After about 2 hours sleep photographing Lewes bonfire night the evening before I headed off to Egypt with my cousin, the wonderful actress Anna Tolputt. For 10 days we kept up a busy schedule almost entirely uninterupted by any bad weather.

We mostly concentrated on the Nile valley apart from a brief trip to the Red Sea coastal town of Hurghada. Highlights included evading the tourist police at dusk beside the pyramids (how else can you get the good light?), a very chilled felucca trip down the Nile at Aswan, strong coffees in Luxor, the former British officers club now the Windsor Hotel in Cairo and the clear waters of the Red Sea.