Royal County of Berkshire Show

Its Friday afternoon and five of us meet at the Newbury SubAqua Club boat shed. The boat has already been loaded up with everything we need and we have unloaded all the stuff we don’t need, ropes, shot lines buoys, flares etc. We hitch up the boat and it's off to the Berkshire show ground at junction 13 of the M4.

On arrival we find our pitch. We are in between the scouts and the rugby players. We unload all the boxes that BSAC HQ have sent us. It’s like Christmas! We have loads of information and leaflets detailing what BSAC does and we have banners and posters of all shapes and sizes, with the addition of our club rib, lots of photos taken by club members and a set of equipment the stand looks really professional and is ready to go.

I have to confess I don’t do early on a weekend unless I am diving, but at 8am we were on the stand putting together the finishing touches before the public arrived. Help arrived in the form of other club members (Ross you looked lovely in your shortie wetsuit, not sure what the public thought though!) and Jeanette the regional coach.

The show really started to get busy late morning and we had lots of interest both from people who had already tried diving elsewhere and from those completely new to the sport. Jeanette was a real asset as she could answer the more general questions about diving, other local clubs and BSAC leaving us to answer the really difficult questions like “When can I book a try dive?”  The RIB went down well with the kids who had great fun driving it and “talking” to the coastguard on the radio!

The weather was brilliant (even a bit warm on the Saturday afternoon) and although it would have been a good weekend to go diving, those of us who gave up our time to man the stand had a great time and we got to meet lots of interested people (the candyfloss and fresh doughnuts weren’t bad either!)

Sunday saw a different team look after the stand while some of us came back to look around the other exhibits at the show. Then 6pm Sunday when the public had left the ground we took everything down, packed it back up into the boat and joined the huge queue of people and animals leaving the show.

The show was a great success with lots of people interested in doing an Ocean diver course and we have already had people in the pool doing try dives as a result.