Author Archives: Julie Hunt

Iceland January 2013: Mýrdalsjökull

Yesterday, on the way back from Landmannalaugar, we discussed the wind. There are two experimental windmills up – experimental since it can get windy in Iceland. The guide told us that Hurricane Sandy had winds of about 48 m/s. Shortly after that, there were storms in Iceland too, in which at one point the wind on the highland road was measured at 70 m/s but generally, their storms are around 25 m/s. Icelanders, by the way, are very precise about everything.

With this fresh in my mind, it was stormy last night. I spent a lot of the night awake and fearing for the roof or the lamp post across the road or convinced I was going to get up and find Reykjavík destroyed. At 6.30 I had to get up to stare out into the darkness and see how bad it was. Of course, strong winds are nothing here and of course they didn’t cause a problem.

I got my hot chocolate and waited on the street corner as usual for my pick-up, this time in a minibus. We did a quick pick-up tour of Reykjavík, finishing up with eight people – three British, one Londoner now living in New York, three New Yorkers and a man from New Zealand now living in Germany. I don’t know what it is bringing people from New York to Iceland at the moment – perhaps it’s because of the warmer weather here.

Because Tolkien borrowed a lot of his names – the dwarf names especially – from Norse mythology, it’s not unknown to come across someone who shares their name with someone from Middle Earth. Our guide today was Dóri, who was not a dwarf but he was armed with an axe and a spectacular beard. Dóri is an Icelandic name I can more or less manage but just to be extra helpful, he had it embroidered on his fleece. What was particularly odd, though, was that he had exactly the same accent as Kermit.

We took the Ring Road down to Hvolsvöllur. That’s about an hour and a half and I’ve done that bit of road so many times that it’s tedious. Up past the power station, down to Hveragerði, through Selfoss, keep going through the farm land until you come to the last stop before glacier world. We stopped at Hvolsvöllur to stock up and then kept following the road for another 45 minutes to the turning to Sólheimasjökull – the Home of the Sun glacier. It’s a glacial tongue coming down from Mýrdalsojökull and I visited it with Reykjavík Excursions in October, walking underneath magnificent ice caves. These are now gone. The glacier is creeping down at about 5-15 cm every day but it’s melting faster than it’s moving.

We were fitted for crampons, given ice axes and harnesses, got into our waterproofs and put on helmets and trekked over to the edge of the ice where we had to put on the crampons. They made it seem a lot harder last time. This time, while we were doing that, some tourists who’d come up on their own, presumably, decided it would be a great idea to wander around in normal boots on the ice, just metres away from what looked like a very deep crevasse. I don’t think anyone in our group agreed with this idea.

We started our climb. It’s quite awkward because the end of the glacier is just a mess of crevasses and gravel and ash from Eyjafjallajökull (or E15 as Dóri calls it, presumably because there are 15 letters after the E) and you have to keep hopping from ice back to what looks like solid ground. It isn’t solid ground. There’s ice underneath, it’s just that the layer of gravel and ash is thick enough that you can’t really tell.

Once we were up onto the glacier, we were introduced to moulins and crevasses. The moulins are the nasty ones – they’re vertical tubes in the ice where water rushes down. The biggest one in the world, in Greenland, is 2km deep and the bowl at the top of it is 50 or 60km in diameter – or deep enough to scream three or four times before you reach the bottom. The biggest one Dóri knows about in Sólheimasjökull is about 200m deep. Several of the ones we came across were deceptively small, ranging from about the size of my hand to smallish bathtub size ones. You don’t want to fall in any of them.

We kept climbing, stopping every now and then for another glaciology lesson. The glacier was striped with blue and white ice. The blue ice is about 7% air, compared to the 20% or so air in the white ice and a blue and white together represent one year. In the winter there’s lots of snow so it gets compressed and the air squeezed out and that forms a blue layer and in the summer, there’s less snow, it’s not as heavy, it’s a bit puffier, it forms a white layer. Repeat over and over again. It apparently takes about 10 metres of snow to create 1cm of blue ice and the blue ice is absolutely crystal clear. A bit weird to walk on because you can see through the ground. The glacier twists a bit because of where it’s hit the mountains on the way down, so the stripes are vertical in some places and horizontal in others. Then we discussed the local volcanoes, that is E15 and Katla. Dóri was detailing exactly what will happen when Katla erupts. The flash flood will be colossal. Easily big enough to just pick up the 8km-long glacier we were walking on and fling it into the ocean a few miles away, easily strong enough to punch a hole through the mountains, will wipe out a few farms, etc. Katla is overdue. Have I mentioned that recently? Dóri also explained glaciers as Snickers bars. The chocolate is the thin, tough layer we’re walking on. Below that is a thick layer of softer, fudge-like ice and below that – like the caramel, but on the bottom. Ooh! Or like a Snickers bar turned upside down! (as he put it, very excitedly) is the melted water that lubricates the whole thing and makes it slide down the valley. And in the middle somewhere, there are nuts, or in this case boulders and lumps of rock taken from the mountains on each side. In this analogy, I guess the volcanic ash doesn’t exist.

We kept on climbing, now walking across horizontal layers of blue and white ice, each about a foot thick, towards our ice climbing wall. It was more or less a perfect wall, stripy, about 15 feet high. Dóri scrambled up the slope to rig the wall while the rest of us made ourselves comfortable. Some of us settled down on the floor and Emily from New York managed to slide down and crash into me crampons first. It didn’t hurt too much. Then Dóri decided the best way to come back to us and simultaneously teach us the basics was to abseil down the sheer stripy wall. He was in the middle of explaining how to use the axes when Paul from New York from London fell over spectacularly, slid down the slope backwards and nearly took us all out like skittles. The instruction was paused while he was rescued from the ice.

While Dóri was rigging the thing, the rest of us had been discussing it and I’d told Emily what I’d seem in pictures. Now we discovered that I’d been pretty much right – you stab the wall with the spikes sticking out of your toes, rather than trying to grip with the sole of your feet like you normally would. I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that everything to do with ice and snow is completely counterintuitive. We had a try one at a time, borrowing each other as bagholders, axe holders and photographers.

The climbing axes are different to the walking axes. They’re shorter and curved and the blades curve down like hooks, and they have better grips on the handles. You reach up above your head and chop at the ice until you get the blade hooked in, and it’s only the very tip of it. Then you kick your toes in and use that to stand on. At first I did ok with my feet. I was struggling to chop axe-holds and kept hearing “Great footwork!” from below but once I got halfway past the wall, I started to get tired. My legs were shaking – we’d already had that with Emily, Dóri calls it Elvis and he commented that Elvis lives on in more than one person. I think for the last five steps up, my weight was on the rope more than it was on my feet or axes. The axes kept slipping, I couldn’t chop as well with my left hand as with my right, my right foot didn’t want to stay pegged into the ice and I was trembling. The top was just above me, just out of reach. I hooked an axe in again, managed to hoist myself up another step and heard Dóri say that if I reached up with my axe and touched the carabiner, I’d be at the top. I scrambled for that carabiner. I was sliding my hand further and further down the axe to make it stretch just half an inch higher.

