Dive with us
Want to get a feel for what it's like to go on a dive weekend with Holborn?
We have a 6.5m RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) which we keep on the English South Coast, this year in Portland. So a typical dive weekend will begin with us meeting at the marina and getting ready to go diving. Most people drive down on the Saturday morning and we do our best to share cars and give lifts to those who don’t drive, splitting the cost.
When everything is loaded onto the boat we’ll set off for our first dive, usually one of the many wrecks nearby to take advantage of slack water (when there is the least current). After our first dive we return to the marina to fill tanks and for a spot of lunch at the café. In the afternoon we’ll set out for our second dive which might be a drift dive to collect scallops or a dive along a reef.
After returning to the marina and making sure the RIB is ready for the following day, we set off to our accommodation (a hotel or B&B) for a shower before heading out for dinner at one of the local restaurants.
On the Sunday we will typically just do one dive (unless we decide to make an early start so we can fit in two), which allows us to get away reasonably early to avoid the traffic heading back to London. Once again, we’ll try to take advantage of slack water and dive another wreck. Doing just one dive means we can often head out to sites further away than we did the day before.
After we have finished diving, we return to the marina, put our kit and the boat away and usually have a relaxing sit down with some coffee and cake before we set off back to our respective homes.
Typically a dive weekend like this would cost in the region of £150-£250 which would include transport, accommodation, food/drink and diving, although it is possible to do it for less. Kit hire would be extra (from one of the local dive shops, we can offer advice on this) although the club does have some kit which it is sometimes willing to loan out and other club members will often help in this regard.
All our trips are run by club members (known as Dive Marshals) and a schedule of these trips can be found on our dive calendar. Please note though, only full club members can sign up for our dive trips.
It's not just weekends
As well as weekend dive trips we will normally run one or two week-long UK trips per season.
This often involves travelling to a location over a weekend, diving from Monday to Friday, and then returning the following weekend. Often we tow the club RIB or we can take advantage of the many diving hardboats that operate around the UK.
Over the years Holborn has visited every corner of the British Isles and one of the real pleasures of belonging to a club such as Holborn is that we visit many places in the UK that you might otherwise never see, such as Scapa Flow and St. Kilda in Scotland, Connemara and Baltimore in Ireland, Pembrokeshire and Anglesey in Wales and the Farne Islands, Isles of Scilly, Isle of Man and Lundy Island in the UK (and almost everywhere in between).
Where we've dived in the UK and Ireland
It's not just the United Kindom
Of course, we don’t just dive in the UK. Most years we will also run one or two trips abroad. In the last few years we have visited the Azores, Grunersee in Austria, Marsa Shagra, Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, the Galapagos Islands, Belize, Normandy in France and Nemo 33 in Belgium.
Our club members are even more well-travelled, with almost every popular foreign diving destination you can think of having been visited. So if it’s travel advice you are looking for, you’ll almost always find someone at Holborn who will be happy to give you a first-hand account. Discover all the places Holborn and our club members have visited here.
Where we've dived around the world
