Tag Archives: Landscape

Day 6 – Hallo, Turf*

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

Leave a Reply

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!

Oman Day 6 – Wadi View!

Leave a Reply

Tuesday Feb 26. After a good night’s sleep, lulled by the song of our crickets, we found that the wind, and its accompanying flying sand, had dropped somewhat: so the only hazard we had to deal with over breakfast was the flies, who fancied a share of our fare.

Apart from covering the food, another way to discourage them is to burn Frankincense; the scent seems to keep them away. The breakfast was, as all meals at the Hud Hud camps, excellent, and so we set out for the day feeling replete.
On the way out we passed a goat farm where the goats were all trooping along for their morning drink.

As we exited the desert, it was interesting to see just how clear and sharp was the delineation between it and not-desert – you see flat flat flat flat – desert,

alongside which is a stern warning!

Frankly, I’m not sure how they’d know if you popped in and took a couple of truckfuls, but anyway….a longish drive back into the mountains took us to the outskirts of the village which takes its name from one of the most popular wadis in the area, Wadi Bani Khaled.

Before we took a walk along the banks of the wadi, Rashid took us off road to see it from above. The view over the village is quite striking

but the view of the wadi itself from even higher is, I think, the most spectacular view of the holiday so far.

The photo hardly does it justice; the contrast between the ruggedness of the rocks, the way the village nestles among them and the greenness of the wadi below makes this absolutely remarkably to stand and see. Even Rashid was struck by it

although his mate appeared to have his mind elsewhere.
It looked deserted from up there. We went down to discover that the parking was nearly full and that there were hordes of people heading up the wadi. Bloody tourists, giving tourism a bad name. However, it was a nice enough walk up the wadi, which has several irrigation channels running off it, obvs – the Omanis are vigilant in finding ways to get water to where it’s needed.

After a short walk, you arrive at a couple of pools

and you begin to realise the extent to which the area has been set up for tourists

with specially-installed viewpoints and also a restaurant, on the left in the picture below.

The restaurant serves a mean lemon-and-mint juice, and Jane reported herself satisfied also with the watermelon juice. The juice stop gave us a nice view of people having a nice time.

It’s then possible to walk a little way further up the wadi, where you can see pools that people can paddle or swim in.

though, this being where it is, there are some caveats about dress

(which were being quite widely ignored, sad to say; bloody tourists again, eh?).
Beyond that the path gets very rocky and in places slippery, so we didn’t go much further. on the way back, Jane got a fishy pedicure:

which started off apparently being very ticklish but soon became quite addictive. There was certainly one chap just up from where Jane sat who had been there with his feet in the water for quite some while.

After we’d exhausted the entertainment possibilities we headed off for lunch. The path beside the wadi passed a couple of mango trees, both magnificently in flower.

We’d enjoyed Wadi Bani Khaled, but at the same time found it slightly weird to have such (relatively speaking) naked pandering to tourism after all the other, less exploited places we’d visited. As our late neighbour Cyril used to lament, tourism is ruined by tourists, and this was the first inkling we’d really had about the encroaching effects of tourism in Oman. It’s an important industry, and the country needs to develop and grow it; but the downside is that nature will get built upon. Let’s hope that the Omani government will try to ensure that tourism development is done in the best possible taste.

Lunch was as usual an excellent picnic courtesy of our Hud Hud chef. After that, we headed back into the desert. En route, we saw the extent of the date palm plantation outside Biddiyah. The water supply that feeds it means it can spread until it butts up hard against the desert behind it.

The object of going back into the desert was to visit Said’s gaff to gain a little insight into the bedouin culture. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but in the event it turned out to be a sizeable room, constructed in a traditional manner out of date palm trunks, stalks and leaves. That sounds insubstantial, but, as you can see from the picture below, it is a sizeable and robust fabrication. As you can also see from the cars parked outside, we weren’t the only visitors.

Half of the room is given over to carpets upon which coffee and dates are served to seated groups of visitors.

and the other half to, well, stuff – artefacts and domestic things, some of which are for sale and some of which aren’t.

To give you an idea of the construction, here are close-ups of the ceiling

which is date palm leaf stalks, and the walls

which are also date palm stalks, but with the leaves left on to provide a fibrous surround.

Our stay there was reasonably short, and we headed off back to the Wahiba sands to get back to camp in time for sunset.

En route, we saw several things worthy of a photo: some opportunistic goats grabbing an illicit snack;

racing camels being taken back to their farms after exercise;

and some more hazards on and off the road (which carries right on towards Muhut until it suddently stops being a road and deposits you onto flat sand, at which point you are on your own – further underlining the need to make sure you’re properly prepared for desert travel).

We also stopped off to allow me to try for some arty shots of dunes

To get to a decent viewpoint for the sunset, we piled into the car (taking an extra member of the camp staff with us to help dig us out in case we got stuck on a dune somewhere) and Rashid took us dune-bashing via a circuitous route to the top of a dune overlooking a valley and served coffee whilst we awaited sunset.

The sunset itself wasn’t particularly spectacular, but the location was very zen.

When we got back to camp, we had the usual excellent dinner and, while Patrick and Jane went off to hunt more scorpions, I set to to trying to get some images of the stars. I got some stills which were rather ho-hum, and then set a timelapse going. Again, it’s nothing too dramatic, but it looks like some aeroplanes came through, (I originally thought they might be shooting stars, but I now doubt that):

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Feb 28, 2019 at 5:43am PST

After all that excitement, since we were due to leave camp the following morning, there was nothing for it but to try to finish off the gin we’d bought on arrival in Oman. Patrick manfully stepped up to the plate to help us out and by hook or by crook we finished it off with just about time for a reasonable amount of sleep before having to face the next day, which is, of course, covered in the next gripping installment of this blog, where I hope we’ll meet again.