Intro
When I won the UPY contest for Wrecks in 2023, I was given the opportunity to select a prize. As I looked through the options, I was interested in the dive trip offered by Gulen Dive Resort in Norway. I took a quick look at their website and saw a ton of information about nudibranchs and quickly moved on. 🙂
I later went back to their website and noticed that they also had a ton of WW II wrecks which made it an easy choice! I planned my trip to coincide with a “Wreck Safari” week so that I could dive more wrecks.
I recently spent from Aug 21 – Sept 1 diving (mainly) wrecks with the team at Gulen Dive Resort. We had some unseasonably bad weather (worst weather recorded in 100+ years) but we made the best of it and I had a fantastic trip and had some time to spend exploring the local area. I’ll go through travel logistics, a summary of the wrecks (I will write detailed reports for each of them), and then some useful information for other travelers along with some “pro tips” for anybody who travels there.
This will probably be the most in-depth trip report in terms of travel & logistics that I have written. There are numerous areas that are very helpful to know before going to Gulen, Norway.
Below are links to each section of the report:
- Travel & Logistics
- Accommodation
- Food & Dining
- Dive Center & Dive Operations
- Gulen Wrecks
- Gulen Driving Tour
- Bergen Tour
Travel & Logistics
Travel to Bergen
Gulen is on the west coast of Norway, about a 2 hour drive north of the Bergen airport.
There are quite a few options for getting to Gulen. If you want to see more of the country, you could fly into Oslo and then drive about 8 hours. The other option is to fly into Bergen and drive up through the fjords. As much as it would have been memorable to drive from Oslo, I took the option of flying into Bergen.
There are quite a few ways to get to Bergen but my route had me traveling from Los Angeles (LAX) to Copenhagen (CPH) with about a 2 hour layover and then a flight to Bergen (BGO). I really like the Copenhagen airport and it is very efficient so I chose to connect through it.
Luggage
As usual, I had about 200 lbs of luggage with me. If you connect through Copenhagen, the flight from CPH-BGO is on a small regional jet which means there is very limited carry-on luggage. I believe if you fly through Amsterdam, the inbound is a A320 aircraft, but definitely check before you leave and plan your packing accordingly (especially those like me that have a lot of lithium batteries, camera equipment, etc.).
On the outbound, SAS airlines was part of the Star Alliance so my luggage allowance was a lot due to my miles on United. I was able to talk my way into checking four bags without additional fees and took my backpack on-board. On the return flight, SAS had just switched to Sky Team so my status didn’t matter and I ended up paying about $100 for my extra bag.
As usual, plan accordingly but check the type of aircraft on your route.
Driving to Gulen
Once you land in Bergen, if you are traveling with a large group, the Gulen Dive Resort team can arrange a van transport. However, I really recommend renting a car. It will be very useful (as you will see further on). I rented a car from Avis and got a Hybrid Toyota RAV4 which was perfect because it had enough space for all of my gear.
Pro Tip: I didn’t see any signs for the car rental area so I ended up walking around a bit and then figured it was probably in the parking structure. I could have missed the signs since I was pretty tired. Indeed, it is in the parking structure to the left of the terminal as you exit. If you walk towards the Clarion hotel, you will find it.
The fastest way to get to Gulen is to take the road to the Solvag-Leirvag ferry and then drive to Gulen. However, I hadn’t taken car ferries in Norway and that specific ferry only runs once/hour (at least when I was there) so I opted for the longer route which adds some time and also involves a pretty windy road at the end but is predictable.
Driving in Norway
Speaking of driving in Norway – it can be quite an adventure!
There are a lot of tunnels in Norway, as mentioned above also car ferries, but they also have some confusing (for me at least) roundabouts and, as you get further away from the major cities, essentially one-lane roads. There are sometimes cutouts to pull over to allow cars in the opposite direction, but there doesn’t seem to be any specific criteria for who has the right of way.