Getting down again was easier. The others had had to have step-by-step instructions while on the wall on how to abseil but I’m very used to that and I walked myself down the wall easily enough for Dóri to observe that I’d done it before. I slightly overdid it – to give myself enough slack to undo the rope I abseiled right down to the ground and then was too exhausted and trembling to get up. The ice axes had to come back out to haul myself to my feet.

Sitting on the ice afterwards, comfortable on the ground without slipping or sliding anywhere drinking hot chocolate and waiting for my hands to stop shaking was a little bit blissful.

Once everyone had had their turn at climbing, we had to go back up out of our little bowl, onto the top of the glacier and walk down. Walking down is harder than up on crampons and two of our New Yorkers needed Dóri’s hand most of the way down.

It had been damp and windy earlier but now the sun had come out, just in time to start setting. The lagoon at the bottom is very brown but it’s also very reflective and came in handy for a lot of photos. There’s a waterfall coming down the mountain opposite and Dóri said he hadn’t seen it this powerful this time of year for a long time. We walked on before he added “Something big is coming” which is a slightly disturbing thing to hear from someone with the same name as a character from The Hobbit. All he meant was that probably the really cold weather is still to come, since 5° and no snow on the ground is not normal for an Icelandic January.

We got out of the crampons and harnesses and helmets and returned the axes and then, as we got back in the minibus, we were presented with our packed lunches. I enjoyed the apple juice but instead of the ham and salad sandwich, I made my own rolls from my bread and my indestructible cheese slices (just about the only food improved by being left on a glacier). I also left the chocolate doughnut for the time being.

The last stop before we got back was Skógarfoss, or possibly Skógafoss. The guide books and leaflets are very inconsistent on whether or not there’s an R in it. Just as I’ve decided which spelling is correct, I find it written completely differently elsewhere. Anyway, we stopped there, just for fifteen minutes which just isn’t enough for this waterfall. It’s pretty big and pretty powerful and only two of us were brave/stupid enough to try and get up close – me, obviously and Daniel from Germany from New Zealand. We borrowed each other’s cameras and got right into the spray for the pictures and in the thirty or so seconds it took, even with waterproofs on, we got drenched. Then there was a toilet stop, which I used to take photos of the waterfall with its reflection in a puddle – Dóri had talked about this puddle earlier and then paused the minibus by the puddle to point it out as we drove to the waterfall. So I obediently stopped and took photos of the waterfall and its reflection and the surrounding mountains and their reflections and the spectacular sunset behind us.

The problem with getting so close up to the waterfall was that I then had to spend two hours on a minibus driving back quite damp and quite cold. It was great fun at the time, I was grinning like a loon when I came back to the minibus but a few miles later, not so funny. Dóri estimated it was 2hrs 15mins back to Reykjavík but since people had a Northern Lights tour picking up at 7.30, he’d try to make that two hours. I know roughly the timings on that road – it’s 40 minutes to Hveragerði then 10 minutes to Selfoss, so if we made Selfoss by 6.10 we could be home by 7.

We did it a bit quicker. The whole journey in 1hr 35 mins, actually. I spent part of the journey asleep, part of the journey trying to decide whether or not to get some more bread this evening and part of the journey trying to work out how to get rid of that sandwich. I decided not to get bread – I was tired and a little bit achy and pretty cold by the time we got back, my boots were soaked yet again and I wanted to get in, get dry socks on, get changed and fall on my bed. Which is exactly what I did. First job once that was done was to download my GPS data and then I ate my chocolate doughnut. I’ve never eaten a doughnut in my life and although it was edible, I’m not entirely convinced and I probably won’t bother having another one.

Tomorrow is “Riding & Wellness” – that is, a couple of hours on an Icelandic horse, followed by a trip to Fontana Spa. This one’s different from the Blue Lagoon. It’s built on the side of a lake, directly over the coolest of three hot springs, so all the heat and the water is coming right out of the ground right there instead of coming as waste from the power station into a pool dug out of the lava. There seem to be baths of varying temperatures, a bit of geothermal beach and you can even dip in the lake if you want, although I gather the lake is not hot. Then we stop at Þingvellir, the Parliament Plains, one of my favourite places in Iceland, on the way back.

Iceland January 2013: Arrival

I successfully got on a coach just before 8 this morning, slept most of the way to Heathrow, checked in, got through security without being searched and stopped at the Tin Goose for some breakfast, while watching breaking news of the helicopter crash on the screen across the other side of the café.

My plane this time was Askja, a spectacular volcano in the Highlands out towards the east of Iceland. It’s got a massive flooded caldera and on the edge of that is a much smaller natural hotpot that you can swim in. The downside is that it’s really hard to get to. Because I keep track of these things, I know this is the first time I’ve been on Askja. Her screens work fine. I watched Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows and it was. The sun came straight in my porthole and I don’t close the blinds on planes, ever. I think mine was the only blind open on that side of the plane. It meant there was a huge patch of sunlight on the screen so I couldn’t actually see half of it, which made it a bit difficult to have a clue what was going on at times.

As we left London and headed towards Luton, the weather changed dramatically. London had been bright and clear and a bit autumnal. Within five or ten minutes of leaving, I could see white fields for miles around. By the time I reached Iceland, it had changed again. We appeared to have descended through 17000ft of cloud (I watched the My Flight page for the entire descent) and landed in an Iceland that was wet, windy and orange. Not a hint of snow anywhere. Iceland’s weather takes me by surprise every single time. I may have to put away my cold weather stuff and get out my wet weather stuff.

I got on my coach and sat and waited for a good twenty minutes for everyone else to arrive. I’d picked up a magazine called Iceland Review on the way out of the airport with the words “All Alone in Iceland?” on the cover and I started reading that while I waited. I’m clearly going to have to watch The Deep on the way home. There was an article about it in the plane magazine, an interview with the director, and now there was an interview with the star. It’s about a fishing boat that sank in 1984. One of the fishermen survived. He swam three miles in the north Atlantic in the middle of winter and then walked barefoot across a lava field for three miles. I remember hearing this story while I was on Heimaey in the summer, because that’s where it happened. Now they’ve made a film based on the story. I also switched on my GPS tracker. I now know that it’s 33 miles from the airport to my guesthouse and that it took 48 minutes.

