Tag Archives: Landscape

Day 8 – Making a great deal more foss

Tuesday 6th July 2021. Yes, I know that obsessing about the weather is terribly British, but it simply has to be pointed out that today was the first day that the weather outlook for us here

was better than at home.

Hah!

In reality, the weather here today really was pretty good – even, at times, a little too warm. So, we’ve been lucky so far.

Our first stop was actually to the “supermarket” just along the road so we could buy something that would serve as lunch. It wasn’t what we’d think of as a supermarket and the selection was a little sparse, but we found some pizza-ish sort of things that would probably do, and – mirabile dictu – a couple of apples. To be honest, whilst the food we’ve eaten in the hotels and restaurants here has been very well-cooked, well-presented and tasty, we’ve discovered that They Don’t Do Fruit And Veg Much here, so the quest for dietary fibre is often, erm, fruitless. That’ll be me showing my age, then.

So: a morning of waterfalls beckoned. Firstly, the most powerful waterfall in Europe – Dettifoss.

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As I hope you can hear from the sound on the video, this is an awesome thing. It must be said, though, that we preferred those from yesterday. Dettifoss, because it’s carrying such a volume of glacial rock fragments, actually looks a bit muddy. I know it’s pathetic to expect pristine white water, but there you go: we’re tourists – what do we know? Dettifoss is one of several waterfalls along a canyon, and there was an insight into the impact of the glacial sediment on the water flow via a view of whatever the geologists would call the side street of a canyon.

You can see the clarity of the water which is out of the mainstream.

The second waterfall of the day is visited on the same hike which took us to Dettifoss. It’s called Selfoss, and it’s also pretty impressive.

You can see photographers on the far side of the canyon. These are the keen beans who have risked the tyres and suspension of their vehicles and a possible broken ankle or two to get to the Dedicated Photographer side of the canyon. Ok, the view of Selfoss would have been better from that side, and you can also get a Classic Shot of Dettifoss from over there; but our schedule, and my not-preparedness to lug a tripod over rocky terrain and spend much time setting up long-exposure shots, conspired against my achieving anything other than the standard Tourist Pics (which I’m very happy with). Dagur did his Pro Photographer bit as best he could at Selfoss, given that his clients were too pathetic to go the extra mile.

But the two falls were anyway impressive to see.

And that wasn’t the end of the foss we had to make this morning, as there was a third waterfall to visit, Hafragilsfoss, down another rocky track.

It wasn’t possible to get really close to this one because the track, even under normal circumstances a somewhat tricky descent, was impassable because of rockfall. Such a shame. No, really.

It was getting towards lunchtime by this stage, and we were understandably anxious to get at our pizza-ish goodies, and Dagur suggested that we could hike to lunch at Katlar, which was along, you guessed it, a rocky track a little further downstream in the canyon. So we loaded up with lunch goodies and set off. We hit a decision point and, through a process that I don’t quite understand but am very grateful for, took a side track. This was actually a revelation, as it led through a landscape that we simply hadn’t come across before in Iceland, involving, as it did – trees!

and wild flowers!

It really was a gorgeous walk, beside a river which of course gave rise to more photo opportunities.

After a while, we wound our way back towards Katlar, which is a gorgeous gorge

but decided in the end, and mainly because of the increasing numbers and importunateness of the flies, to head back to the car, where we ate our lunch in air-conditioned comfort but with no view.

At the next stop, we agreed between us that it wasn’t worth spending time heading toward the lava cave that Dagur had originally in mind (we’d already passed a couple, maybe not so grand, earlier in our walk). However, the car park for that trek was interesting as it illustrated the difference between how serious Icelanders go on serious camping holidays

and how the Germans do it in Iceland.

After this, we went to an oasis of calm called Ásbyrgi Canyon. This is a huge horseshoe-shaped wall of rock with a lake at its foot (Icelandic legend has it that this was a hoofprint of Odin’s 8-legged horse, Sleipnir. I couldn’t possibly comment on the veracity of that.)

And yes, a rocky trail leads down to the lake and at first blush it didn’t look as if it was going to be all that calm

but fortunately the bus load of Americans left shortly after we arrived and it settled down a bit. From the lakeside, you can’t capture the scale of the place in a photograph. You have to climb up to a viewing platform to do that.

But I did try a little snippet of video (creative director again was the distaff side) to give some idea of what it’s like on the lakeside.