I also witnessed a herd of cows leisurely crossing the road while I was out driving to a dive location!
Pro Tip: First, drive slow and take your time. Second, if you can get a car that has something like CarPlay or some way to show GPS navigation on the screen, it will help.
Return Departure Logistics
I had a 6am flight from BGO-CPH. My flight from CPH-LAX left around noon and there was a 10am departure from BGO but that would only leave about an hour for the transfer and I wasn’t ready to take that risk. Since my flight was leaving BGO so early, I decided to transit from Gulen to Bergen the day before my flight which worked out well.
I stayed at the Clairion hotel at the airport which is only about a 10 minute walk from the terminal. The logistics worked great. I dropped off all my luggage at the hotel and then returned the rental car and walked back to the hotel.
Pro Tip: when you return your rental car, grab a luggage cart and bring it back to the hotel. I was a bit worried about finding a luggage cart at 4:15am so this plan worked out very well. I put all my luggage on the cart and they stored it in the luggage closet in the hotel lobby. The next morning, after I checked out, I grabbed the luggage cart pre-loaded with all my bags and just walked to the terminal.
I had a long 4.5 hour layover at the CPH airport but that was worth the risk of not making my flight. Overall, I had a really good experience on flying SAS to/from Bergen.
Accommodations
I had planned to arrive a few days before the Wreck Safari Week started so that I could adjust to the timezones and possibly get in a few extra days of diving. I had requested a single room and was pleasantly surprised when I arrived and they gave me a complete cottage!
The cottage was amazing and had a full kitchen, living/dining area, outdoor patio, etc. The primary lodging area is in the background in the picture above and right next to the dive center.
Food & Dining
A forewarning: there are not any restaurants within walking distance of the resort and they don’t have a restaurant on-site.
This is one reason why it makes a ton of sense to have access to a car while you are there. Each of the living areas at the dive resort has a full kitchen so you can cook your own meals. There are a few different choices for markets to buy food. I primarily went to the local “Matroken Dalsoyra” which is only about a five minute drive (3 miles / 4.5km) from the resort. There is a bigger “Bunnpris” market near the ferry terminal that is about 20-25 minutes away.
I only ate out once and cooked all my other meals in the cottage I was in.
Pro Tip: Almost all markets are closed on Sundays and close early on Saturdays. If you are arriving on Sunday, I recommend either picking up some food in the airport or possibly stopping off at the Circle K right outside the Bergen airport which I believe is open 24 hours. Also, if you are staying over a weekend, make sure you have whatever you need for Sunday the day before.
As mentioned, I did eat out once at Zanzi restaurant which is about a 20-25 minute drive from the resort. The food, menu, and decor are a bit eclectic, but the food was really good. Pro Tip: check ahead on restaurant days & hours. They change seasonally and are not open every day. Zanzi was only open Thu-Sun when I was there.
Gulen Dive Center / Dive Operation
Below is a panoramic picture of the Gulen Dive Resort area with some key areas noted.
The dive center is well equipped and spacious.
A typical dive day would start with the dive center opening at 9am and then the boat leaving for the dive site at 10am. Then, depending upon the location of the dive, the boat will return for lunch or stay out near the wrecks for a second dive or possibly just do one long dive. On quite a few days, we went with the latter option and did 90-120 minute dive run times at a single site. This was also driven by weather conditions, site selection, and who was diving.
Pro Tip : If you are planning on diving Trimix, then I would recommend bringing your own drysuit inflation bottle. The dive center has 3L steel rebreather tanks and some AL80 cylinders filled with Air, Trimix and Nitrox for bailout but does NOT have smaller drysuit tanks.
Dive Boat
The primary dive boat at the Gulen Dive Resort, the Vikingfjord, is really nice.
It is basically almost like a mini-live aboard. There are spacious areas inside to relax while in-between dives or in-transit. They also have a diver lift which is awesome for tech divers who usually have a lot of heavy gear. Below are a few pictures of the dive boat from the Gulen Dive Resort website:
Pro-Tip: I would recommend bringing your lunch on-board with you since the days can be long. They have soda, water, coffee, etc. on the boat but it was definitely a good idea to bring a sandwich with me. Plan your market shopping accordingly!
