Pictured: Becks Martin surfaces holding the precious ring
A BSAC club in Bedfordshire came to the aid of a distressed paddleboarder - by finding his lost wedding ring in a local river!
On Friday 26th July Bedford Scuba Divers received a call from Ant Crocker, a 34-year-old firefighter with a problem.
Ant had been paddleboarding down the river Great Ouse near Bedford, ending up at Priory Country Park, where he and a friend decided to take a cooling-off swim.
Sensing something was rubbing against his finger, Ant shook his hand before realising the sensation was actually his wedding ring slipping off. Lifting his hand out of the water, much to his anguish Ant discovered the ring had indeed gone to the bottom.
A quick dash home to grab swimming goggles ended in a fruitless attempt at duck diving down to look for the ring. At this point Ant began to wonder what he was going to say to wife Danielle, to whom he had only been married just over a year.
The search area
His last resort was a plea for help via WhatsApp to Bedford Scuba Divers. Diving Officer Mags Martin answered the call, together with her daughter Becks, Tony Pugh, and Tracy Humphries providing shore cover.
The duo splashed in to 2.5m deep water, with plenty of patchy sediment and lots of little rocks on the bottom. Visibility in places was less than one centimetre, yet within less than 15 minutes Becks had found the ring, glinting and lodged between two rocks!
[L]: Divers enter the water on the ring search and recovery mission; [R] Left-to-right - Becks Martin, Ant Crocker and Tony Pugh
Becks Martin said:
This is the third time Bedford Scuba Divers have received a request for help like this - we’ve got a 100% success rate with wedding ring recovery! Members of the club are beginning to call me the queen of the ring.
The much-relieved Ant, together with Danielle, took the dive team for a post-dive drink to say thank you.
Post-script: without realising, Becks had dropped her car keys on the walk over to the dive site and only realised after her return. Thankfully, a local passer-by had found them and left them with her car.
That’s karma!