If it hadn’t been so cloudy and rainy, I don’t think it would have been so dark as we drove over to Reykjavík. I think I remember it just being incredibly dark when I first came, in December 2011 and that was much the same time of day. This time I could see a hint of light in the sky between the clouds an hour after the sun should have set. It was dark enough to be confusing, though. I completely lost track of where we were several times, including once we’d actually reached Reykjavík. We stopped at the posh hotel by the airport where there are four Christmas trees still covered in twinkling lights and looking very pretty. Actually, there are a lot of pretty Christmas lights still around and the Pearl looks lovely in the dark. By day, it looks a bit weird. It’s six huge concrete tanks with a grey dome balanced on top but in the dark, that dome is lit up (on the inside, I think) by thousands of little fairy lights. Finally there’s a spinning green searchlight on the top. You can see it from miles away.

Because my guesthouse is down a narrow street, I had to jump off the coach downtown and get on a minibus and once I was on the minibus, I panicked that I’d left my pack of vouchers and passport on the coach. That wouldn’t actually be too much of a disaster. Iceland Excursions are very good and they would have noticed. It would have ended up in their office and they would probably have managed to phone me, if I didn’t get down to them to reclaim it first. Luckily I’d been organised and put it back in my bag so that saved me having to go out again in the rain.

Evelyn, who owns the guesthouse, was waiting for me at the door. I had to take off my shoes and then trudge up two flights of stairs with my suitcase. My room has three beds. At the moment I seem to have one for sleeping in, one for sitting on and one for unloading stuff onto. My suitcase seems to have been either put in a puddle or left out in the rain (I’m blaming Iceland for this, since it was dry at Heathrow) so one side of it is soaked so there’s a lot of stuff on the radiator at the moment. It’s a good radiator. Most of it is already dry. I’ve got a sink in my room, the bathrooms are right outside and I’ve had a peek in the kitchen. Not too much of a peek – not enough to spot any kettle, although I’m sure there is one. I actually went down for the wifi password, to be told “you can only use the wifi down here. You can sit with the students!” No. No no no. The wifi works in my room and I did not come here to sit and write this with a group of strangers. I am unsociable and remaining that way. It seems to cut out regularly but it reconnects if I give it a stern look. Hopefully that’s all she meant – that it doesn’t reach up to the second floor too well, rather than she wants internet use supervised or she wants to force me to be sociable. I’m already uncertain about this place, to be honest. I got put in my room. “These are your keys. There’s a front door key but I’m downstairs so tell me if you want to go downtown” and evidently I have to tell her what time I’m being picked up in the morning so she can make breakfast. Feeling like this, I’m not at all sure if I’m going to even want breakfast. I’ve had a handful of cereal tonight and I experimented with one roll with a slice of plastic cheese in it which seems to be going ok. I’m also just across the Pond from the domestic airport so tonight I’ve already seen three smallish planes fly across right in front of my window.

Each of my spare beds has a big blanket on it. I like this, at least. And it’s warm. My room has a name, not a number. It’s called Sóley, which is one of the Icelandic words I know. Its literal translation is Sun Island but it means buttercup and it’s a fairly common name. Must go and pack for tomorrow before I go to bed.

Iceland January 2013: Landmannalaugar

When I woke up, I was convinced my alarm was about to go off and I was about to have to crawl out of a nice cosy bed. I was delighted, therefore, to discover it was only 2.58am and I had hours still to sleep.

I woke up ten minutes before my alarm, got up, pottered around, enjoying the fact that my bag was already packed for the day and went downstairs to make hot chocolate. There was still no sign of a kettle in the kitchen so I found a pan and was in the middle of filling it with water when Evelyn appeared, demanding to know what I was doing. There was hot water in the dispenser, didn’t I know? But she would make me some hot milk. In fact, instead of making it with my little Highlights sachet, she’d use Swiss Miss powder. She whisked my little flask away and I sat down to try and eat some breakfast. I’d actually already had some cereal for breakfast up in my room but as I had breakfast waved at me downstairs, I thought I’d better eat something. A slice of bread and butter (and the in-flight magazine was right, Icelandic butter does taste different) and some orange juice (almost undrinkable) while chatting a little bit to a German girl from Stuttgart. Evelyn brought back my flask full of hot chocolate and I dived back upstairs to pull on my outer layers, throw the flask in my bag and hurry downstairs to be waiting for my pick-up at 8.

It wasn’t until about 8.28. By then I was getting a bit twitchy. Car after car went past, then jeeps of various sizes but finally one pulled in by the door – a big silver Nissan Patrol with tyres almost as big as me. I hopped in. I was first and as the other two were coming together, would I mind please sitting in the front seat? Not at all. My guide introduced himself but it was an Icelandic name, of course, and I managed to completely miss what it actually was so hereon in he will be called “the guide”. Of course, then I made an idiot of myself by forgetting that we drive on the wrong side. I got the car door open to find the guide holding open the door on the other side and telling me he’d rather be the one driving. Sheepishly, I explained “English cars” as he asked if I was Australian or English.

With our other couple (Adrian & Melissa from New York), we set off. I’d brought my GPS and I switched it on as we left the town centre. It was dark for a long time. The guide wasn’t sure we’d make it to Landmannalaugar. A friend of his went yesterday and after being stuck in wet snow for four hours had had to turn back. He told us we had the option of trying for Landmannalaugar bearing in mind there was only a 75% chance we’d make it and only a 50% chance we’d get back without help or we could go to Þórsmörk instead, have a nice drive up the river valley, drive right to the edge of Eyjafjallajökull, stop at the EFJ museum and go for a swim in Iceland’s oldest pool.

We headed up towards the Ring Road as usual, down to Hveragerði (Icelandic peppers got mentioned but not the bananas) and to the little shop and petrol station where I spent a night looking for the Northern Lights a year ago. While we waited for the guide to return, I chatted to Adrian who said he and Melissa would rather try to get to Landmannalaugar. I was in agreement and off we went, up the 28 towards the Highlands.

As we approached Hekla (now 13 years since last eruption; overdue), our guide pointed out the farm where he’d grown up. He saw Hekla erupt in 1980 while he was out making hay and recommends that if you ever get a chance to see an eruption, to go for it. Five or ten minutes later, we’d passed the last farm and the tarmac road ran out. A little further on, we came across another jeep, full of men taking photos of Hekla. We stopped alongside it and our guide talked in Icelandic for ages with one of them, finally reporting back as we set off “Not such good news”. All he meant was that the others were not going to Landmannalaugar but they’d swapped phone numbers and he appeared to have found them on the radio so it was “nice to know they’re in the neighbourhood in case of problems”.

It was beginning to look snowy – you could see the snow increasing mile by mile. Half an hour later we stopped on top of a dam that looked like it was on another planet so he could let some air out of our huge tyres, ready to head onto the snow. The three of us tourists ambled around taking photos for five minutes and then we were off, properly into the wilderness.

