“JUST walk in normally like your stepping off the bottom step of some stairs,” Said Steve Slade, my instructor for the evening.

“Put your right foot forward and bend your left knee slightly.”

It would have been completely normal had I not been wearing a mask and breathing through a huge pipe attached to a very heavy gas cylinder strapped to my back.

I was, of course, having my first ever diving lesson courtesy of Bury Sub Aqua Club in the 3.9m diving pool in Castle Leisure Centre.

I had never been scuba diving before, whether in a leisure centre in Bury or somewhere more exotic, and I must say I was really excited.

Having spent the majority of family holidays as a child with mask and snorkel looking at the rocks and aquatic life around the coastline of Menorca, learning to scuba – or at least getting a taste of learning to scuba – seemed like a long-overdue logical progression from that.

I am a confident swimmer – the instructor had been sure to ask this beforehand, and I signed a form confirming so – but the one thing I was a bit cautious about was how heavy I would feel once I hit the water.

Standing on the side of the pool the tank felt very weighty, and leaning over too far would be dangerous as I would lose balance because of the unstable weight on my back, but once I jumped in I floated just below the surface without having to tread water. A strange sensation.

Beforehand Steve, a club member/volunteer and advanced diver and instructor, had told me the signals we would be using to communicate under water.

There were the obvious ones like pointing up and down, indicating if you wanted to rise or sink, and a wobbly hand gesture mimicking a rocking boat to indicate unease or discomfort.

This hand gesture is followed by pointing to what’s concerning you – for example, hand wobble + mask = “I have a problem with my mask”.

And then, of course, the most commonly used hand gesture of the underwater world (hopefully): the two circles made by both thumbs and index fingers, signalling “everything is okay”.

And it was. But the hardest thing to grasp was using the “buoyancy compensator” in an attempt to reach “neutral buoyancy” – meaning I would neither sink nor float.

Another strange sensation is releasing air from the air bubble harness in order to sink deeper, when the natural method would be to swim downwards. Steve, who was simultaneously a good laugh but very professional, had told me to relax and not hold my breath, a common gut-instinct mistake for beginners, and when I relaxed my breathing things became easier.

After sinking several metres to the required depth, just above the pool’s bottom, we paddled with flippers only (no hands) around the perimeter of the pool.

While the bottom of the pool at Castle Leisure Centre isn’t the most beautiful sight on earth, looking back up to the shimmering surface was quite thrilling.

And the electric lights on the centre’s ceiling isn’t quite the Caribbean sun, but the sensation of looking up through the surface of the water and from a considerable depth, while breathing normally, is nonetheless an exciting experience.

Steve was giving me a whistle-stop tour of some of the things beginners would learn in the first weeks of the national British Sub Aqua Club’s (BSAC) Ocean Diver course.

The full course, which people can complete at Bury Sub Aqua Club with instructors like Steve, consists of classroom lessons, a theory assessment, a basic swimming assessment in a pool, as well as open water lessons.

All lessons are performance-based so you progress at your own pace.

As a BSAC Ocean Diver you will be able to dive progressively to a maximum of depth of 20 metres accompanied by another ocean diver or with a more qualified diver.

Members of the club also have the opportunity to go on subsidised tours, such as an amazing recent expedition to the wild currents of Rathlin Island, off the coast of Northern Ireland, for which the group won a national award.

When I asked the club secretary Elaine Barber why she would encourage people to get involved with diving, she said: “Well it’s just a fantastic sport.

“It’s like another world under there, it’s the closest thing you can get to being in space, because you’re floating.

“And also being part of the club is a great social experience, anybody who wants to join would be extremely welcome.”

For more information about joining, visit the club’s website: www.burysac.org.uk or search “Bury Sub Aqua Club” on Facebook.