If you ask most people what they think of freediving you'll get a range of answers, but there'll be a common theme running through them. Most people think that freediving is

a) stupidly dangerous, bordering on the suicidal
b) totally pointless after the invention of the aqualung over 50 years ago

So, it was interesting to see the collection of people that Keith managed to round up and convince that a weekend spend holding your breath under water was a good idea.

We had:

Cynical Fish, who'd been before so must have been convinced that it was actually quite a good idea.
Drunk Fish, game for anything after six pints of London Pride.
FitNHealthy Fish, who is anything but fit and healthy. This would be the deepest "diving" he'd been allowed to do for over two years - enough said.
Gullible Fish, doubtless had been told that it was a really good idea and had fallen for it.
Jelly Fish, the most scaredy person in the whole world, ever
Psycho Fish, what can you say, if it's mad and dangerous, he'll be at the front of the queue.
Sarflondon Fish, scared of nothing and nobody, apart from holding your breath for a 30 metre dive.
The Codfather, or should that be oldfish? Brain going a bit soft?? Should really know better.
Timid Fish, inwardly more scared of water than Jelly Fish, but also has more experience at hiding fear.
Weird Fish, hmm
Vomit Fish, another 'game for anything after six pints' sort of chick who was only here cos she'd got a free ticket.

I'll leave it to the reader to try and work out what each person's motivation for the weekend was. Personally, after spending twelve months traveling and being generally shit at snorkeling in some of the world's most stunning locations, I wanted to improve my confidence and general "in water without a scuba set" type of skills.

We all met at about 8:30, breezed through the security procedures with just a hint of nervous laughter and banter and whizzed round to the SETT to await what would obviously be a set of indepth lectures and theory on the psychology and physiology of free diving before being allowed to put our newly acquired knowledge into practice. The lectures started with the world's worst safety brief from the bloke running the SETT. After hearing this fuckwit get totally confused about which way was North, and how we'd flee from a fire, I'm no longer surprised that the Royal Navy managed to park a destroyer on Lord Howe Island a few years back.

And that was it. Howard breezed in. Checked that some people had arrived (he seemed to think that Keith was an organisational genius by getting everyone to the SETT on time) and we were told to get changed and meet at the top.

Once we were all changed and ready, we were allocated a bit of rope and told to get on with seeing how long we could stay under water for. No zen breathing techniques. No yoga relaxation guff. Take a breath and see how long you can stay underwater. Do it three times with a nine minute break between. I'll see you in half an hour. And we paid 170 quid for this? I'm beginning to feel a bit ripped off. Anyway. the half hour passed, and we'd all at least doubled the amount of time we could last on just one breath. Hmm, perhaps this is one of those subliminal courses.

Next challenge was to see how deep we could go. Do it three times with nine minutes rest. I'll be back in half an hour. Again, amazingly, we all at least doubled our maximum depth without really knowing how we'd managed it. The group had been roughly split into boys and girls. Dez obviously went over onto the girls team because he's far too timid to be messing about with a bunch of ruffty tuffty boy divers. The excuse he gave was that he was evening out the numbers. Yeah, right! The boys group were mostly at the bottom on the 3rd dive. The girls group was at the 15ish metre mark.

Now, I thought, having been shown how crap we are, we're going to get some insight into the zen lifestyle of a freediver. But again, no. The instructions were, errrm, more of the same. "Take a breath and see how deep you can go". He did explain some stuff about blood oxygen saturation levels (which is why you have to wait for at least nine minutes between dives), and something odd happening to your spleen when you hold your breath. Apparently it shrinks and releases a load of red blood cells. How did we evolve that skill? Despite the apparent lack of instruction we were all making progress. Howard wandered around with witty anecdotes and general confidence boosting stories. We were also joined by a set of proper freedivers who were mostly showing off by sitting on the bottom for three minutes at a time. Watching how they built up to each dive gave us an insight into what we should be doing.

So, by lunch time the boys were all at the bottom, and being very smug about it. Ian had broken the 2½ minute breath hold barrier, and as yet hadn't samba'd (technical term for fainting when you get to the surface). We were all progressing at at steady pace. Interestingly Helen was demonstrating an odd ability to hold her breath for over a minute, dive to 20 meters and come to the surface bright red. Everyone else was coming up blue, just like the text books say you're meant to. No idea what she's got pumping through her veins, but it doesn't seem to be regular blood. Must be something to do with the volume of white wine she drinks. The girls group had hit an invisible barrier at 20 metres. Perhaps we'd be better off after lunch.

