A group of teenagers were staring at me as a strolled across St Abbs harbour, drysuit relaxed to half-mast and an empty cylinder over my shoulder. I felt oddly out of place. It wasn’t until I noticed one of them holding an oversized hammer I realised why. Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, Avengers: Endgame. Hollywood has left its mark on this village.

St Abbs is now far better known to the general public as the filming location of New Asgard in Marvel’s blockbuster than it ever was as a simple diving destination.  

St Abbs is a small fishing village sitting just over the border on Scotland’s east coast and has long been a marquee UK diving destination. The surrounding waters became the first Voluntary Marine Reserve in the country back in 1984 cementing its place as favourite destination for a long weekend’s diving.

It had felt like an epic journey to make it to St Abbs from southern England. Torrential rain, closed motorways and traffic, endless traffic. It was a relief to see the sign proudly displaying the cross of Saint Andrew as I crossed the border into Scotland. 

My accommodation was a ‘Tiny House’, one part shepherd’s hut one part caravan, only a mile or so outside St Abbs. It was comfortable and quirky providing all the comforts I needed post dive. 

Skelly Hole

I met the rest of the divers the next morning and we made short-work of launching the RIB using the decent slipway inside the harbour. Our first dive was at Skelly Hole, a short 15 minute RIB ride north around the headland. Blessed with flat calm conditions I was able to enjoy the ride and take in the scenery of the Scottish borders. The grey-green craggy cliffs, made of a type of sandstone called Greywacke, still looked menacing in the August sunshine. 

The benefit of this geology is that it extends below the surface with dramatic boulders, swim throughs and gullies. The bottom type is generally a fine heavy gravel (eroded from the cliffs) contributing to the generally good visibility in the area.

We descended past the kelp layer onto the rocky reef outcrop below. Visibility was good at around 10m which made navigating around the underwater landscape straightforward. The rocks were covered in dead man’s fingers, white sponges and anemones, unfortunately tentacles withdrawn due to the lack of current.

The creature I was aiming to find and photograph was the Atlantic Wolffish, an eel-like fish that’s all teeth and threat, it normally makes an excellent subject. So I got to work looking into every crevice and hole but luck didn’t seem to be on my side. There were plenty of crabs and the occasional lobster – clear signs of the success of the marine reserve. We were joined by a shoal of bib as we came shallow to deploy our DSMB.

After a short surface interval in the harbour we returned to Skelly Hole for another excellent dive in the afternoon. Most of the dive sites are within a couple of miles of St Abbs harbour so there’s plenty of time to relax between dives.

St Abbs is well provisioned for divers. There’s an air filling station in the harbour operated by Dive St Abbs alongside public toilets and an excellent cafe to provide a calorific boost between dives.  

The best wreck in the area, the Glenmaire, should only be dived at slack water and preferably on neaps. Unfortunately, we were very close to springs so thought better of it. So the next day we planned to do a couple of dives around Wuddy Rocks.

Wuddy Rocks

Wuddy Rocks is a jutting rock formation (unsurprisingly maybe) that sticks out from the headland between St Abbs harbour and St Abbs head. We followed a deep gully with near vertical walls covered in white sponges. We needed to scatter a shoal of Atlantic cod to make it through an impressive swim-through at the end. 

On our second dive we’d missed slack water and there was a decent current running. We were now very much passengers. However, the benefit of the current was all the anemones we had seen closed and resting were now open displaying their vibrant colours. The pops of colour of dahlia, elegant and beadlet anenomes quickly drew my eye against the green hues of the rest of the reef.  

Towards the end of the dive we were taken deeper away from the rocky reef and pushed across a desolate plane of endless brittle stars. With no ability to fight the current we decided this was the sensible point to end the dive.

The impression I got from my short time diving around St Abbs is you could drop in anywhere close to shore and have a fantastic dive. 

Final Thoughts

The oddest thing about St Abbs was how quiet it was – with only one other club RIB present over the course of the whole weekend.  This may be a reflection of the popularity of club diving or it may have just been unusual. One of the older divers in our group could remember times when there were queues of trailers with clubs trying to launch their boats. 

There are plenty of dive sites that I will definitely return to dive, particularly some of the sites that are right outside St Abbs harbour, the famous Cathedral Rock is probably top of the list.