Tag Archives: Iceland

Day 4 – Crossing the mountains with a Fjord Escort

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Friday 2nd July 2021. At last! A chance for me to foist upon you my joke about travels among Nordic mountains. Sorry, though – Long Read Alert Again!

The weather forecast according to the Met. Office app was for unbroken sunshine all day. No, really:

This was the reality as we headed for breakfast.

In the event, we had little direct sunshine, but no rain and almost no wind, so a good day for relentless tourism, which we proceeded to embark upon.

The first stop was Tálknafjörður, which Dagur described as “a bit of a sad town”, but which looked pleasant enough.  I guess that, like many Icelandic towns, it’s struggling to survive and thrive in modern times, with Reykjavik and parts foreign proving attractive to young people. Anyway, that aside, its USP is a very unusual church.  Not the bonkers architecture seen in Stykkishólmur (go and look at the blog post for Day 2) or Reykjavik (arrival day), but nonetheless striking.

It overlooked a pleasant view, too. Lots of lupins, of course.

Our onward journey took us up into the mountains as we crossed the knuckle of the peninsula towards Bíldudalur and thence from paved to unpaved road for a bumpy, 25 km, half-hour ride, which, according to Google Maps, took us out to sea.

This was a map-reality disconnect, luckily…  Anyway, we bumped along, heading for the outdoor art museum of Samuel Jonsson, who, it seemed to us, Wanted To Be Alone whilst he made his art from driftwood and anything else to hand, as he lived a great distance from what we might regard as civilisation.  The museum is charming.

To the left is a church he built, which has a lovely interior, today used as part of exhibiting pictures and other information about him and his art.

The most striking thing in here is his model of the St. Peter’s Church in Vatican City.

The building to the right of the church is a gallery (not currently in use) and dead ahead is the (rebuilt) house he lived in.  There are various artworks gathered outside.

The statue is a recreation of that of Leifur Erikson, which is outside the  Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavik; the circle of lions is his recreation of an original from the Alhambra. It’s a working statue, after a fashion, in that it needs manual charging with water.

The place seemed awfully remote to us, and we wondered how on earth one could sustain a life so far from the nearest town.  But the lady in charge of the exhibition pointed out that things have changed in the nearly 100 years since Jonsson first lived there.  For a start, Bíldudalur was a much larger town then, and had a variety of shops; also Jonsson lived among a community of some 200 souls, with another one of 100 people not far away; and, of course, there was much more reliance upon supplies being brought in by boat. So life wasn’t as tough as we might have thought when viewing it through 21st-century eyes.

After bumping our way back to today’s version of civilisation, we headed again into the mountains. En route, we did stop to see something quite uniquely Icelandic – an outdoor, public, hot spring bathing pool.

One can just change in the little hut and bathe in the hot water – it’s a public facility.

The paved road then gave way to another ungraded surface which took us up into the mountains where we actually saw some residual snow. This remains even during the summer, in those shady parts where the sun can’t reach.

The next stop was a treat, as it was a visit to the biggest waterfall in the Westfjords – the Dynjandi waterfalls.

There are seven waterfalls, each of which has an individual name, and there’s a path one can climb to pass them all on the way to the big one – Dynjandi itself.

It really is a great place to visit, a very impressive sight and well-organised.

We lunched there on sandwiches bought earlier and then headed round to the next peninsula in the Westfjords, to a place called Hrafnseyri, where there’s a museum which features a replica of a turf-roofed house

and a rebuilt version of an old church.

After this visit, we headed – again across the knuckle of a peninsula finger – towards Þingeyri. As ever, this mountain road gave us some impressive views. We were lucky enough to witness a phenomenon which is not uncommon in Iceland, but is not the sort of thing you often stumble across in the UK – valley fog.  Clouds appear to be spilling out of the fjords into the sea, and it’s a striking sight.

There were, of course, other impressive views over the fjords.

and, as we neared Þingeyri, Dagur suggested we could try an interesting track across a hill (the one in the centre in the above picture, actually) which offered some fine views.  So, off we went. But only so far, as it turned out to be such an arduous climb that Dagur wasn’t sure that even a modern Land Rover Defender could handle it without risk. So it ended up with Dagur and me scrambling up the rest of the path to the top. I just thought you might be interested in a the vital signs of a photographer as he ascends a climb taking photos on the way, wanders about taking photos at the top and them comes down again:

But it was worth the climb for some fantastic views.