The first bit was driving along a narrow embankment alongside the lake created by the dam. It was narrow and I was very aware that there was a very very cold (half frozen) lake to our left. Next we were up and onto the bit that, in the summer, had looked like the surface of the moon. Now it was a big white nothingness. It was spectacular. We had to pause a couple of times to look at the road ahead – well, at the white nothingness ahead. There was no road. But the guide had a big chunky satnav and that was showing a road and we were following it very nicely. We came across a road sign, normally two metres high apparently, now with the pole invisible and nothing but the triangular sign itself sticking out of the snow. We also stopped to check that some tracks in the snow were definitely arctic fox – yes, they were.

We followed the power lines (laid in 1973/74 before the days of superjeeps and handy machinery) across a bumpy white nothingness. It had been scary at first, seeing how much the guide pulled the wheel around but you got used to it surprisingly quickly. In the summer this had been a big black lavaflow, with odd-shaped rocks sticking up all over the place. The rocks were still visible but mostly it was just snow. And once again, I kept feeling like Landmannalaugar had to be just around the next bend. I sort of half-recognised places, like the terrifying descent where we’d come across some rescue ATVs last time which I thought was five minutes away from the place. The last 50km crawled. The last 2k were slowest. In my guidebook it says:

“In good conditions, skilled drivers might be able to nurse a conventional vehicle to the ford at Landmannalaugar, the passengers then hitching a ride across with something more sturdy but you’re not advised to try.”

In summer, this ford is no obstacle at all. If you really can’t drive through it, it’s all of about 500 yards from the centre and there’s a footbridge over it. In winter, you can’t follow the road all the way to the ford because it hugs the bottom edge of the mountain and it’s too steep to drive across in snow. We had to cross a river that just wasn’t there in the summer. Once we’d got out of the river (easier said than done, even in a superjeep) something seemed wrong. We crept along at 3km/hr (I was watching the satnav) while the guide kept sticking his head out the window and stopping and reversing and trying again. I had no idea what the problem was. I’d have just driven straight across. Probably a good thing it wasn’t me driving. Eventually, after he’d flicked two green switches several times, we gave up trying to cross the mysteriously scary snowfield and headed into the river. This was all of half a mile away. I was starting to think of saying “It’s right there, we can walk” and then thought better of it. There’s a very cold river at least a foot deep and moving at quite a speed, the snow is two feet deep and half a mile is quite a distance to run if a storm suddenly blows up.

Eventually we made it. It seemed the problem had been quicksand in the river and an unexpected swamp underneath the snow. The guide opted to stay in the car, since he’s been to Landmannalaugar and been in the pool many times. The rest of us abandoned car and fled down to the hut. It wasn’t really open but the front section was, so we could shelter inside to get changed. Remembering how slippery the boardwalk had been in summer, I put my yaktrax on my boots and decided the best thing to do was to put my thermals on over my swimming stuff, put on my coat and my boots and scurry down to the platform with my towel. Getting there was a bit tricky – the snow was thick but where people had trodden in it fairly recently it had opened up in huge deep holes. I made my way down to the waterside like a crazy person, pulled off the warm clothes, wished I’d brought a drybag down to the water, swore at my boots as I had to take them off one at a time to get the thermals off but put them back on before my feet could freeze. I left them right on the steps by the river and jumped in.

It was amazing. It was so warm and so blissful. Filthy but blissful. I drifted upriver towards the hot spring itself, which is take-your-skin-off hot. But you get used to it very quickly and you soon realise it’s only the top of the water that’s warm. If you’re sitting in the water, your feet start to get chilly so you have to float. I had no intention of getting my hair wet – it takes forever to dry and I had ridiculous visions of it getting wet, freezing and then snapping off. So I had plaited it and went in the water with my hat on and the plaits tucked up inside it. Looked ridiculous but it worked. I even had the water to myself for a few minutes before the Americans made it across and in.

The guide had told us we’d made good time and we could have an hour, an hour and a half in the water. I hadn’t brought my watch in with me so I had no idea how long I’d been in but I wanted to get out because 1) the idea of having to get out and stand in the rain (oh yes, the rain, it was raining) and get dried and/or changed was unappealing and therefore better over and done with and 2) I wanted to take some photos of Landmannalaugar in the snow.

I got out. My boots were soaked, partly from the rain and partly from the deep snow I’d run through to get to the water. With the help of my towel, I got the top of the swimsuit off and a thermal top and then coat on and then I wrapped the towel around myself while I considered the problems of the thermal trousers and the wet boots. Then I realised the towel was pretty much windproof and my bare wet legs weren’t really cold. I gathered up the trousers, hung my camera around my neck and wearing a towel-skirt, coat, fleece hat and boots, I fled, trying to follow my own footprints but the snow was going into my boots, which was unpleasant. I made it to the hut without hypothermia, slammed the door behind me and got dressed. Award for best service of the day goes to my softfibre travel towel. Warm, windproof and gets you dry. Back in my multiple layers, I was surprisingly warm and delighted to find I’d packed my waterproof trousers, so I could go and play in the snow for a while before we had to leave. The one problem was that I hadn’t brought any dry shoes or socks. The boots were soaked. For the time being, my socks were still dry so for a few minutes putting the boots back on was ok. I dug out my bottle of hot chocolate. This was about five hours later and it was still hot. Well done Evelyn. Proper bliss. A swim in a hot river in a snow field in the middle of nowhere, followed by warm dry clothes and hot chocolate.

By the time I was ready to go outside the Americans were emerging. They’d taken their bags down to the river but came back in much the same state of dress as I had for all that. I went outside and took photos and tried to ignore the jeep, still sitting there with the engine running, making me feel like we were running late (which we weren’t). To avoid the jeep, I went back down towards the river. Just past the hut but a bit off to the left of the paths I’d take through the snow I found a foot sticking out of the snow – a duck foot, by the looks of what was left, and some tracks that could well have been arctic fox. I did not take a photo. I took photos of the views and the mountains and the snow and then went back up towards the jeep. By now the Americans were coming too so we all hopped back in, damp and warm and happy.

Getting back was easier. We headed straight down the river, followed our tracks back through the wilderness and were back at the Highlands Hotel in no time, having stopped a little way before the dam to partly reinflate the tyres as snow began to give way to lava and gravel. The Highlands Hotel is the last stop before the Highlands road. It used to be a camp for people working at the hydro power station but when it closed, someone bought the camp and turned it into a combined hostel and last stop. It says Hrauneyjar over the door – I prefer that name. It means Lava Islands. The guide stopped there to fully inflate the tyres and for us to get some coffee. Not drinking any coffee, I enjoyed taking off my wet boots and then my wet socks, since they were making wet footprints everywhere and sitting down with space for my feet (a bag and a coat in the front seat of even a superjeep doesn’t leave a lot of space for feet) and then we were off again.

