How to contact me.

If you want to e-mail me about anything I'm afraid you'll have to type out my full address which is......

Back To Main Index.	So just who is this guy Dave Cordes? Well, I live and work in Bedlington, Northumberland a few miles north of Newcastle. I'm an electronics design/development engineer and used to be quite a keen diver but the years are taking their toll and I'm becoming somewhat choosy about what dives I do nowadays. I started diving in 1974 with a local BSAC club and almost all our early dives were from the shore, not only the sites described on these pages but quite a few others that we thought might prove interesting - but weren't. In 1976 I acquired a half-share in a boat which allowed us to begin exploring the Farnes (how we survived is a miracle - no dive guides to refer to in those days and what was this "slack water" thing we kept hearing mentioned?). As soon as the club got a boat we sold ours, did boathandling and chartwork courses then started trying to do things properly. Over the next twenty years I held most positions within the club hierarchy (except Treasurer - I never liked the idea of being responsible for other people's money), made a lot of friends and helped teach a lot of people to dive. In 1999, together with several others, I resigned from the club (we all assigned various reasons but petty politics was the root cause). I then visited a neighbouring town's branch for few weeks but found it far too divided (old-hands vs newbie-upstarts) so I travelled further afield and eventually joined the same branch most of my fellow leavers had. Sadly, after two years of fruitlessly trying to persuade the resident D.O. that he should, at least ocassionally go diving in open water as opposed to the pool, we realised it wasn't for us so we left and in 2002 dived as individuals. In that year, I personally had some of the best local diving ever. No trainees meant no shortened or aborted dives; no boat to tow meant we dived from hardboats (luxury!) where, when and with buddies of OUR choice and no bombastic, posturing fools to contend with back at the branch; fantastic! We've now formed our own small club to maintain our BSAC qualifications and I'm looking forward to many more years enjoyable diving. Please don't judge me too harshly on the "no trainees" comment but after twenty-plus years in a club environment I hadn't realised just how much good diving I was missing; the "benefit" of being one of the most experienced divers in the branch meant I almost always ended up buddying someone who needed shepherding and it wasn't until I got away and regularly dived with competent divers that I realised how much of an impact this'd had on the quality and enjoyment of my dives. As for the "bombastic, posturing fools" comment, I make no apologies; I suspect every branch has one and we were unfortunate enough to leave a branch with one only to end up joining a branch with two. I'm sorry to admit it but it's true what they say, BSAC branches do seem to be rife with petty politics and cliques - although that's probably true of most democratic clubs. Most foreign diving has been combined with family holidays; the few places I've dived include Malta, Minorca, Cyprus, Barbados, Egypt (both Sharm & Hurghada), Cuba, Tobago and the Bahamas. Warm water may be nice but I still think UK and in particular, Northumbrian diving, is up there with the best. Dave Cordes, 3 May 2008
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