Diving
I found the diving in Gulen very similar to Southern California. A few of the wrecks had lines with buoys but the dive boat did not moor onto the wreck. Instead, they would “live boat” whereby they would put the diver in the water up-current from the line. The key in this case is to make sure you get eyes on the marker and head towards it and get down the line and out of the surface current. The currents are largely tidal but can be strong at times primarily on the surface in my experience.
On a couple of the wrecks, there was not a marker buoy or line. In this case, they would provide directions on how to navigate to the wreck. For example, “when you get in the water, we will place you at the weather station pole, orient to the edge of the cliff to the west and follow that bearing down a slope to the wreck.” You need to be comfortable in these cases with using a compass and having good situational awareness. If you delay on the surface and drift before descending, you could end up missing the wreck.
At the end of the dive, you put up a SMB, they come close with the dive boat, and then you swim to the rear of the dive deck and get onto the lift. After you give the okay signal, they bring you back up to the dive platform and help you remove cameras, bailout tanks, etc.
Again, similar to diving here, there is not a guide in the water with you (or at least for all of the dives I did) which means you need to be comfortable exploring dive sites and navigating without a guide. For me, this is a normal situation. They also allow qualified divers to fill out a “solo diver” liability form and then dive solo which I did on almost all of the dives. There were other divers in the water in most cases, but I dove my own plan.
The diving is basically what I would term “big boy & girl diving” which means you need to be comfortable in the water in various conditions, navigating using a compass and/or landmarks underwater, and diving without a guide.
In terms of thermal protection and water temperature, it obviously varies seasonally. When I was there in August, the temperatures were very similar to what we would experience in the winter here in Southern California. On the deeper portion of the dives, it was usually about 52-54F (11-12C) and then 59F (15C) on the 20’/6m deco stop. The only exception was the Oldenberg which is in a different area and sees a lot of freshwater runoff. On that dive, it was 49F (9C) on the deepest portion. I wore a thin undergarment, a heated vest, and then Fourth Element Arctic top & bottom. Of course, in the winter it is going to be colder but it doesn’t get as cold as one might expect.
In terms of visibility, from what I understand, it is usually very good. However, during my trip, it wasn’t great due to the amount of rain and the runoff into the fjords. It was also generally “dark” due to the lack of bright sun and the cloud cover. This made photography very challenging which will be reflected in how dark some of the pictures are. However, again, similar to Southern California, the visibility improved with depth and varied from location to location.
After the dive day, they made fresh, hot waffles back at the Dive Center which was awesome!
Gulen Wrecks
Gulen has an interesting place in the history of World War II.
Essentially, the Germans would “hide out” in the fjords on their journey from carrying iron ore from the far north in Narvik south towards Germany. The fjords in that area of Norway are very large and complex and allowed ample opportunities for hiding out during the daytime and then steaming at night. However, there were two primary problems which led to the wrecks we enjoy diving today: (1) navigating at night through the fjords was complex and fraught with danger (c.f. MV Ferndale) and (2) the allies had perfected the art of using scouting planes to find the ships and then dispatching planes to bomb them.
The net effect is that there are quite a few wrecks in the Gulen area. Unfortunately, weather was our enemy on this trip and we didn’t get to visit as many as I would have liked; however, I did get to see some amazing wrecks. I will provide detailed posts in the upcoming weeks for each of the wrecks listed in the map/table below. As usual, I will have a lot of photos, the backstory for each wreck and photogrammetry models for two of them.
As I post detailed articles for each wreck, I will update the links in the table below:
Gulen Driving Tour
Due to the bad weather (wind and rain), one day early in my trip I decided to check out some of the local sights. If you have time, I would highly recommend doing this (one more reason to have a rental car).
