Tag Archives: Tourism

Day 5 – What the fox that?

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Saturday 3rd July, 2021.  One gets to be obsessed with the weather while on holiday in Iceland.  It’s not a conversation-easer like in England; here, it really matters.  The forecast for the day was hopeful.

but the reality was much better.

Ísafjörður looked lovely in the sunshine; and Jane pointed out that it also has an unusual-looking church. It seems to be a thing here.

We set off into the sunshine with a song in our hearts and a long day’s driving ahead.

Then we ran into the fog.

However, Dagur Had A Plan, and so took us up into the hills, where we could get some good views looking down on the clouds, which is always nice.

Today, we learned the proper Icelandic word for the “Valley Fog” that we’d first noticed yesterday. It’s called “dalalæða”; “dala” means valley, if my knowledge of Swedish is anything to go by.  This is a form of sea mist, but it’s pretty much unique to Iceland, as far as I can make out. Every so often for the rest of the day we entered a bank of mist, or it figured as part of the view.  So, for example, we stopped at an outdoor maritime museum at Bolungarvik, and could barely make it out through the mist.

But the mist also provided a lovely backdrop to a photo of Ísafjörður.

Our next stop was at a museum dedicated to the Icelandic Arctic Fox.  Officially, this is the same as arctic foxes found elsewhere; but an interesting information film gave the impression that actually the genetic makeup of most of the Iceland population is diverging from those elsewhere. It’s an appealing place

with coffee and cake if you want it, and several (stuffed) examples of foxes, such as this, which we judged to be the finest specimen on display.

Both Jane and I were under the impression that arctic foxes had a winter (white) coat, which changed into a summer (dark) coat.  It turns out that we were wrong; there are two “morphs”, white and blue, and while their coats may change a little in colour, it’s not the transformation that we’d previously thought.

And outside, in a large caged-off area, they have a real, live, fox.

Arctic fox cub

It’s just a pup; a Bambi fox, because apparently it’s parents were shot. It’s not known what its future holds, but for now, it is supremely cute.

Further cuteness was on display a short while later, as Dagur suddenly braked, turned round and went back along the road we’d come along.  It turned out that he’d spotted a lone seal on a rock, and so stopped and took some photos.

There is an “official” place to view seals a little further around the coast, so we stopped there; but one really needed binoculars to see the seals; my general-purpose lens could barely pick them out.

and my phone couldn’t do the scene justice, either.

(though, once again, this image is a tribute to the imaging power of modern phone cameras.  I could barely distinguish between seals and stones with the naked eye).

Shortly after this, we had a scenery stop at Rjukandi, where there’s a pretty cascade. But this is Iceland, so it’s not a real waterfall.  We did venture off-piste to try for a photo of three others.

I particularly wanted to capture this as a wonderful demonstration, suitable for any geography/geology lesson, of water’s power of erosion.

It was time for lunch, and serendipity stepped in at this point, as we were near a place where we could see a round of Vestfjarðavíkingurinn 2021, the Icelandic Strongest Man competition.

It was slightly surreal to see these large chaps congregating

and I was lucky enough to get a little video footage of a couple of the contestants

after which they came into the restaurant for lunch.

The commentator is a very big name in Iceland – Magnus Ver Magnusson, who won the World’s Strongest Man competition four times.

After this unusual lunch stop, we next visited Saltverk, a small factory producing some of Iceland’s (apparently) famous sea salt in a 100% sustainable fashion, based on a geothermal source at Sudureyri.

This heat is used to evaporate salt water taken from the sea from its normal salinity of around 3.5%, in stages, to around 28%, where the salt starts to separate out in its tanks and sink to the bottom, where it can be collected.

and then put into drying racks before being packaged up.

The salt is mixed with other ingredients such as thyme, or smoked, or sold untouched by further processing.

The rest of the day consisted of simply getting to our hotel, and thus completing a journey of over 350km.  The scarcity of towns and villages as we travelled underlines how isolated these parts of Iceland are, and goes some way to explaining why some places are struggling – the distances are too large for any kind of convenience in living.

We passed a couple of noteworthy buildings on our route to the hotel:  a house that looks more like a small castle (unoccupied definitely, and abandoned, it would seem);

and another for our informal collection of unusual church buildings – this one at Holmavik with rainbow steps.

And so here we are at our hotel, at Laugarbakki – a modern and quite imposing edifice, with, as we’ve now come to expect, very good food in the restaurant.  Jane had a salad which included unusual-coloured pea pods:

She didn’t eat it, of course, as she’s not a Purple Peapod Eater.

So here we are at the end of a varied day. We have a similarly mixed programme of things to look forward to tomorrow, so I’d be very glad if you were to come back and Read All About It then. For now, good night!

 

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.