Marcus D. Hanwell's Blog

On Saturday Louise and I set off from home at about 6:45 and picked my friend Alex up at just after 7:00. We were headed for the London International Dive Show 2007, Louise and I attended LIDS 2006 last year as well as the last two that are held in Birmingham. The shows are a great chance to see the latest dive gear, meet people from the dive industry and get discounted dive gear.

We were supposed to be meeting Mark down there but he was a little delayed. I think we got there for just after 10:30 and he didn't arrive until gone midday. The show seemed a fair bit smaller this year and I particularly noticed the lack of a Suunto or an Apeks stand. There was still lots to see though and as usual we didn't quite get as much time as we would have liked.

I managed to get another book signed. This was The Art of Diving and Alex Mustard signed it for me. Check out his site, there are some amazing photos on there - the book is filled with beautiful shots. It was nice having a quick chat with him

We also chatted to a very nice lady on the Tony Backhurst stand about liveaboard holidays in the Northern Red Sea. I know I have only just got back from there but I really want to dive the Thistlegorm! They have own liveaboard of the year three times I think. We even saw Tony Backhurst himself but he was busy chatting away to someone. Their boats look great, it was disappointing that the boats doing the Northern Red Sea itineraries do not offer free Nitrox but other than that everything looked great. Hopefully January/February next year we will make it out there.

I got myself some new 12L oxygen clean scuba cylinders and a Fourth Element Thermocline T-shirt to take the edge off that chilly UK diving I also ordered a pocket dive log stamp from Dive Logs. I was trying to control my spending this year so I think I managed to stop myself from buying anything else. We just filled in competition entries and I helped my friends to pick out some masks, snorkels and fins.

We had a really good day and set off back at around 17:30 after discussing the day over Pizza Hut. We were going to get something a little more upmarket but we really didn't know the area and they were the first group of shops we found. Got back after 21:00 very tired but with a good haul of new toys. Lots of brochures to look over too.