Poseidon's Parlour: Cloud Cuckoo Land

For the benefit of my international readers, Scotland, where I live, is a having a referendum to decide whether we should leave the United Kingdom. It has been said that those who want to leave the UK are living on "Cloud Cuckoo Land". Today, to escape the relentless referendum chatter, Gill, the Announcer and I headed north to the Highlands and Loch Leven to dive a site known as The Slates.

The drive to the site is pretty epic taking you through some of Scotland's finest scenery such as Glen Coe, but it takes about 2 hours from Glasgow. So given the additional effort we really hoped the visibility and life would be good.

Dive one saw as kit up and head round the point before exiting next to where we had parked the car. The first dive had great visibility, but more importantly loads of fish. I was sure I had spotted female cuckoo wrasse and spent the rest of the dive looking for a male as I'd never seen one. Rock cooks, goldsinnys, corkwing and ballan wrasse. Throw in a few cod and it felt like we had entered an aquarium. The Announcer and I exited delighted by what we'd seen. Gill on the other hand was a bit blasé - apparently there wasn't enough "sunk stuff".

After some lunch, The Announcer and I headed in for a second dive, leaving Gill to read her book in peace. We retraced our first dive briefly as I knew I'd dropped a clip on the first. After finding the clip we headed off in the opposite direction. Then it all happened.

First up I saw a large fish in the distance as I approached I realised it was a male cuckoo wrasse. Neither myself or The Announcer had ever seen one. It was sadly a bit skittish, but my camera caught a few glimpses of one of Scotland's most beautiful fish.

Then The Announcer had another first, a large gurnard. We emerged very pleased, believing that Cloud Cuckoo Land actually exists and may well be a better place.

I voted Yes.