There’s a moment at the end of a holiday where you almost wish that you would be led into a room where Laurence Fishburne would you offer you a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. Take the red pill, you return to the real world, complete with the tedious but necessary tasks, the mundanity of the daily commute and the oppression of an desk bound job in an artificially lit office overlooking the grey, rain drenched, smog ridden cityscape. But choose the blue pill and your holiday will never end.

Unfortunately for me, I’m obivously not the chosen one and my plane touched down at Gatwick airport this morning at about 2:15 am. after a five hour flight back from Sharm El Sheik. (I didn’t get home until nearly 7:45 so it took me about as long again to get to my home!)

I’m missing it already!

Three words to sum up my holiday? I. Love. Diving.

I last went to Sharm 5 years ago (to the day as it turns out) and even in that short space of time, it’s changed far beyond how I remember it. Whereas it used to be dominated by divers, we now seem to be in the minority. Sharm, or rather, Na’ama Bay is now an overly commercialized, tacky, resort focussed place that attracts tourists like flies to shit. It has about as much character and charm as a piece of fetid toe jam. So it’s a good thing that I spent my days in the company of some wonderful people on a boat, cruising up and down the Red Sea, doing 3 dives a day and enjoying every minute of it.

I was staying at the Oonas Dive Club which, to be fair, isn’t a fantastic place but the staff are friendly, there’s a ready supply of Sakara beer in the bar which also serves a mean pizza. Mind you, I spent approximately 6 out of every 24 hours in my room and that was primarily to sleep so it fulfilled every need I had.

The diving was superb. Did I mention that already? It can only get better too as it was still a little too cold for most of the interesting life (read sharks, rays and other pelagics) to be spotted and in fact we didn’t see many large schools of things like barracuda, tuna or even batfish until the last day, but despite that (and despite the cold - turns out I needed more than just a 3mm wetsuit!) it was great. We did the local sites (Ras Katy, Temple, Ras Za’atar) and Ras Mohammed a couple of times (Shark Reef and Yolande reef - and I finally got to see all of the famous Yolande toilets!), four of the Tiran reefs (Gordon, Thomas, Woodhouse and Jackson) as well as the wreck of the Dunraven (a steel steamer that sank on 24th April, 1876) and the still marvellous SS Thistlegorm (a WW2 British supply freighter, sunk by German bombs on 6th October 1941 with 9 fatalities).

Above all else, what made this holiday was the great group that I dived with. Thanks guys.