(Note the vast extent of the lupins in the last of these photos.)

After a very careful descent, we visited Þingeyri and then travelled around to the next finger of the peninsula towards Flateyri.  En route was a uniquely Icelandic scene.

A perfectly pointy mountain above some houses and swathes of lupins.  I’m so glad we came whilst these were in flower.

The final stop of the day was to marvel at the size of the earthworks they’ve built above Flateyri to protect against avalanche. Here are pictures of the right-hand wall and the overall sight from the harbour, but it’s difficult to convey how huge the endeavour is to build this.

We then headed to our final stop for the night, Ísafjörður. We checked in to the eponymous hotel, had a very fine dinner, which featured wolffish, and took a brief stroll around the town…

and thence to bed.

I’m promised that tomorrow will be spent mainly driving and so there really, really should be fewer photographs and drivel from me.  Thank you for reading this far, and I hope you’ll check in on tomorrow’s exploits.

Day 3 – Flipping birds!

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Thursday 1st July 2021. Another Long Read Alert – lots of pictures again!

For a holiday such as this, where sightseeing and photography are basically the whole point of the exercise, the weather is anything from important to critical.  This makes Iceland a place of great uncertainty, since it’s basically impossible to have any confidence in what the weather gods will bring.  So, the morning ritual of opening the blinds to peep out at the weather is a time of heightened tension.  This morning?

Not too bad, it would seem.  Not that this is a guarantee, or anything, but at least we know it’s not hurling it down for the moment.

After breakfast we set off for various destinations around the area, the southernmost bit of the West Fjords.

Off we went, and it soon became clear that the promise of a sunny day was an empty one.

I mean, it’s a nice view and all, but suddenly the horizon’s gone.  Near this spot is a bizarre statue.

It is of Julius Oskar Þorðarson, who was apparently the boss in charge of the gang who built the road it stands on, back in 1947.

A few kilometres on the scene cleared a bit, so we got a good view of the road to Patreksfjörður. Slightly to the side of that was an appealing optical illusion.

The trees look like a pine forest until you realise that the blue patches are the ubiquitous lupins, at which point it becomes clear that the trees are less than 2 metres tall. (There are very few tall trees in Iceland because of the paucity of much of the soil and the relentless strength of the wind; the only ones you’ll see  are imported and sufficiently short that wind doesn’t tear them to shreds. Hence the local joke: what do you do if you are lost in a forest in Iceland? Stand up…)

Patreksfjörður is an appealing town, which, like so many in this area, is located on crammed into a thin strip of land between the sea and a thundering great mountain.

The locals are building a wall to keep out the avalanches which are a constant possible threat. You might be able to make out the earthworks in the centre of the picture, above the buildings.

The town centre has some handsome buildings

and it’s generally an agreeable place.

We then moved on towards the hotel where we were to stay the night, the Hotel Latrabjarg. En route we passed a rather bizarre sight.

This is the not-so-good ship Garðar, billed as the oldest steel ship in Iceland, built in 1912 and now abandoned here to rot. No, me neither.

However, just by the wreck was the rare occurrence of a stretch of water unruffled by wind, which gave me the opportunity to indulge my favourite sort of landscape photo, a reflection.

There was uncertainty about whether our overnight hotel would be able to offer us dinner*. In the end, we decided to eat somewhat down the road and so planned lunch in Breidavik, with a further plan to return there for a sufficiently early dinner to allow for an activity which was best planned for the evening.

Before lunch, we went to the beach.  Of course we did.

On the southern extremes of this peninsula is an area called Rauðisandur, “Red Sands”.  It’s not really red, but actually, well, sand-coloured.  But nonetheless it felt extremely out of keeping with a holiday among glaciers and mountains, to go to a vast expanse of sand.

So, the mountains stop and the sand starts.

and the “beach” is actually a sand spit with water inland of it.  But it still feels like you’re on the beach.

Dagur, in chasing a particular photographic angle, did his Cnut act

and was just as successful, ending up with boots full of seawater.  I don’t know if he got his shot or not, actually.

