I've heard many people complain about their dislike of coastal diving off the shores of our great country and am wondering why? Ok, so the first dive was cack and probably one of my worst ever. I presume how many imagine UK diving to be. Started off my buddy was underweight, so I gave her 2kg of my weight, which was fine for the descent with a full aluminium tank. Then I had to deploy an SMB, which I'd have to drag along throughout the dive, trying not to get it tangled up in the thick kelp forest we had to battle our way through. With the visibility only pushing 2 metres I only saw a big crab.

After 24 minutes my tank had become a little more buoyant and I was struggling to stay down. In doing so I managed to get my legs tangled in the SMB line and then promptly headed to the surface feet first. Embarrassing!

Had the next two had followed suit, I'd probably concur that UK diving is crap, even though 3 dives isn't enough to draw a fair conclusion. Luckily the next two dives were much better.

As it went, the second dive was probably one of my best. Loved it! I was on a charter boat with the people from my club and a group of amateurs who'd been brought along by a guide. It was a 30-minute boat ride to the site (Mewstone Ridges) and looking around you'd have expected a dive accident to occur sometime soon. One person was throwing up over the edge of the boat, another had put their regs on the wrong way round and the others had equipment trailing and buckles undone. The reg problem was corrected by the time they rolled off the side of the boat, but one of them did so without his reg in and another had their octopus hanging loose and it could have quite easily got caught. Another problem was that my buddy’s neck seal was broken and unfortunately we had nothing to fix it, so she had to stay onboard.

Visibility was a good 15m+, sea life was in abundance, topography was varied with many rocks to look under and ridges to peak into and the water temperature at 24m was 14oC, which isn't cold at all when you're in a dry suit. It'd also bearable in a 7mm semi-dry and a shorty.

I can't remember all the fish I saw and didn't know what many of them were, but some species you may see UK diving are wrasse, dogfish, rays, starfish, conger eel, angler fish, flatfish, cod and much more.

Dive three was probably one of my most challenging ever. Probably a walk in the park for tech divers, but tricky for me. I was mapping the dive site with another dive master trainee and in doing so, had to navigate, note depths, take pictures and tow the SMB but despite all that, it was still an enjoyable dive.

So why do people complain about UK diving? I think it's all about expectations. If you jump in expecting 25oC+ blue water with 50m vis and hundreds of thousands of tropical fish, then you'll no doubt be disappointed. UK water is green, you'll be lucky to get more than 10m vis, water temperature only just pushes over 20oC in summer and the fish aren't tropical. This doesn't mean you can't have a great dive. Why does it matter what colour the water is? Who cares if the water is cold? You don't ski in your underwear do you? You have to dress for the occasion! Dive in a dry suit, they're meant to keep you warm.