We were taking a slightly different route back. I have no idea at what point we deviated from our original route but suddenly we were on the other side of the river (my GPS says about 8 miles after the Highlands Hotel). We stopped off on the way back to have a quick look at Hjalparfoss, the little twin waterfalls that supply one of the six power stations on that river. It was nice to have it to myself (well, with the two Americans somewhere around) after having a full coachload in the summer but on the other hand, it was starting to get dark by now and my camera’s not a big fan of the dark. The guide thinks it’s a very small waterfall. It’s huge by UK standards and there’s a big chunk of rock in the middle at the top splitting it into two waterfalls. All around it are spectacular horizontal basalt formations before it meanders down to the power station.

From there, we followed the river back to the Ring Road and then it was an hour’s drive back to Reykjavík. I was getting sleepy by then and by the time we reached the outskirts of the city, at least one of the Americans was asleep.

I was dropped off at my door, left my boots downstairs, was permitted to take my coat upstairs since it’s dry and had a shower to wash the river filth off me. It’s a lovely river but it is full of weed and scum and bizarre orangeness today – I thought I had a big bruise on my leg but it turned out to be a patch of something sulphurous from the bottom of the river. Having realised that, I also discovered my hands were bright orange from paddling along the bottom. I vowed not to eat anything until I’d had a chance to wash my hands – not that there was much opportunity to eat until I got back. And eat I did.

Now I am fed and clean and mostly dry and I’ve been drying all the soaking wet stuff on that fantastic radiator ready to go again tomorrow. Glacier hike and ice climbing on Sólheimasjökull, followed by a stop at my favourite waterfall, Skógafoss.

Iceland autumn 2012: Reykavik and Viðey

Today dawned very bright and clear. With no plans for the day, I decided to go the Pearl and maybe as far as the geothermal beach. But first of all, I had to go down to the seafront to say hello to Esja, who I haven’t actually seen yet.

I walked along the seafront, took photos of the view, took photos of the Viking boat, enjoyed the sky and the sun and the fact that I could see Esja and went along to Harpa. It’s always interesting to go inside. It’s not a very pretty building from the outside – interesting, yes, but it really doesn’t blend into Reykjavík’s architecture. Inside, the outer walls are all hexagons and the ceilings seemed to be hexagonal blocks of glass and the inner walls are all black concrete and if it’s sunny, like today, the outer walls reflect on them so you end up with colours and patterns all over the place, which makes interesting photos.

I headed into town and remember the Volcano House so I went to see the Cinema on Fire which started approximately five minutes after I arrived, and I was the only one in the audience. It’s two films, each about twenty minutes long. One is on the 1973 Heimaey eruption. This was of course filmed while it was going on and it shows its age. Still, the whole thing was incredible and well worth documenting and it wasn’t the film I saw in the café on Heimaey over the summer. I hadn’t realised that the worst of the eruption came two months after it started. At first it was the shower of ash that buried houses and caused trouble but in March, it started pouring out lava and that was the bit that was really destructive. I love and am horrified by the Heimaey story in equal parts.

The second film was Fimmvorðuls and Eyjafjalljökull, which are part of the same system. Fimmvorðuhals went up a few weeks before Eyjafjallajökull and threw out lava fountains and was pretty and unproblematic. You all know what Eyjafjallajökull got up to. This film was made only two years ago – while the eruptions were going on, of course – by a professional filmmaker, which meant that when the film changed, it suddenly turned widescreen and all bright and clear and beautiful. And it was beautiful, because the first five minutes were just panoramas of Iceland, showing how volcanoes had shaped the landscape.

I went along to the tourist information centre to get some ideas for the afternoon. I picked up leaflets on domestic flights – it’s only forty-five minutes to Akureyri, not a thing to do today but perhaps at some point, or indeed it’s only about six hours by bus. There’s Esja to be climbed – also not a thing to do today but next time, or the time after. Possibly better in summer. And I found a booklet about trekking – specifically, the Laugavegur trail, which goes from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk. I want to do that. Perhaps in 2014/15. It can be done in two days but it’s more comfortable in three or preferably four. Arctic Adventures provide a guide, book tents/huts and best of all, they drive your luggage to the next night’s stop so you only have to carry the bare minimum.

I picked up a leaflet on Viðey. This is a little island in the harbour, great for just wandering in the summer. You can also go in the winter but the boats only leave from one place and it’s just a bit out of comfortable walking distance. However, they do evening tours with hotel pickup to go and see the Peace Tower. This is a monument to John Lennon and world peace commissioned by Yoko Ono in 2007. Basically, it’s fifteen or so huge searchlights which form a massive column of light that stretches up a very long way – possibly visible from space. It’s only on for two months, from October 9th (John Lennon’s birthday) to December 8th (John Lennon’s deathday). I wanted to go to Viðey, I see that the Peace Tower is a bit of a Sight, so I decided that’s what I’d do with my evening.

Last stop of daytime was Tjörnin, the Pond. It’s one of my favourite places in Reykjavík. It’s just what it sounds like – a big pond. Most places would call it a lake. And it’s not peaceful at all. At the town end, there are always people feeding the birds and it’s all chaos and noise – bird chaos and bird noise but they cause a lot of it. There are geese and swans making all sorts of interesting honking noises, there are ducks and seagulls splashing and having fights, there are birds trying to jump out of the water to pounce of people in search of bread and it’s just great fun, even if you haven’t got any bread, to stand and watch for ages, mostly because the honking noises are hilarious.

I was picked up at about quarter to eight, taken to the harbour along with Manchester’s version of Taylor Swift – I have never heard anyone use the word “like” so many times in so few sentences – and a girl from Nottingham. They’d all been out and about and seeing things but apparently none of them knew any of the names of the places. “Somewhere out in the wilderness, really pretty, with waterfalls” was about the best we got.

We were taken to the harbour, took photos of the Peace Tower from land and then got on the whalewatching boat. The island is only a couple of minutes away and if the North Atlantic Ocean wasn’t so fatally cold, you could easily swim there. But we weren’t going straight there! We were going to see the Tower from the sea first. It was quite choppy. I was fairly sure the boat wasn’t actually going to capsize but I wasn’t 100% sure and I was quite glad when we were taken to land.