The water inland of the sand gives an opportunity for some interesting shots

and in places you can see that the sand is not all sand-coloured.

One has to walk a short distance to get from the car park to the sand, and the walk, and an episode on the way to lunch, gave me slight pause.  As you head towards the sand, you pass a really lovely view.

 

I couldn’t walk past that without stopping to admire it, and of course take a photo. Dagur walked past it without a glance.  Shortly after we left the sands, we asked him to stop so we could take photos of no fewer than three waterfalls visible from the same spot.

Dagur, again, hadn’t really thought about stopping for it.  He’s so used to the fantastic sights that you can see in Iceland that he doesn’t see small fry like these scenes, whereas to us Brits, they’re fascinating and lovely.

After lunch we drove to the other end of the sand spit for a walk around.  It turned out that the walk took us past the nesting grounds of some Arctic Terns, who were not best pleased to see us, and so started dive bombing us.  They’re very agile flyers, and so it’s disconcerting to have them head straight for you, only to veer away at the last instant (or even peck at your head en passant, apparently).  From several dozen attempts, I managed to get a couple of halfway decent pictures of a tern in flight.

There was a lot of bird activity.  In a little stream nearby was a little chap we think is a Dipper (though not a big one).

and the skies were filled with the sights and sounds of dozens of different types of birds coming and going.

Near where we parked for this walk was a cute little black church

with Oyster Catchers on the surrounding wall.

They got rather agitated as we approached and we think they probably had a nest in the wall.  So we left them to it and headed to our hotel. We had a chance for a refreshing cuppa before heading out to an early dinner.

The reason for eating betimes was that we wanted to get to the Latrabjarg cliffs to see

the puffins, which are nesting at this time of year and which come out in the evening after a day in their burrows.

It’s a popular spot with photographers

and, to be fair, it’s a rewarding time to be out chasing photos.  The puffins are very cute and don’t seem at all fazed by having people thrusting long lenses at them.  It’s quite easy to get good photos, and I even managed some video.

We actually made two visits to the Latrabjarg cliffs, with the later one being fractionally more satisfying.  In between times, Dagur whisked us off to an area called Keflavik (same name as the airport, rather different scenery).

It’s actually past the end of of the sands where we birdwalked, and down a very rough road (as you can see above).  You get a nice view, though, and it’s so difficult to get to that very few people will have seen it from this viewpoint.

It’s a Wild And Lonely Place (WALP Factor 8).

and Dagur also took us to see a monument to an extraordinary rescue attempt by Icelandic farmers of English sailors who were shipwrecked nearby, back in 1947. The farmers had to carry loads of gear out to this WALP and haul sailors up the cliff in very difficult circumstances – a major effort to save a dozen lives.

(I think the weather’s always foggy here, which is probably why the ship was wrecked.)

The day today had featured a lot of avian activity with some very satisfying results.  I think that tomorrow will involve longer periods in the car spent travelling around, so maybe tomorrow’s enthralling episode will be shorter.  There’s only one way to find out, so see you then, I hope.

 

* In this part of Iceland, towns are small and far apart, and often only accessible by unsurfaced roads. Generally speaking, it’s a Wild And Lonely Place, so you can’t make any assumptions about whether anything is still open or offering what one might think of as a normal service. On entering the Latrabjarg peninsula, for example, there’s a sign informing you that there are no fuel stations in that part of the island.  As it happened, the Latrabjarg hotel could provide food, but not early enough for our purposes.

Day 2 – Raining in our expectations

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Wednesday 30th June. Long Read alert – lots of pictures!

We needed a prompt start, as we had a ferry to catch as well as a load of relentless tourism to undertake. Hoping against hope that we would have nice weather, we lifted the blinds and peeped out…

Oh, well…..the only thing to be seen were some sheep which had drifted up overnight by the hotel.

We got up, breakfasted and checked out – I studiously avoided any mental calculation of the awful truth about our bar bill – in time for a 9am start. Our first photo call was the Black Church just a short way away, which would have had a lovely backdrop of the Snæfalljökull glacier, had the driving fog and drizzle not obscured it. It left rather a desolate scene, to be honest.

This was to be a hallmark of the morning – wind all the time, rain quite often and temperatures around 11 or 12C. Despite this, Dagur found us some interesting things to see and photograph.

