Faroe Islands

The day is built backwards from the tide table. Briefing, drive and launch are all timed off the window the skipper is aiming at, so a dive can fall at breakfast or late in the evening, which at 62°N in midsummer is still daylight. Boats are small and run short crossings from sheltered harbours, and plenty of sites are reached by road instead, with kit in the back of a van and a walk down to the water.

Underwater the rock reads as what it is: stacked lava flows stepping down in ledges, with the sea cut in along the softer beds between them to leave overhangs, arches and blind cuts. Sites divide by exposure more than by depth. Headlands and islets out in the stream carry the densest growth and are dived on the turn of the tide; the fjords and sounds behind them stay workable when the outside is not, and take the check dives, the training, and the days when the forecast collapses.

Plans stay provisional right up to the water. Wind and swell decide which coast is diveable, so operators keep alternates on different sides of the group and reshuffle in the morning; a week inside the May-to-September season can produce a run of good days or a run of blown-out ones. Visibility splits the same way, with the flow-fed outside usually the clearer water while sheltered fjords green up when the plankton is running. At its best the dive is a basalt face falling away, kelp still laid flat by the last of the stream, seabird colonies working the cliff overhead.

This suits self-sufficient divers travelling as a group, comfortable being turned around and content to plan around tides rather than be handed a schedule. It rewards anyone who values structure, kelp and cold Atlantic water over animal encounters, and who would rather log a few hard-won dives than a full week of them. It is a poor choice for a first cold-water trip, for anyone on fixed dates who needs the dives to happen, or for divers wanting a taught progression.