At the time of year the UK is festooned with images of wintry snowscapes and robin red breasts bobbing about looking for berries. However, for those of us who live here life is actually quite different. Snow, except on higher ground, is rare. It rains a lot. It's cold just above 0c, but the dampness and the wind make it feel a lot colder.
Sunday's weather lured Jester and I into a false sense of security. We decided at the last minute to make a dash for the lochs. By the time we got there it was dark and, intermittently, a little drizzly.
We had chosen to dive Conger Alley knowing that the visibility would be hit or miss and more likely miss after three weeks of almost continuous rain. Undeterred, we kitted up and headed in.
The water was cold and murky at the surface but we thought it would improve with depth. To some extent we were right. The visibility opened up to around 3-4m. However, the temperature, even at 30m, never rose above 7c. By the end of our 66 minutes I was really feeling it.
The obvious highlight was a sighting of the Smurfs.
Despite being the author of a relatively dull diving blog, I challenged Grant to summarise his Go Pro footage into 60 seconds of footage. This is his attempt.
So the weather has conspired to keep me from the water in the last few weeks. I'm not bitter, I'm just not wet. A look at the detailed weather forecast on Tuesday saw me catch sight of a rare 4 hour window of opportunity. Jester decided it was worth the gamble too. We met at Costa Coffee where, as chance would have it, some members of Eastwood SAC were also meeting. We decided to join them, although Grant and I dived separately.
As we got close to Seal Reef the rain stopped. We made it, the weather window!
We kitted up and plopped in heading down enjoying the usual nightlife. As we passed back and forward we caught glimpse of the other divers and their silt clouds, but it didn't affect us.
It was a great 63 minutes, but the action didn't start until we got out the water and discovered that Pat G had fallen foul of the famous St Catherine's stairway to heaven to the detriment of his knee - we later found out that he's broken his shin. So Campbell, took him to hospital while I took his kit home in my car.
