Day 22 – Eyemouth, Berwickshire

23 November

Today The Great Scuba Drive crossed the border once again, this time into Scotland and the beautiful coastal town of Eyemouth. This historic fishing town with its natural harbour is well known to divers as it has some of the most diverse marine life in the UK due in part to it being the point where the Gulf Stream and the Arctic Tidal Stream terminate. Sophie was especially excited to visit, as her great-great-grandparents came from here.

We had always planned to dive around Eyemouth but taking into account the weather and wind direction, our plan for the day was to do a gully dive. The coastline around Eyemouth is dramatic, with high, rugged cliffs that plunge deep below the waterline, creating narrow gullies rich in marine life. We’d heard that this stretch of coast was famous for its abundance of underwater life and we couldn’t wait to see it for ourselves.

This was a shore dive, and finding the right entry point took a bit of patience. We eventually chose a relatively safe spot that required a scramble across some rocks before dropping into the sea. Other potential entries looked far more precarious, some even lethal, so we were happy with our choice.

Once in the water, we found ourselves in a gully about five metres wide at the surface, narrowing to two metres before opening out into deeper water. It was magical, like slipping through the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. Below us, a dense kelp forest moved gently in the current, bursting with colour and life. The visibility was around 7–8 metres, and as we followed the western wall of the gully, the whole scene came alive around us.

Everywhere we looked, there was something to see: spiny and common lobsters, velvet swimming crabs, sea urchins in all sizes, baby starfish, and a carpet of anemones in every shade imaginable. We also spotted clusters of dead men’s fingers adding soft texture to the rocks. But the real star of the show was a group of long-clawed squat lobsters, much larger than any we’ve seen on the home reef at Porthkerris, Cornwall.

Navigation was straightforward, following the natural line of the gully, though a bit of swell made the dive more challenging than it might otherwise have been. On a calm day, this would be an ideal site for beginners, but today the conditions called for a bit more experience and care.

We stayed underwater for 1 hour 20 minutes, our longest dive of the trip so far, reaching a maximum depth of 11.4 metres, with an average of 7.3 metres. The water temperature ranged between 9 and 10 degrees.

It was a spectacular first dive in Scotland, rich with life, colour, and character. The landscape above and below the surface was equally dramatic, and it felt like the perfect welcome to the Scottish leg of our journey.

Crossing into Scotland and diving at Eyemouth felt like another milestone. The gully was unlike anywhere we’ve been so far, wild, vivid, and full of energy. It was very much one of the reasons that we set out on this trip in the first place: to experience the diversity of UK diving and to see how every dive location has its own rhythm and story. As we packed up at the end of the day, looking out over the cliffs and sea, we both felt an enormous sense of excitement for what else Scotland has to offer.