Vivian Quarry: The Perfect Family Diving Weekend Getaway

Published 8 years agoon September 12, 2017

Throughout my year as Miss Scuba UK 2016 I have been trying to see as much of what’s on offer for divers here in the UK as possible! The lovely Clare Dutton of Duttons Divers invited me earlier in the year to their summer dive festival and to dive in their amazing slate quarry – Vivian Quarry.

Vivian Quarry is set in the valleys of Snowdonia in North Wales and it is the perfect spot for a family weekend away. My little family comprises of my Partner and dive buddy Ed, and my two doggies and we all had a great weekend!

Whilst in Llanberis we went on some beautiful walks in the Snowdonia hills, sampled the amazing hearty pub food of Llanberis village (the food there needs to be good to feed all the starving tourists after their days spent doing watersports and climbing) and stayed in the cutest doggie friendly BNB. There are miniature steam railways scaling the hills, beautiful lakes stretching through the valleys and all in all its one of the prettiest places I’ve ever visited.

Duttons Divers – www.duttonsdivers.com – is a tiny dolls house style dive shop, which is nestled into part of the old slate mining areas (the slate mining museum is opposite). It is run by the amazing PADI course director Clare Dutton. Clare and her team have the pleasure of teaching at probably the most picturesque dive site in the UK! By having all of their own on-site facilities, including classrooms, changing rooms, a purpose built training area and Quarry, they are able to offer any course to be taught all at the one location. Clare is friendly, warm, and welcoming and I would recommend her to any divers wanting to complete their diving license in the UK.

The dive festival weekend saw free try dives, side mount diving, full face mask diving and stalls from Divers Warehouse LTD, Scuba Travel, Ocean Reef UK and PH Diving and Servicing.

Plus, who could forget the on-water movie Finding Dory!

Check out the video of our dive here:

https://youtu.be/ryrp-a9oeoQ

All in all, a great weekend… and we cant wait to get back to Wales and dive with Duttons Divers in the sea to check out basking sharks and seals in the very near future!

Hannah Higgins

Hannah Higgins is currently a 3rd Year Medical student at the University of Sheffield, working as a mental health carer around her studies. Previous to this she completed a Biochemistry Degree with honours at the University of Leeds, completing a research project centring on viral genetics. She has published papers at international conferences as 1st author, and is currently working on a radiology research paper with the Sheffield children’s hospital. When not working or studying she enjoys scuba diving, and is an Advanced level scuba diver currently working towards her rescue diver qualification.