19 - 26 August 2012
In August Carl Cox, Henry Hart, Henry Fulford, Max Moyles and Rhodri Lewis along with Mr John Chapman and Mrs Debbie Claridge departed on a cold early morning to Gatwick Airport for the 5 hour flight to Sharm El Sheikh airport where, once we passed through immigration and customs, were met by our minibus and driver from Reef2000, our diving company for the week. We were then transported to our Hotel and Dive centre in Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula.
The next morning we awoke to glorious views of the Red Sea looking out toward Saudi Arabia.
After being fitted out with our diving gear we split into our respective groups for our courses. Henry and Carl, already being PADI Open Water divers, were taking the Advanced Open Water course accompanied by Debbie and instructor Kalim with the remainder of us completing the PADI Open Water course with instructors Adam and Akram.
By Wednesday Carl and Henry and Debbie had successfully completed their course, which included a boat dive, a navigation dive and a night dive along with some intensive evening study, and were awarded their advanced qualification. So Thursday they had two recreational dives at the Blue Hole dive site to the north of Dahab to add to their ever-growing logbooks.
Thursday afternoon saw the final written exam for the rest of us having completed all our confined and open water dives and evening studying. After 40 minutes or so there were smiles all round as we all found out that we had passed and were all now qualified divers.
That brought us to Friday, and the last day of diving for this year’s trip. We decided that we all wanted to dive together. So we were taken to the south of Dahab to the south oasis dive site where we had two final dives all together and a under water group photo.
We were all very fortunate to see some wonderful marine creatures including squid, turtles, octopus and lionfish to name a few.
Well done to the boys for successfully completing their courses and qualifying as PADI divers.
Next years trip is already being planned and should you want further information please contact john.chapman@abingdon.org.uk
Object 26: The Duke of Wellington’s Letter 