After lunch we tried a new approach to getting to the bottom. We'd spent the morning pulling ourselves down a rope, feet first. But now we had a pair of stupidly large flippers to propel ourselves with. Howard actually gave us five minutes teaching on the proper use of fins. Grannies and sucking eggs did spring to mind at this point. Personally I actually found that the fins made things harder. You use up loads of oxygen using them and I couldn't clear my ears going head first. There's also the danger of taking somebody's head off as you duck dive. There were two groups in the SETT on Saturday and it was decidedly crowded.

The fins seemed to slow everyone down a bit. But the boys again soon got the hang of it. Shadey and Shandy seemed very relaxed at 30 metres swimming around. Shandy's youth and octopush training generally showing the rest of us up. Shadey was smiling and saying 'Boing' a lot. Keith freedives like he drives his car. Fast and hard. I think he could do with some of that yoga stuff. Ian was well into the land of zen, totally detached from reality - no change there then. Daf was damn good at it, and the lack of oxygen had no effect on his sarcasm levels. Over at the girls side, Noe was the first to sprint down to the bottom, and Floss got there on her last dive of the day. Helen and Dez were still struggling with the 20 metre barrier, although Dez had got pretty good at going blue. Helen was getting more red with every dive.

Hometime came at about 4ish.

The next day we swapped Noe and Daf for Chris and Tess. And we got rid of the other group, which was a huge blessing and made the pool a much more relaxing place. The morning was spent practicing what we'd done yesterday. Everyone improved, and Howard was gently encouraging us to go deeper or longer. Chris and Tess went through the process that we'd all had the day before. The natural competitiveness between them came to the front and within two hours they'd bullied each other to the bottom. In fact everyone made it to the bottom today. Dez could only manage it by using the rope and going feet first, everyone else got there with flippers like proper free divers.

Being on the bottom is strangely relaxing. It's a bit Weird really. You have to un-psyche yourself before setting off. Being completely relaxed is far more important than bravery, breathing or finning technique. Any hint of anxiety will bring you to the surface like a rocket. I found that I could only get to the bottom by closing my eyes and slowly counting the number of times I cleared my ears. After about 10 metres you become negatively buoyant. After about 25 metres you literally have no volume of air in your lungs to clear your ears or equalise your mask. You have to be really focused on the way down not to waste air equalising your mask. It really is quite freaky hitting the bottom and looking back up to the surface. You get a huge tunneling effect that terrified me the first time I saw it. It took me about 45 seconds to get to the bottom. Which left me with enough oxygen to have a look round for a few seconds before slowly pulling myself back up the rope. As you come back up your lungs re-expand and you find that you've got a massive volume of air left in your lungs. As long as you've got your mind sorted out when you leave the surface the whole process is remarkably relaxing. But what I found most relaxing was going down to about 10 metres and sitting on one of the ledges and watching everyone else shooting around. I was perfectly neutrally buoyant at 10 metres and really did feel like I could have stayed there forever. I think 2 mins 45 seconds was my best effort. Ian was well into the 3 minute realm by the end of the weekend, but he's a nutter.

I'm sure that everyone had a fantastic time by the end of the weekend. Helen particularly seemed to have got into her groove and was drifting round in a very relaxed fashion by the end of the day. Floss too was well into the zone, electing to take the express route to the bottom of the tank courtesy of a 16 pound lead weight. Sensibly she left it at the bottom for Howard to collect. Young Shandy and young at heart Shadey also took weight and managed to bring it up using the rope. Psycho Ian took the weight down and then decided to swim it back to the top. We knew there was going to be trouble when he started grabbing at the rope for the last 10 metres. When he got to the top the lights were on but nobody was at home - a full on samba. He'd been in denial about a couple of twitchy moments he'd had earlier but there was no denying this one. Keith had slowed down too towards the end and was much more relaxed with a pottering type style.

And the last hour was fantastic. Shandy had a go with a mono-fin, and made a complete pigs ear of it (no coordination that boy). Bubble rings were in vogue and Howard showed the way forward by blowing a series of perfect rings, and then swimming back up through them - git!

So, that's the good news, there must be some bad things that happened during the weekend. And yes, there was. In a word, Speedos. There was a disturbingly large number of very small pairs of speedos for the weekend. Boys, they're not big, not clever and definitely not attractive. A special mention has to go to Shadey who definitely had the worst pair. There really is no excuse for them. Sort it out.

Right then, to summarise. I went there hoping for big things. And I'm not sure how it happened but I came away feeling very pleased with myself. We'd all made it to the bottom and I think had surprised ourselves with how far we'd progressed. It's damn expensive and there isn't a right lot of actual teaching (Howard did give us an hour after Sunday lunch talking about the sport and how it works in practice). But freediving seems to be something that you teach yourself by actually doing it. Everyone does it differently and everyone gets different things out of it. I'm still timid, Helen is still wobbly, Ian is still a psycho. But we can all swim down to 30 metres and have a good time doing it. Save up, and go on the next session that Keith organises.