We were shown Iceland’s oldest stone house and Iceland’s second oldest church (I’m apparently the only one interested in knowing where the oldest one is – the guide had to confer with the driver/captain to get the answer. Up north, where the other bishop used to be, that’s where. Iceland used to have two bishops, one at Skálholt, the other at Hólar. The last Catholic bishop, seated at Hólar, was murdered at Skálholt and thrown in the river, if I remember rightly) and then we went up to “the seeing hill”, or Sjónarhóll, (without getting garrotted by the washing line next to the path and almost invisible in the dark) where there’s a view over the Tower and Reykjavík and of the full moon – a hill made for taking photos, really. I had managed to forget my hat and it was very windy, so I put the hood of my big red shirt up and secured it in place with my headtorch, which also came in handy for making my way down the hill. Our guide said that sometimes scheduled flights from Reykjavík Domestic fly right through the light. As if on cue, a plane rose out of the city, heading straight for it and yes, through it. That did look quite spectacular. Then it circled around and went through again, made a bigger and slower circle and did it a third time. I have no idea whether that’s just a stunt or whether it was a coincidence or whether the plane thinks it’s a moth and is attracted to the light but it was great to see.

We walked down to the Tower itself. It’s a wishing well, about eight feet high, made of what looks like big ceramic tiles but are actually glass, engraved with “Imagine peace” in twenty-four languages around it. It sits on a platform of Icelandic stone – rhyolite, basalt etc – and there are six searchlights set into the platform, shining in horizontally before being reflected by big mirrors upwards. There are seven more lights underneath the monument and the whole thing sends up a huge column of light right up into the sky. When there’s cloud above it, it just lights up the sky and our guide said that when he sees it like that, he really wants to put a Batman logo in there. No one can quite work out how to actually do that, though, as the light is actually fifteen separate lights. It uses 75kWh of green geothermal electricity, or as our guides kept putting it “about as much as a medium-size Icelandic town”. Electricity is clean, renewable and cheap in Iceland because of the volcanic activity but apparently, the bill for the Tower is still quite big. Yoko Ono paid for it for the first two years but now it comes out of Reykjavík art institute money. Iceland was chosen for this monument for three reasons, by the way. It doesn’t really have any connection to Lennon (any more than Vilnius does to Frank Zappa). 1) Iceland has no army. This is a great thing for a Peace Tower 2) It sits exactly on the boundary between America and Europe 3) Green electricity to power it.

We stayed there for ages, taking lots of photos. I was playing with the settings on my camera and managed to get some of the cliffs behind us, better than what I could actually see. And I was hoping the Northern Lights might come out to play. They were predicted tonight. The Northern Lights have a scale of 1-6 and tonight was apparently a 3. A 2 can be seen within the city itself. But no, not so much as a spark.

We stopped off in the second oldest church on the way back. There’s a tree in there and as part of the peace thing, you write a wish on a tag and tie it to the tree. When the tree is full, the wishes are removed and put in a time capsule underneath the Tower, to be opened in 2040, when Lennon would have been 100. There are several of these trees around Reykjavík. We wrote our wishes, tied them on and went back to the boat.

This time there was no faffing around looking at the light from the water. We just went straight back, bouncing over the waves. Everyone else was half frozen and stayed inside. I didn’t. I don’t. I went down the side to where I could see out the front and hung on, enjoying the wind and the bouncing.

Back at the quay, we had hot chocolate while we waited for the minibus to warm up – at least, I assume that’s what was going on. Hot chocolate that was too hot – I had to take mine on the bus and drink it when I got back to my hotel.

I need to pack tonight. It’s hometime already. I’m already making plans for next time.

Iceland autumn 2012: The Golden Circle

I got up late today – well, I was awake at 6.30 again – to find my horseriding blog is OffExploring’s Travel Blog of the Day! That happened last time I was here too, I forget what I’d done that day. Since I didn’t have a crack of dawn pickup, I took my time going down to breakfast. I thought I’d add cereal to my usual bread and butter as there were Honey Loops or Cheerios or something. Something that turned out to have the approximate taste and texture of cardboard. I won’t be making that mistake again.

First stop was at the eastern end of Laugavegur to take a few photos of the petrol station from Næturvaktin – at least I’m fairly sure it’s the one. The arrangements of pumps looks different and the inside is definitely different but that’s allowed. And yes, I know the petrol station from an Icelandic comedy series is a weird thing to be excited about. I am weird. Then I turned left and went down to the seafront, where I watched some seabirds and spotted a seal – right there in the seafront in the middle of the city!

As I walked along, heading for downtown Reykjavík, it started to rain and the fog came in until I couldn’t even see downtown Reykjavík. I was wearing my waterproofs but it was really wet, I could feel the rain starting to soak in through my trousers and my glasses were not only coated in water, they were also steamed up so I was more or less blind. The rain let up enough for me to take a photo or two at the Viking ship, and to borrow someone to take a photo of me with it, as is apparently the tradition, then I turned left and went straight up Frakkastígur, to Hallgrímskirkja and took shelter in Café Loki. I was soaked, I was ridiculously hot and I was exhausted and all I could manage was to get to the counter and ask for a “hot chocolate without… hot chocolate without…?” I knew what I meant but I’d completely forgotten how to say it. Cream, that was what I meant. No cream. The girl brought me a cup of very hot hot chocolate, with chocolate dust in the froth and I sat there and stirred it for ages until I’d cooled down and it had cooled down, enjoying the fact that I could see Leifur Eiriksson framed in the glass in the door and Hallgrímskirkja framed in the window. It was good hot chocolate.

I retreated back down Skólavörðustígur and had a look in the interesting arty design shop. Why have I never been in there before?! I could have bought half the shop! It’s only things like novelty ice moulds and bookends and keyholders but some of them are so brilliant and so funny! Stopped off in the smaller Puffin next and then Eymundsson, the bookshop. Last time I came in here (July) Fifty Shades of Grey was number 1. Today it was number 2 and Fifty Shades Darker was number 1. I deduce that Icelanders are quite slow readers but they all want to carry on beyond the first book in the trilogy.

Last stop was the bigger Eymundsson down on the main street before going back to the IE offices to pick up my ticket and get on my bus. Foolishly, I’d assumed autumn was low tourist season and that most people who wanted to do the Golden Circle would do the full day one. No. Packed coachload. Our driver talked the whole way. His English is not quite as fluent as most people’s here and the sound system on the coach isn’t wonderful. He didn’t say very much that I didn’t already know but at least I was listening – just about everyone I could see was sleeping.

We went to Þingvellir where it was cold and rainy and although we could see the plains and the cliffs, we couldn’t see much view. Down to the Wishing Well where I learnt that the beginning of the custom of throwing coins into it came from the Danish king, who came to visit Iceland (which was at the time a Danish colony) for Iceland’s 1000th birthday in 1874, wanted to know how deep this particular gorge was and threw a coin in to see, much to the horror of the Icelanders who witnessed it. These days, everyone throws money in and I was told there are at least two credit cards in there too. Even on a wet grey day, the water was crystal clear.

