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Diane took on the extraordinary challenge of Shark Diving
I was approaching my 39th birthday so I decided to create a bucket list of 40 things to do before I turned 40. The list was made up of things that I had always wanted to do with shark diving being one of them. I started researching shark dives in the area and came across Caudwell Children, that’s when I decided to combine my dream experience with raising funds to change children’s lives.
The fundraising team at Caudwell Children were amazing, from their first email to my post event thank you card, I felt completely supported by them. I received a charity t-shirt which I wore on the day and I proudly walked around the Blue Planet Aquarium wearing it! One of most memorable moments was receiving a “good luck” card just before my shark encounter, this was totally unexpected and warmed my heart with the lovely message inside. The card is now part of my bucket list journal that I will keep forever.
Preparing for the shark encounter was a mental game, my main fear was the scuba diving as I had never done this before and I’m not the most confident person in water. I knew this was going to be an extremely hard challenge for me to overcome.
On the day of my experience, my heart was racing but the instructor was amazing. After the training I was able to watch other people complete their shark encounter through a large viewing window, it looked incredible. When it was my turn, I was extremely nervous but the whole encounter was so calm and peaceful, Betty the oldest shark was huge and came to say hello a few times.
I absolutely loved the shark encounter and would recommend it to anyone. Although this was a personal challenge for me, it was even more worthwhile knowing that I was helping autistic children and children with a disability. In total I raised £540.