charlie
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Glen Douglas Road End 28 Feb 2007 (night dive)Troublesome journey but great diving
Gus & I set off from Stirling at the back of 5pm for a planned dive at the Caves. Everything was going well until we got to the Garelochhead turn-off from the A82 Loch Lomondside road. At this point the traffic slowed to a stop & ominous blue strobes could be seen ahead. Right enough, the A82 was blocked due to a fatal accident.
Oh well, we'll have to go past Finnart to the Caves we reckoned. We did however realise that kitting up at the Caves wouldn't be great with all the Loch Lomond traffic being diverted that way. Once we got over the old military road we ended up getting caught in stopped traffic again. That road was also blocked apparently!
As we sat in the queue, we wondered if we should cut our losses & dive the Gareloch wrecks or try to find another dive on that peninsula. Anyway, we got to the front of the queue, said we wanted to get to Arrochar & we were told that the A82 was now open. So we retraced our route back across the old military road only to be confronted by another queue on rejoining the A82. Apparently, we'd been misinformed. I spoke to the PC who told me that the accident was 3 miles south of Tarbet. Desperately trying to salvage a dive from the situation, I asked if we could get to the Glen Douglas Road and was told that we could. So we bypassed the queuing traffic (Gus flattening a cone at the road block en route  ) and entered the now deserted A82 north-bound . The rest of the journey was uneventful: fortunately we met very little opposing traffic on the Glen Douglas Road. When we reached the road end we found that northbound traffic was queuing, so we abandoned any attempt to get to the Caves, and just parked there. As we kitted up, a guy told us that 2 lorries had become jammed together at a point on the road somewhere between Arrochar & GDRE.
We kitted up (with a good audience on-looking) and made our way down for a very pleasant dive. From the entry point we headed straight across the loch until 15 m depth where we turned left to find the drop-offs. Popped down to 32 m and had a leisurely scan around making a gradual ascent. There are quite a lot of big rocks with vertical faces encrusted with copious sea loch anemones. Spotted "Erika's traffic cone" at 31 m. Site is not as impressive as the Caves, but still well worth exploring. Lots of velvet swimming crabs, squatties, glorious sea cucumbers and occasional poor cod & gobies. No seal ! Viz was good at depth (5 m) dropping to about 3 m in the shallows. A nice relaxing dive after a rather stressful journey. As I removed my fins in the shallows, we could see blue strobe lights about 0.5 mile north, so that's presumably where the road blockage was.
We de-kitted and headed down the loch-side road past Finnart only to find that the old military road back to L. Lomond was now also blocked to allow emergency vehicle access. There were stationary north-bound cars that looked as if they'd been sitting there for the long haul  . So we had to take the long way home via Helensburgh.
A much later night than expected but still worth it as far as Gus & I are concerned. Are we mad? 
Dive time: 33 min
Max depth: 31.7 m
Temp: 6.8 - 8.0 °C
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