We then headed back to the hotel, via a small town called Husvik, the Whale Watching capital of Iceland, where Dagur took the Land Rover off to clean it whilst we pottered around. The town is typical of our experience so far here, in that there are some attractive buildings

but much of the town is basically workmanlike rather than pretty. It does, however, feature an unusual church, which we of course added to our collection of same.

After Husvik, we headed back to the hotel but Dagur took us by an alternative route which enabled us to get some insight into the reason for the lupins in Iceland. You can see them dotted about in the laval soil here.

Dagur told us that he remembered being driven along this road by his father when he was quite young, and it was just black sand. And this sand had been a major problem, particularly as it blew in the wind; soil erosion was one issue, and damage to cars’ paintwork was another. So the lupins were planted to combat soil erosion and they work – but it’s still ongoing and will be a task that carries on for generations to come. The authorities are trying to leaven the mix with grass planting as well as lupins and this seems to be working overall; the problem is really to decide exactly where to cover with the programme, as a huge area is affected by this issue.

And thus ended another varied and interesting day, apart from the bit where Jane educated the hotel bar staff about Boulevardier cocktails. We have another V&I day in prospect tomorrow, with – who knows? – perhaps even more puffins! But much of the schedule will be decided on the hoof and so you’ll simply have to come back here and find out what we got up to, won’t you?

Day 6 – Hallo, Turf*

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Sunday 4th July 2021. Happy Independence Day, people in the USA!

The usual obsessing about the weather attended our waking, and actually the day looked to be just, you know, ordinary – no sun, but then again no rain, which put us ahead of the game, in our view. And here’s our view of the hotel, to give you an idea of the weather today.

The day promised to be a mixed bag, with a variety of cultural experiences on the schedule. Our first stop was to gawp at a rock formation near the hotel called Hvitserkur, but described to us as a “drinking dragon”. It took us a little while to see it….

…but actually, if you think of the left hand end as the head, it becomes clearer. Jane swears it’s more like a drinking donkey with a load on its back, and I’m remaining neutral on the rock naming issue. The scenery around this point is quite appealing

but it is clear that we’ve left the Westfjords area with its air of being a rock-and-moss-strewn Wild And Lonely Place. Generally, this, the northern region, has a much less savage landscape.

Our day would take us over 200km through north-western region and into the north-eastern region, ending up at the regional capital of Akureyri. But we had several aspects of Icelandic culture to experience en route, not the least of which being a record haul of unusual churches, which seem to be a bit of A Thing in Iceland. We started this collection at Þingeyrakirkja (pronounced “Thingeyrakirkjya”, but I want you to know that I’ve mastered the knack of getting Icelandic characters into my blog posts).

Construction of the church took 13 years and required transporting stone from Nesbjörg, a scene of historical battles against the Vikings, throughout the winter of 1864-65, by sled over the ice-covered lake Hóp on an 8-km journey. It’s slightly unusual, being a Roman Catholic church in a land whose church is officially Lutheran. Being Roman Catholic it has, of course, got some fancy artefacts in it. The church itself was locked, which meant peering through the window into a gloomy church with the interior backlit by the windows opposite.

However, with the combined miracles of modern digital camera sensors and intelligent software, it became clearer what we were looking at.

There was also a gallery visible through a different window. The processing results were less impressive, but still gave a fair idea of what was inside.

Thank you Nikon and DxO. Oh, and Jane, for helping me deal with the worst of reflections in the window glass.

A church would be the subject of our next stop, but on the way there we got a reminder that we were in horse country.

Iceland has a unique genetic strain of horses and the authorities go to extreme lengths to keep it pure; Icelandic horses (never “ponies” in polite Icelandic company, despite the fact that they’re all smaller than 15.2 hands) are famous in riding circles for having a unique gait, halfway between walk and trot, called “tölt”.

So: next church: this one is Blönduóskirkja – so-called because it’s in a town called Blönduós – and features another eccentric design.

Today being Sunday, we thought it might be open. Like so many churches around the island, it wasn’t.

The next stop was also a church and the start of our brush with Icelandic turf constructions. It is called Víðimýrarkirkja, and is part of the Skagafjörður Heritage Museum (Skagafjörður is the name of the county it’s in). It’s small but beautifully formed.

and the inside is a delight both to look at

and to smell – it has a wonderful, woody, scent.

One of the other parts of the Heritage Museum is at Glaumbær, and also heavily features turf.

It looks like several turf houses

but this is an illusion. If you step in the main entrance above and explore, it becomes clear that it goes back a long way

and there are different rooms off this passageway, such as this kitchen.

