Farne Islands 2025

Or the “Wot no diving” dive trip

By Phil Underwood & Cathy de Lara

It was that time of year again, when autumn approaches, leaves turning into winter colours and the temperature was dropping. However, for Newbury, we had a trip planned to the Farne Islands to look forward to.  A Total of 12 of us were going, this was made up of 9 from Newbury and 3 from our Scottish contingent, courtesy of Gordon. Tales from year’s gone past, that this was a great social trip and guaranteed seal spotting and if you are like Alan (catnip to them) a lot of one-on-one seal interaction.

Last few trips had been easy, picked a date, had faith, then arrived to flat calm conditions, great easy diving and even better social evenings. This year 2025, what could go wrong? Well, storm Ben decided to park itself on the NE of England. But believing in fate, I thought it would blow out and we’d be good to go. Daily check-ins, with BBC weather, Met-office, even marine forecasts weren’t telling a very good story. This was further exacerbated when talking with Andrew our skipper at Sovereign said “Eeee it’s not good, Phillip”. (in that lovely Northeast accent). Each day I called him, he just laughed and explained nothing was leaving the harbour.

The call was made, diving cancelled, messages went out. Consensus was that the majority of us were still up for some kind of social action. We had a few dropouts, of which one of our new members stepped in with gusto, this was Nabs, or as we call him now ‘Lightweight Nabs’. The only other drop-out was Martin who very kindly donated his double room at the Ship Inn, only to find out he never really booked it (Definitely a nomination for one of the club’s coveted(?) annual awards).

Anyway, we all arrived safely to Seahouses on Thursday afternoon and in true alcoholic fashion. Got to the room, dumped kit and made our way to the pub. The evening was a blur, which ended with lots of whisky being consumed back at our room. The next 24 hours was carnage. All I can say is that someone was put into a recovery position at bedtime, Alan had a permanent smile all night, a bit of makeup, he would have looked like the ‘Joker’ out of a Batman film. As for the rest of us, we were very “green around the gills” in the morning. (Award nomination #2: Phil for texting Nabs to tell him he had found his phone….) Then in a true Hobbit style we had a second sleep before setting off to see some sites in Seahouses in the afternoon.

John, Matt and I (Cathy), being slightly less green around the gills, decided to make the most of the morning and headed off across the causeway to Holy Island  (Lindisfarne castle and Priory) It’s a beautiful place despite it being a rather soggy day, at least there are lots of tea rooms! And we did manage to find one seal, honest.

That evening there was a lot less drinking in the pub (can’t think why!)

There was a bit more enthusiasm on Saturday, we all went to the harbour to watch the waves crashing over the sea wall and debate whether we could have gone diving after all (The sea state could be described as “a tad sporting”). Phil and the boys went on a distillery tour while John, me and the Scottish contingent (plus Moira and Susie dog) went for a rather windswept walk along the beach to Bamburgh where we had a pub lunch followed by a brisk walk back (the tide was coming in, and we were rapidly running out of beach)

That evening we all met up at the Italian for a lovely end of trip meal.

Sunday morning we all went our separate ways, did we dive with seals? err no. Did we have fun? Definitely. Would we go back? Absolutely! (Although we would prefer it if Phil could organise slightly less sporting sea conditions)

A good lesson in how to plan for every eventuality; both sea and land-based.

Phil and Cathy