Martin Woodward on Diving

I spent a lot of time when I was a young lad, snorkelling off the Ledges, and you’ve either got that thing in you that finding something, it doesn’t matter whether you know you can pick up any item here like that it looks like a worthless piece of brass or a fishing weight but if you’re extracting that from the elements, there’s a special feeling to the fact that you’ve done it. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a great monetary value, it’s the fact that you’ve found something, and you wonder what that item can tell you.

As a lad, I was always scrabbling around out there and I found all sorts of bits and pieces, nothing really valuable apart from a gold ring once I think, but as time went on, I knew that I loved it under water.

I love the underwater world and I was totally at home with it.

But, to answer the question, I moved on from snorkelling to thinking well, I’d like to get some breathing gear that you can stay down there and not have to hold your breath, so I bought some old gear when I was I suppose about 18 or something like that, 17 or 18, some old cylinders and a demand valve and I basically taught myself.

Just gradually went down deeper and deeper and I was totally at home, you know, I had enough common sense to know the basic rules and you can read about what the basic rules were. Today that doesn’t happen. Everybody has to do a course and they progress through the qualifications.