I did a clockwise route around the area north of Gulen. I first stopped at The Gulanting which was, as I understand it, the first place that the various Vikings gathered to resolve disputes, design a governing body, etc. Apparently, if a dispute couldn’t be settled through talking, the two aggrieved parties were sent to a nearby small island and whomever lived in the battle, won. It was an interesting site with beautiful views.
My next stop was the town of Eivindvik which has a beautiful church and some other historic sites. It also has a grocery store so I stopped in a pick up a few extra things. There is a restaurant and a few other places worth visiting if you are in the area.
I continued on to Dingenset where I thought there was a castle or something but I couldn’t find it and so continued on to what I was really looking for: a World War II bunker in the shape of an octagon. It is a bit tricky to find and is really buried into the earth and hidden. It is on Google Maps but you might have to hike around a bit to find it.
I continued on my trip enjoying the scenery and drive and then connected back with highway 57 and went south. Along the way, the gorge was filled with water from the rain and had a lot of beautiful waterfalls. It was a great way to spend a windy, rainy day that prevented diving on wrecks.
Bergen Tour
After I checked into my hotel and returned the rental car, I had a bunch of time to burn and didn’t want to sit in an airport hotel. I decided to get a cab into Bergen, do some walking, take a look around, and eat some good food. The cab is about US$50-60 each way which isn’t cheap but I figured it was worth it to see Bergen (and it was). There is public transportation right at the airport but after all my adventures, I figured I would take the “easy button” approach. Of course, the day before I was leaving Norway, the weather was perfect!
Bergen is a really nice town with a ton to see and is very walkable. If you are in that area, I highly recommend spending time in the waterfront town Bryggen. There is a fish market that is superb.
Based on a recommendation of a friend, I went to dinner at Enhjorningen Restaurant (which is in the second building from the right in the picture in the upper left above). It is a bit tricky to find, but the food is great. It specializes in seafood and I had the three course menu and chose the scallops with dill and trout roe, the monkfish with tomato salsa for a main course, and then some cheesecake with strawberry & lingonberry.
Final Thoughts
I really appreciated the overall experience of diving with Gulen Dive Resort and Norway in general. Norway is a beautiful country with rugged landscapes and vast, open spaces. Upon return, my wife asked me what I liked most about the trip. After giving it some thought, I replied “it was a total adventure.”
Many times nowadays, vacations are rinse & repeat whereby travelers follow a well-beaten and well-known path. While it is true that many people visit Gulen for diving and tourism, for me personally, it was a completely new adventure. I will write about my solo trip to dive the Oldenburg and it will hopefully provide some insight into the sense of adventure I felt.
Roald Amundsen (the famed Norwegian explorer) said “Adventure is just bad planning.” While I do agree with him to an extent, I spent plenty of time researching the dives, the locale, etc. and had prepared myself in advance but I still felt a sense of adventure.
I would note that Roald also said:
“I may say that this is the greatest factor: the way in which the expedition is equipped, the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order, luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time, this is called bad luck.”
When Amundsen beat Robert Scott to the South Pole, many in that time chalked it up to “luck.” I completely disagree (as do most nowadays). It was due to his superior planning and strategy for getting there. I hope this article spurs others to visit Gulen, Norway and provides some advice & tips to help you prepare.
Disclosure: I was not paid to dive at Gulen Dive Resort or to write this article. I did win the trip as a prize for the UPY contest. I paid for my extra nights, food, gas fills, sorb, etc. but did not have to pay for the diving or lodging. I do hope and plan to return to Gulen again since it was such a great experience.
Thanks To…
My wife who is so supportive of my “hobby” even though it means I’m away from home for stretches of time.
Ørjan & Monica (owners) & Richard (technical dive instructor) at Gulen Dive Resort. They are such nice & genuine people. Even with bad weather, we had a fun time filled with laughs and good diving.
Hopefully this will not be the last sunset I witness at Gulen Dive Resort:
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