In fact, the whole construction is one house, constructed in sections up to 1879, which would have belonged to a wealthy person (a bishop, actually) and where some 24 people would have lived. The timbers in the house give away the fact that this was a wealthy man’s house, as timber is a scarce resource in Iceland because the original settlers chopped down all the trees. A more typical example would have much less timber and of much coarser quality. There are around a dozen turf houses left in Iceland, all examples of dwellings of wealthy people, and some were even inhabited as late as the 1960s. The buildings look great now, but life in them would not have been too wonderful – two dozen people crammed into such a space would not have been that pleasant, and it’s too easy to romanticise life back then.

I’ve got a load more photos of the other rooms and the outer sections – toolsheds, etc – but don’t want to bore you more than I’m already doing, so I’ll move on, as we in fact did.

Dagur next took us on a tour of his native town, Skagafjörður, before we stopped off at Hofsos, a pretty village with a lovely harbour.

We then spent some time with Dagur’s mother, father, younger brother and niece, who have a summer house nearby; it was a very pleasant interlude, and they are a charming and hospitable family.

Our final brush with Icelandic culture was to visit Siglufjörður, which was a centre of a huge herring processing industry in Iceland, and is now home to the Herring Era Museum. The town itself is quite handsome.

It would have been even more so had the fog not obscured the mountains, but it’s an appealing place. To the left in the picture above is the Sigló Hótel, an imposing and attractive building, which is a strong candidate for a stay when we come back to Iceland in the future.

The Herring Museum itself (visible on the far quayside in the picture above) is very interesting as it gives a superb insight into the extraordinary size, scope and complexity of the herring industry which was so important to Iceland (still is, in fact, but it’s much more industrialised now). Again, I have dozens of photos but will just show you a couple here.

The museum is actually five buildings of which three contain exhibits. The biggest one is the boathouse.

As well as boats, it has examples of fishing equipment of all sorts, and a couple of idiosyncratic wooden figures of people from that era: a fishwife;

and an old salt, clearly out to try something on with passing people.

The next building is the fish oil factory, which shows the sort of huge machinery used to process herring into oil and fishmeal.

Upstairs is a gallery which gives a lot of information about the history and size of the industry and the importance of its products.

One gets a powerful impression of how tough the life must have been – hard labour in unremittingly unpleasant conditions. The third building covers the salting process and also contains the lodging for the “herring girls” who worked there in the summers.

As Jane pointed out, most ships have a bridge in them, but this is ridiculous.

Shortly after this visit, we arrived in Akureyri and checked into our room, so far towards the furthest reaches of the hotel that the WiFi reached only intermittently), at the Kea Hotel (comfortable enough, but so cramped that if one person is sitting at the desk, another can’t get round to the window) before heading out for a decent meal at a nearby restaurant called Strikið. We’ll explore the town more tomorrow and I’ll report back, so stay tuned for the gen on this, the capital of the northern region, and more waterfalls.

* The title of this post is after an idea proposed by my wife. I just thought you ought to know this.

Oman Day 7 – Back to “civilisation” with a bump

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Wednesday Feb 27. So this was it – our goodbye to the camps that the Hud Hud Travels team had so splendidly set up and run just for us – sad in a way, but holding out the tingling anticipation, at the end of the day, of:

getting online
unlimited running hot water
unlimited electricity

I may not be as jaundiced about camping as I was earlier in the week, but still my heart leapt at the prospect of all of the above.

However, there was packing to be done and breakfast to be had before we said our goodbyes and headed off for the day’s adventures. These largely centred around a drive over the Hajar mountains, widely touted as the most scenic drive in these ‘ere parts. Touted correctly, too, in my opinion. The road itself is a bit of a bone shaker

(and should not under any circumstances be undertaken in anything but a robust 4×4 – see later) but offers some really spectacular scenery.

You’ll notice in the last of these that there’s a village nestling among the savage scenery. This, and others, are inhabited by people who have lived in the Hajar mountains for generations. For them, life is simple, spelt t-o-u-g-h, but it’s one they know and when the government, in an enlightened attempt to make life better for them, builds an entire village for them

the uptake is quite low, according to Rashid. However, the younger generation are more prepared to move and so eventually social housing projects such as this may well be fully populated, and the problems of delivering water, electricity and life’s other essentials to the remote areas of the Hajar mountains may well diminish.