Next we headed up to Gullfoss. This has always been my least favourite stop on the Golden Circle – it’s a very nice waterfall but it really isn’t nice enough to merit such a long stop, even if it does have a café at the top. But today – today, Gullfoss looked beautiful. It was all powder blue, set in a golden-brown autumn landscape, frozen around the edges but still flowing fiercely and for the first time, it really looked beautiful and special. We only had forty-five minutes here today, which was actually only just enough time to get right down and then up to the middle of it, take a few photos, take a few videos, come back up and crash into everyone in the shop because my glasses misted up inside.

Then we were off to the hot springs, where I still don’t think we get enough time. Strokkur provided us with a show, as usual, which is always fun and I got a few videos of her, but I spent most of the time with one eye on Strokkur and the other on the smaller frothy pots further down, which are just as entertaining but tend to get rushed past. I have a particular soft spot for Litli Geysir, which just sloshes around violently. It was chilly enough that as well as the steam that generally comes out of the springs, there was the extra vapour that happens when it’s cold, so the whole place was in a low-level mist, except when Strokkur went off, and then there was high mist as well. It’s very pretty there – perpetually green, or greenish because the hot steam keeps the place warm and damp and the mountains up the back are streaked with red.

We did a couple of unofficial stops on the way back. Faxi, which is a waterfall with a salmon ladder up the side. The guide told us we were doing a stop that you won’t find on any itinerary, which is a pity because it’s very interesting and it’s right beside the road “and except that it’s called Faxi, which I’ve just told you, you don’t even know what it is.” I actually said out loud “I do!” because that was really the first sight I ever saw in Iceland – my guide decided to stop there when it was all frozen up last winter. Our other unofficial stop was Kerið. It was getting dark by then, so harder to take photos of but still nice to see. Last I heard, there was potential access trouble, as it had been bought by three brothers who didn’t want tourists looking at it but there was no sign of any of that today, and I do hope there never is, because it’s a very nice crater.

We drove back to Reykjavík after that. It was dark, the sky had occasional clear patches but was mostly cloudy and it rained. We drove back through Hveragerði, where the guide talked about earthquakes and earthquake-proofing houses. I’ve been here three full days, driven through Hvergerði three times and no one has mentioned Icelandic bananas! What is wrong with this country?! If I’d actually made Iceland Fact Bingo, I’d be losing badly because I expect Icelandic bananas! to come up, or at least Icelandic roses (both grown in the massive geothermally heated greenhouses in Hveragerði). Neither has anyone mentioned hot springs unexpectedly spouting in the middle of people’s houses or even the more horrifying one about having to be careful where bodies are buried because they can be thrown out of the ground and into the air by newborn hot spouts.

I’d planned to get off in the town centre but when the bus stopped on the corner of my street and Laugavegur, I though I’d hop off there instead, to save myself the walk in the drizzle. It also meant that I was right by the shop, for more bread and chocolate.

I got back to my hotel to find a note under my door – my superjeep trip to Þórsmörk tomorrow is cancelled because there aren’t enough people on it. I’m not entirely surprised. I was wondering about that. So I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. Iceland has more than enough on offer to keep me busy, just have to pick something to do. I could walk up to the Pearl, see the view from the revolving restaurant and go to the Viking Saga museum and then the geothermal beach and just spend a day wandering the city instead of rushing around like a mad person. I probably won’t try climbing Esja, although I’d like to. I could find a Rekjanes tour or go to whichever museum contains the ancient manuscripts of the sagas. I wish I’d brought my Sagas of Icelanders with me, because I see it in all the bookshops (and believe me, I go in every bookshop I see) and I want to finish the Saga of the People of Laxardal. But it’s a big heavy book so I left it behind. Or I could find out where the cinemas are and maybe see Bond with Icelandic subtitles. Or go to the Volcano House and watch their Eyjafjalljökull/Eldfell films. I saw a chunk of the Eldfell film in the café on Heimaey over the summer. Watching it is a tiny bit traumatic. Decisions, decisions. First up, how do I get home from Heathrow on Monday? This is a little detail I still haven’t worked out.

Iceland autumn 2012: South Shore Adventure

Another early morning, another early breakfast, another early start. I was picked up by a huge coach and delivered to the BSI terminal under a spectacular pink and orange sky, only to discover the ground was very icy when I tried to get away from the buses enough to get a photo of it.

Today we were off on a South Shore Adventure. First stop was Hvolsvöllur, which is a very small town about an hour and a half from Reykjavík. There is a petrol station with shop and café, a small supermarket and not a lot else. It exists to provide supplies and fuel for tourists who are heading east and hikers who are heading Þórsmörk/Landmannalaugar direction. There’s a good view of Eyjafjallajökull from there.

Next stop was Þorvaldseyri farm. Well, not the farm itself, just the layby outside. This was where Eyjafjalljökull erupted and it’s where you see all the pictures of it. The whole place was black with ash two years ago but apparently after it stopped, grass began to sprout out of the ash within two weeks and now you can’t tell anything happened.

Third stop was Sólheimajökull, a tongue of Mýrdalsjökull, which is Eyjafjalljökull’s larger neighbour. We dropped off one passenger right at the turning to go on a superjeep tour, left half the group behind to do a walk on the ice and the rest of us proceeded right down to the glacier itself. We walked down past the glacial river – as brown and opaque as most glacial rivers and yet incredibly reflective – and then down to the ice. A lot of it was covered in filth – partly the filth and ground-up rock the glacier has picked up on its long slide down the mountain but a lot of it ash from Eyjafjallajökull. I hadn’t realised how close to Sólheimajökull we were actually going to get. We walked underneath it! The underneath, protected from the dirt and the ash, was absolutely crystal clear glacial blue. When I walked on Falljökull over the summer, we were told to stay away from the ice caves because they could collapse and that’s a lot of very heavy ice to fall on your head but apparently this time it was ok. We all posed for photos in a blue ice tunnel and then went under a tongue of the glacier and emerged the other side before slowly making our way back to the coach. I’d heard our guide talking about volcanoes while we were on the ice. Katla is a huge volcano under the next glacier to the east. She’s ten times the size of Ejyafjalljökull and overdue. The phrase that particularly stuck in my head was “If Katla starts today, you’re all becoming Icelanders”. Because if Katla blows, the disruption to air traffic caused by Eyjafjalljökull will look like the blink of an eye. Katla is huge and under a huge glacier and will send up monumental amounts of ash. This isn’t “if” Katla erupts. This is when. When she erupts, European flights will stop for a long time. Hekla, on the other hand, I’m really hoping goes soon. She’s also overdue. She’s erupted 35 times since Viking times and this century has gone on a pattern of every ten years. 1970, 1980, 1991, 2000. Last time she erupted, half of Reykjavík went to watch. I think I said this in my blog over the summer. It was a pretty eruption, all red lava and very little ash and people wanted to see it. Problem was, while they were watching it from the mountainside, a big snowstorm came up, causing Iceland’s biggest ever mountain rescue operation, while the lava cheerfully went on bubbling away elsewhere, not actually being a problem. Hekla tends to start with no warning whatsoever and scientists say she could start any day. If Hekla starts while I’m here, I’m moving my flight back a day or two and going out to watch. She’ll become a big tourist attraction within minutes, there’ll be hundreds of tour buses, I can get out there easily enough and I’m not missing an eruption. Of course, chances are it won’t actually happen. But keep an eye on the news.

