which had obviously been pushed (or driven? hope not) off the cliff-edge above. A few large tyres and some chairs made up the man-made items in Hodge. What was good though was the visibility, lovely for a UK site. After being used to Eccleston, Capernwray and Wast, the vis at 28m was wonderful, and there were some nice rocks to look at as well. There are underground tunnels at Hodge but these were strictly off-limits to LUUSAC, although we were joined in the afternoon by some friendly cave divers who told us some scary stories about them. Also worrying, was the fact that their kit made LUUSAC's look brand-new...

Due to the rather cold conditions (my computer told me it was a toasty 6 degrees) only me and Fiona, and Martin and Mark went back in for a second dive, whilst the others had to endure a fierce ice storm above. Fun was also had in the form of an inside cave that people swam in, and the overground tunnel that winds its way around the site. After these dives were completed it only remained to haul everything back through the tunnel (really not what you want to do after a hard day's diving) get caught by the farmer so we had to cough up after all, and drive to the pub. A big thanks to Chris who supervised the trip for my DP2 and all the other divers helped out and made it a successful day's diving :-)