At the high point of the drive is the Salma plateau. If you want my opinion, it’s a bit up-and-down to be credibly called a plateau

but I suppose everything’s relative. Anyhoo, the most interesting feature of the plateau are the “beehive tombs”, some 28 of which can be found here, with many more in other locations such as Al-Ayn and Al Khtum.

Above are two of the well-preserved ones, but many have decayed. The workmanship on them is quite remarkable.

Jane crawled inside one to see what it was like inside.

As you continue the drive, you can look back and see the ones which have survived over the centuries.

On we drove, enjoying the spectacular mountain scenery.

until we came to a village nestled in the middle of all this rockery!

The question naturally occurred to me – why the actual do people set up a habitation in such remote parts? Rashid’s answer was simple – they found water, and had developed skills in locating sources of water which enabled them to perpetuate this life, tough as it is. This village is called Qorun (I think) and, indeed, is centred around a well.

Above you can see the tanks to which well water is pumped before being loaded on to the water trucks for distribution to the remote parts of the village and other mountain sites, too.

A diversion was provided by a baby donkey, who wondered if we might have some food.

There are wild donkeys in the mountains, but also some which are owned by villagers, along with goats and sheep. If you look in detail at the layout of the village, you can see where the animals are kept.

Theirs are the shelters extending out from caves and hollows higher up the rocks to centre and right of the picture above – but those used to be the actual domiciles of the villagers themselves in times gone by!

After a while we reached the top and crossed over to the point where we could see the coast, and we stopped for lunch in front of yet another stunning view.

(The faint line across the middle is actually the horizon, with the ocean meeting the sky.)

Rashid spent some time explaining elements of the view to us, whilst around us there was a certain amount of wildlife activity. We were inspected by goats

donkeys

and, delightfully, Egyptian vultures.

(we think we spotted a Turkey vulture as well, but are not entirely sure. It’s amazing that Oman has to import its wildlife from other middle eastern countries, don’t you think?)

Lunch over, we made the descent to the coastal plain. This is where a 4×4 – and an experienced driver like Rashid – becomes essential, as the road is incredibly steep in places – difficult to convey photographically, but here’s my best shots.

We saw a few more features on the way down: a face in the rocks;

the caves where mountain people used to live;

and another government housing project intended to encourage these folk to live in better accommodation which so far languishes mainly empty, since the people refuse to move.

We finally made it down to the coastal plain and spent a few minutes cruising the (lovely, smooth, tarmac) coastal road near a town called Fins looking for gazelles, since this is the coastal end of a reserve called Ras al Shajar. We saw a few, but they’re quite shy, so I have many photos of their back ends as they ran away.

Then Rashid took us to see something that is, on the face of it, a bit strange – a Frankincense tree. It was rather marvellous to see something in real life that I had previously only come across as a biblical reference. So here it is – the only Frankincense tree in northern Oman:

There are, Rashid told us, many in southern Oman, around Salalah, but this is the only one in north Oman. I’m not sure I can understand why people haven’t taken cutings from it to make other trees (because you can see where cuttings have been taken), but there we are. Rashid also told us about male and female Frankincense. Looking closely at the tree, this is a patch of female

and this of male

They are subtly dfferent in the scent they produce, apparently, but I’m only a bloke so I don’t really understand these things. The tree was in flower, so here’s your chance to see Frankincense flowers.

Our next tourist stop-off (because by this stage I’d begun to feel that we were ticking the boxes – gazelles, tick, Frankincense tree, tick) was Hawiyat Najm, or the Sink-hole park. There’s maybe nothing unusual in yer average sink hole, but this one is slightly unusual in that it’s fed by both fresh water, from the mountains, and salt water, from the sea. Anyway, there are steps down into it and you can go swim in it if you like – after you’ve paid to get in, of course. Like Wadi Bani Khaled, this is very much a tourist spot, but it’s quite striking.

So there we were – all the boxes ticked and it was finally time to go to the hotel which would be our home for the next four nights – the Chedi, in Muscat. This is a seriously posh joint and I’m entirely pleased to report that we were upgraded to one of their Executive Suites, and so have separate bedroom, bathroom, terrace and lounge, which is where I sit and type, for these blogs don’t write themselves, you know. Jane has pointed out that all this luxury seems a bit fake after the gritty reality of life in the mountains or desert. I kind of understand what she’s trying to say, but I’ll grab that unlimited electricity and hot running internet with both hands and be grateful.

Tomorrow, we get to tour the highlights of Muscat, so tune in to the next installment to find out how that went. ‘Bye for now!