Please give me some instructor advice!

[Rich1280]

I'm Yorkshire based, I'd suggest finding the right BSAC club for you. There are good and bad fits, so you will need to talk to them, mine is in Huddersfield and does a good chunk of 20-35m diving each year, Scapa regularly, Sound of Mull, Clyde, St Abbs / Eyemouth and Tyne. There's loads of stuff in that mix, and an ADP and twinset package in club are cost effective and allow steady progression and access to the deeper stuff. Then there's a chunk of us doing 50m+ stuff and looking deeper with other groups and in parallel on OC and CCR.
Realistically, you need to be diving regularly to keep skills up for the deeper stuff, and having a club full of people to dive with gives you access to do that. You just need to find the right type of club for you.

Rich

 

[Sebs]

All the serious tech divers I know dive locally/regionally as well as on trips away. And they dive often. I try for once a month in the winter, even if it’s just a pool session, to keep the rust off. Only diving 1-3 weeks a year? I can’t even get my head around that.

1-3 weeks of diving a year isn’t enough to keep higher levels skills where they need to be.

I'd agree with this. I was in a similar boat as you OP and realised that vacation diving three weeks a year wasn't going to make me a competent (technical) diver. So now I'm doing my drysuit course, buying a suit and will go diving here in Switzerland, which in terms of things to see must rank pretty low. I'm sure there's much cooler dive sites in the UK.

I can also recommend scuba seekers in dahab, but can't speak for sameh as I had another instructor who I did my intro to tech course with. I can also recommend Alfred from H2O divers in dahab.

Ps: you'll probably be disappointed by the blue hole. I of course didn't do the arch but found the site meh. The canyon, which is about 15 minutes south of the blue hole was a lot cooler.