Crystal clear water, 50-metre visibility, vertical walls stretching down into the abyss, huge anemones and weird fish. Was I in the Red Sea? Caribbean? Pacific? No, I was freezing my vitals off deep in a Norwegian fjord, well inside the Arctic Circle.
This wasn't the usual sort of diving holiday, it was more of an expedition. It had taken us 7 days of ferries and hard driving to get this far from our starting point in the South West of England, broken only by stops for diving and overnight camping.
Our route north was based on the E6, a road that runs thousands of miles from Oslo to the North Cape of Norway. Occasionally it is a fully-fledged Motorway, usually a reasonable "A" road, but it also wound its way as a single-track road through some impressive mountain passes and some sections were just gravel.
Our technique for finding dive sites was to compare a road map to the appropriate marine chart, then drive along the side of a fjord looking for places we could park and climb down to the water.
We could tell Leirfjorden was going to be a good dive even before getting in. The fjord walls descended almost vertically to the water's edge, with the road perched on a narrow ledge cut into the rock.
Just one meter under and everything goes out of focus as we pass through the halocline.
Descending the sandy slope, we pass through a thermocline to even colder water at about 15 metres. Suddenly the water goes crystal clear and the wall just drops away below us. Even with the 24 hour daylight of the Arctic summer ambient light is not very good, but it feels like we can see for miles. Every few metres huge dahlia anemones cling to the wall.
On a later dive in Tjeldsundet I am absorbed in taking macro shots of things on the wall. My concentration is disturbed by a scream from my buddy. A huge wolf fish had just tried to eat her pony regulator.
Realising that a regulator was not edible, Wolfie's next move is to inspect my camera strobes. Meanwhile, I am trying to back away and get the best shot I can with a macro lens that is totally inappropriate for the occasion. Eventually he just settles down and looks mean.