Holidays

I booked our holiday today.

After huge amounts of research and discussion, we finally had little choice because we're so restricted on when we can go. But we've booked on a liveaboard for a week in the Red Sea (poo-pooing this whole credit crunch nonsense and have a cheap holiday in the UK ... it certainly isn't cheap). I'm ridiculously excited about this already, even though it's weeks away because I get to unpack all my dive gear and check its all OK and hopefully even go for a dive or two in a local puddle - just to make sure everything is up to scratch, you understand.

Sometimes I forget just how much I enjoy diving. One of the best times of my life was doing my Divemaster training in Australia. I think it has the ideal combination of activity, technology, shiny bits of kit and water. I love to see the fish, but am rubbish at telling anyone what they are (much to my embarassment when I'm dive-leading).

The most exciting thing about this holiday is that we are stuck on a boat for 6 days with nothing to do but dive. This means doing several dives each day - which really gets your diving up to scratch. The last time I did that was in Australia. Even though we've managed to do some diving on most holidays, herself is not as keen as me and so we have to pace the diving and spend time sitting by the pool or playing table tennis or something. This time there will be little or none of that and I'm hoping that I can, and feel up to, doing the 4 dives a-day which represents the maximum ... although, maybe not every day.

The boat we've selected (see the pic) gets some very good reviews and sounds fantastic. All that remains now is to decide what bits of kit I simply must replace. Having been forced not to replace the main things, I'm sure I can still find a number of bits and bobs which will be absolutely essential to my enjoyment and full participation in the week. We also need to get herself a wetsuit. Oh, I can feel my credit card vibrating at the meer thought of it.