A great weekend's diving on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. The old rocket shed in the village (* where they used to house the horse-drawn shipwreck rescue rocket apparatus) is now a simple little museum about the island with a collection of natural history items on the window sills, discovered by children. Great to explore a section of the island and climb the lighthouse. The fields full of sheep, Soay sheep, highland cattle, silka deer and birds everywhere. Saw fulmar, petrel, razorbill, puffin, gannet, wheatear, skylark, yellowhammer, kittiwake, cormorant, herring gull and many other species. Many of the island birds were ringed, including all of the confident sparrows hopping about outside the pub and nesting in the barns.
Underwater the visibility was good all weekend with the famously confident Lundy seals approaching the divers and trying to bite fins and enjoying sneaking up from behind or playfully tearing off strips of kelp to show off with. The wreck of the 'Robert', a 70's coal ship that foundered half a mile offshore, was covered in life; anemones, dead man's fingers, pink sea fans, urchins, fish and fry, flatworms, nudibranch's, squat lobsters and crabs. The ropes now garlands of soft corals and anemones and the hull a landscape of 40 years of marine life now reclaiming the ship as a reef. Too much to list here but I summarised some in the islands logbook - see beneath. I plan to return next year, such a wonderful Island and so close.
Lunderful.
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