Ask anyone what they consider their dream destination and, more than often, they’ll give you the tired old cliché of a perfect desert island, palm trees rustling in the warm evening breeze as, cocktails in hand, they dip their freshly pedicured toes into a crystal-blue sea. As I write this, on a grim, rainy day in the southern Cotswolds, it could happily be my dream destination as well. So could Belgium, come to think of it — anywhere but here, and the incessant rain. Normally, though, the desert-island scenario is my closest definition of hell.

If I’m honest, I think I’ve always been slightly nervous about spending too long anywhere that forces me to relax too much, allows me time to think. It’s the voices, you see... that’s why I gave up swimming. I need distraction, constant distraction. I need the radio and television and traffic — I don’t really “do” silence. Maybe I need to see a shrink. I’ll probably get to that someday, but so far I’ve just avoided any experiences that include seclusion. It’s my own home-made cognitive therapy.

When my wife and I were planning our honeymoon, the inevitable Maldives question came up. I don’t know why these islands are so synonymous with one-off, holiday-of-a-lifetime honeymooners. We were both instantly filled with dread. We still didn’t really know each other that well (bit of a shotgun wedding) and neither of us seemed to fancy being stuck in a little shack on stilts for two weeks with only ourselves for company. It should have been a bad omen for our marriage, but, actually, I think we’re both quite practical, had travelled extensively and just knew what we liked and what we didn’t.

We both like having things to do, enjoy adventure and, also, wasn’t the whole place about to go underwater? So how did I end up, six years into our marriage, sitting next to my wife on a plane headed for the very destination that we’d vetoed for our honeymoon? I’d like to say we were at a stage in our marriage where we were both extremely confident that we were now ready just to sit and talk to each other for 10 days while stuck in a little house on stilts.

I’d like to say that, but I can’t.

I was going for the scuba-diving and Stacey had read about the spa. Having children dims your lust for adventure. Just being able to leave the children behind and do nothing but pamper yourself starts to become your number-one ambition, and Stacey had seen the spa facilities on the website. She couldn’t wait to get stuck into the mishmash of Far Eastern cleansing philosophies on offer.

WE LANDED in Malé, the capital. Aside from the bustling fish market, it’s a fairly uninteresting hotchpotch of a city perched on one of the central islands of the archipelago. We hadn’t come here for fish shopping, so we hopped straight onto a waiting speedboat that whisked us off to our island of choice. There is little more satisfying in life than getting off a plane and hopping straight onto a boat. It allows one to play at being multimillionaires for a while. Stacey and I had done it once before — in Venice, when a vaporetto had sped us from Marco Polo airport up the Grand Canal at dusk, as we gazed in totally awestruck silence at this magical city sliding by in our wake.

Back in the Maldives, the architecture was slightly less developed. We rocked and rolled over white-tipped, greeny-blue waves towards our destination, Baros. From a distance, we could see the tall wooden spire of the island’s “Lighthouse” restaurant beckoning us enticingly towards our home for the next 10 days — so far, so good. The boat glided into the dock and I half-expected a dwarf to start running up towards the main building shouting, “Boss, the boat, the boat!” Instead, a rather foxy Italian took us straight to our... little house on stilts. Oh God, we both thought. Here we go.

We are going to have to lie in complete silence on our tastefully decorated terrace, trying to drown out the voices as the waves lap gently and relentlessly against our stilts. We unpacked in silence, both realising that this was going to be a big test of our marriage. After a couple of minutes, though, we started to look around and realised that we’d actually stumbled into the pages of Elle Decoration. The oversized sun-loungers seemed to be just daring me to give up the battle, lie down and let the voices do their worst.

Once we’d unpacked, we padded barefoot around our tiny island. It didn’t take very long, but by the time we’d returned to our room, a curious sensation had overcome me — it was a bit like... I don’t know how to describe it... I felt at peace with the world. I wasn’t worrying about all the things I had to do back home. Everything seemed to be on hold. I was in limbo. It was all very weird. Had Stacey put something in my drink? A drink? Now there was an idea. We hadn’t had one yet and we’d been on the island a good half-hour.

We headed off towards the bar, where we necked a couple, or 10, fabulous cocktails. Without realising it, we were quickly slipping into the desert-island cliché... and it felt amazing. Our first evening was spent in the Lighthouse restaurant, eating the most exquisite tuna tartare known to man and savouring a gorgeous bottle (or two) of Aloxe Corton, which, like us, seemed a long way from home. As the red, red sun set and the light of a lone tikki torch danced on the mirror-flat lagoon below us, there was no sign of the voices — which was nice...

The following morning I awoke early and after a light, fruit breakfast, a jog around the island and 40 minutes of intense meditation, I wandered over to the dive shop. Okay, that’s a lie. I got up about 10 o’clock, necked a couple of strong espressos and ran over to the dive shop because I was late. I met the diving boss — a German guy called Sepp. He’d been in the Maldives for more than 30 years and seemed never to have suffered from the voices. Over the next seven days, he took me to a dozen different dive sites and it was truly spectacular stuff. The sea was heaving with giant turtles, white-tip sharks, stingrays (which I treated with a new and healthy respect) and, a first for me, giant manta rays that wafted through the warm sea like enormous hang-gliders.

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