For example, the dismal weather couldn’t detract from this viewpoint on the road towards a fishing village called Arnarstapi,

And the village itself features some enormous basalt columns

among which nestles a very photogenic cottage – one of the most famous in Iceland, Dagur said, because of its location.

This visit gave us the first example of one of the other hallmarks of the day – cliffs lashed by the sea and crowded with nesting seabirds (guillemots, kittiwakes and various sorts of gull).

A seal was playing around in the harbour and popped up to take a look at us.

Just down the road could be found a giant troll statue, of Bárður Snæfellsás – the Mythical Protector of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in West-Iceland

It is said that it is lucky to go through the tunnel underneath, so Jane immediately went through whilst I decided to take the risk of bad luck instead; it would have been very undignified for me to get stuck, which seemed a distinct probability to me.

Basalt cliffs with seabird colonies are two a penny around these parts of Iceland, but this one, near old Bárður, is pretty striking – you can see seabirds flying in and out of the cave which forms part of this stretch.


Another good viewing location is near a large orange lighthouse called Svörtuloft

(which, by the way, has a baby brother just down the road)

It’s a good location to show the waves lashing in.

Generally speaking, this part of Iceland, the Snæfellsjökull National Park, is a pretty desolate landscape, consisting largely of black lava and yellow moss

Because this is just lava, it’s not fertile enough to sustain the growth of grass or other plants – volcanic ash makes for fertile earth, but lava doesn’t.  Only moss can grow, and the land can’t be used for anything agricultural at all.

The cliffs occasionally have an unusual feature such as this, which tremulous locals once thought was a troll.

but otherwise the landscape was bare, apart from a visitor’s centre, which actually showed a picture of the Snæfellsjökull glacier.  So, even though we couldn’t see it, we had some idea of what it might look like if the fog lifted.

Our next port of call was a fishing village, Öndverðarnesviti, which featured some extraordinary building art.

We carried on around the peninsula and, very gradually, the fog started to lift and the sun to peep through.  Eventually, we could even see the glacier which the fog had hidden so completely that morning.  We thought that Dagur had driven past the point where we could actually see the glacier, but he turned off and took us past the official viewpoint car park and along a very bumpy track

past a waterfall

and eventually, there we were, with a prime view of the Snæfellsjökull glacier!

As you can see, the sun was beginning to shine.  It was still very windy and there were still occasional bursts of horizontal drizzle, but fundamentally the weather had changed for the better.  It even enabled some shots of a church near Hellisandur, which in itself was quite photogenic, but it also gave a further opportunity to show the ubiquity of the lupins.

We had two final stops before a ferry journey towards our hotel for the night.  We struck really lucky for the first one.  The local mountain, Kirkufell, had been shrouded in fog, but this lifted, the sun came out and so it was a really worthwhile stop to capture a classic photo of it. (Apparently, single mountains are rare in Iceland, so this is a fairly unique sight.)

The waterfall is called Kirkjufellsfoss, and although this is a picture taken a million times by a million photographers I was very glad to get such a clear shot in such good conditions.

The final photo was taken in some haste as we made our way to the ferry at Stykkishólm.  Although the town has a perfectly normal small church, for some reason “an architect fuelled by cocaine”, in Dagur’s words has somehow got permission to build Stykkishólmskirkja, which was, erm, dramatic.

Unsurprisingly, opinion is deeply divided about whether this is a good addition to the town or not.  I quite like its arresting style, personally.

After this, we simply made our way to the ferry, a two-and-a-half hour journey to Brjánslækur, itself just a short drive from the hotel in which I sit writing this, the Hótel Flókalundur.

We had a swift drink and then a simple (but delicious) dinner in a dining room which to start with was full of an Icelandic care home coach outing, including one old guy who was wandering around being extremely genial because extremely drunk and taking swigs from a bottle of neat spirits of some kind.  He was eventually bundled into the coach and quietness returned to the dining room whilst we finished our meal.

If you’ve stayed with this post thus far, then well done!  We covered a lot of miles and sights today.  Tomorrow promises to be the same; I have no idea what the weather will be, but I’m sure Dagur will dig out the best sights for us to take in and pictures of.  So please come back tomorrow, when I hope I’ll have more photos to share with you.