Norway, in pictures

[shermarama]

I'm not going to review exactly what I did in great textual detail. I'm just going to post a load of photos of excellent things we saw.

I went to Norway and I saw:

Comments

[braisedbywolves]

Aw, that looks properly lovely. And I'm glad you have your diving joy back!

[the_elyan]

That looks fantastic - its'a country I very much want to visit. I'm hoping to get something similar in Iceland - as I'll get to within a few miles of the Arctic Circle, and a week of Midsummer, I suspect night will be a rare commodity indeed.

[shermarama]

This suggests that a week away from midsummer, Reykjavik gets three hours of notional darkness a night, with the sun setting only 40 degrees away from where it comes up again. The definition of civil twilight is when the sun is less than 6 degrees below the horizon, and Bergen was still achieving that for three hours of the night while I was there, so, actually, it shouldn't ever get much darker than that last photo. Nice!

[openidwouldwork]

Awesomeness! *drools on keyboard* Looks absolutely wonderful! *congratulates you for having a great vacation*

[shermarama]

Seriously, the diving up there was brilliant.

[motodraconis]

This is the kind of holiday review I enjoy. Beautiful and/or interesting pictures punctuated by explanatory blurb. Looks like you had a cracking time!

[steer]

Wow... beautiful diving. Looks like some great viz.

[shermarama]

It was generally a bit soupy at the top and therefore a bit darker than it could be, but nowhere as near as dark as I was expecting having got used to the Dutch notion of dark. And once down past the funny layers the vis was very good indeed.

There was a brilliant halocline in Vadheim, where freshwater streams were emptying over the wreck. Between about two metres and the surface you just had to pretend you were on drugs or something, the way everything went wibbly.

[steer]

Sounds very weird indeed. Is the vis rubbish for all dutch dives then?

The best halocline dive I ever did was this:
http://www.cenoteangelita.com/cenote_info.htm
Probably a bit far for you to go though.

[shermarama]

The problem with Dutch dives (or particularly the lake diving) is not so much the vis, which can be excellent, as the amount of light, which is often absolutely zero. A lot of the lakes are old peat diggings, so the water has bits of the black stuff in it, and beyond a certain point that means it's like doing a night dive in the middle of the day. Where by a certain point, I mean maybe 15 metres.

And that dive looks completely nuts. Was that part of a general diving holiday? And would you recommend Mexico?