We drove along the south shore for a bit, past Dyrhólaey, which is the big bit of rock with a hole in it (said to be tall enough to sail a ship under – the way this is phrased makes me think no one’s actually tried it. Apparently this part of the coast is hard to get around by boat because of the lava) and down the west side of Reynisfjall, which is a big ridge of rock separating fairly green countryside from the volcanic desert on the other side. We stopped at Reynisfjara, a beach of black lava sand. There are magnificent basalt cliffs, with the six sided columns that really shouldn’t form naturally and yet do, shallow caves with hexagonal ceilings, three big stacks off shore called the Reynisdrangar (supposedly three trolls who were caught by the sunlight trying to grab ships) and big unpredictable waves.

Our lunch stop was on t other side of Reynisfjall, at the last town before civilisation runs out for a while, at Vík-í-Mýrdal, more commonly known as plain Vík. It’s a pleasant little town that I stopped briefly at on the way to the glacier over the summer. Now I got an hour there. Most people went for the café at the petrol station (which serves typical Icelandic stuff as well as eggburgers, hot dogs and apparently “toast with cheese and marmalade”. I didn’t try it out. I went into the wool shop, which is the factory shop and therefore cheaper than the shops in Reykjavík, if you’re after lopi jumpers (the traditional Icelandic woolly jumper with the elaborate ring pattern around the neck) or blankets. Still upwards of £80 though.

Once I was done with the wool shop, I went down to the beach, through bright yellow reeds to just wander and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet. I took photos of the Reynisdrangar from the other side and the snow-dusted mountain that overlooks the town and sat on the rocks and generally appreciated being on an alien beach.

I ate lunch on the coach on the way back to our next stop, Vík being the furthest east point of the day. I’d brought bread rolls and cheese slices and these are easy to eat on the go but on the other hand, you have to hold on to them very tightly when the bus driver takes downhill hairpins a little quick – trying to keep hold of two halves of bread rolls balanced on one leg with one hand and cheese slices balanced on the other leg with the other and not fall out of my seat at the same time.

Next stop was Skógar Folk Museum. A man called Þórður Tómasson started collecting stuff in the forties when he was fourteen and eventually turned it into a museum. He’s ninety-one now but he still comes to the museum every day and plays the organ and has unexpected singsongs with the visitors. When I say he collected “stuff”, I mean “stuff”. There’s a copy of the first ever printed Icelandic bible, there are spoons made of cow horn (you cut out a spoon shape from a horn, soak it in boiling water to make it hot and use a spoon-press to make the spoon rounded. Trouble is, if you eat hot food with it, your spoon goes floppy again. Still, not much else to do on cold Icelandic nights except repress your spoon every day), bits of rope and driftwood, buckets made of whale bones, the handle from a treasure chest hidden behind the waterfall in the Viking age (they still haven’t found the treasure but the existence of the handle more or less proves that the treasure isn’t just a myth), a fishing boat, stuffed birds, bird skeletons, paintings, musical instruments, furniture, ice skates made out of cow bones (this particular pair was still used until the 1970s), an Icelandic washing machine and mangle (used until the 1960s), ladles, plates handpainted with such exotic plantlife as poppies, chestnuts, hazelnuts, blackberries etc (exotic to Icelanders, who have no such things) and a collection of turf and wooden houses which were relocated here as part of the museum.

This was all very nice and our guide was great and hilarious and I’m very glad we weren’t just let loose to wander but it wasn’t as interesting as the waterfall across the field.

Skógarfoss is 62m high, straight down. Possibly not the highest I’ve seen or the widest but the two combined I think make it the biggest and most powerful and you get soaked if you get anywhere near it. You can see the spray coming off it from all the way over in the village, where you can’t actually see the waterfall because it’s hidden in its own short but deep little valley. It just plunges down off the cliff in this vast white cascade and you can get so close to it, if you don’t mind getting drenched. Actually, it’s quite good fun, especially if you’ve had the sense to wear waterproof stuff. I could have done with less time at Vík and more time at Skógarfoss, especially as it was the reason I chose this tour in the first place.

Next stop was another waterfall, one I already knew, Seljalandsfoss. Our guide seemed to think the waterfall itself isn’t very interesting and only worth the stop because of the unique path that means you can walk behind it. I disagree. I like Seljalandsfoss. It’s high and thin and heavy and it looks great. And yes, you can follow the path up and walk right up behind it. Today it wasn’t looking as good as it did over the summer. In the summer, it was set among bright green grass and fields and it caught the sun and sparkled and gave me lots of photos of rainbows. Autumn in Iceland is a dead-grass-brownish colour. Pretty and exotic but very different from summer.

By the time I was finished with Seljalandsfoss, I was soaked. I hadn’t put on my big coat, instead I’d put on my fleece and raincoat and that seemed good – I’d stayed pretty dry although my mittens were soaked through. It had started to rain although not so much that it really makes a difference when you’ve been waterfalled twice within a few minutes. In the coach, out of the wet stuff and settled in for a long drive back to Reykjavík, I tried taking photos from the window, as I’d been doing all day because we’d come to a great bit of snow-covered floodplain but the window was too speckled to get pictures. It was raining, in a slightly odd way. And since when had the landscape been so white? And why was the cloud suddenly so low that we were driving through it and couldn’t see the mountains anymore? Because it was snowing, that was why!

We stopped at Hvolsvöllur for “ten or twelve minutes” (oh yes, our guides are quite precise with their stops) and I hopped down to take photos of the snow that had definitely not been there when we’d stopped this morning – not been there half an hour ago, come to that. I hadn’t bothered with either of my coats, just pulled on my thin green fleece over a t-shirt and went out to prance in the snow and proclaim to anyone who came near that “This wasn’t here this morning! This is amazing!” and take a photo to match the one I’d taken in the morning, of the road and the warehouse and Eyjafjallajökull, only with the volcano missing because of the fog and what was left coated in snow. I took a photo of the socks on the pipes that I’d forgotten about in the morning and then decided I really had to take a photo of myself in the snow for Facebook. I did and then used Reykjavík Excursions’ free onboard wifi to upload it, only to discover that I was accidentally wearing my Love Winter t-shirt and it was very visible in the photo of me in “the first snow of the winter”.

It had stopped snowing by the time we reached Reykjavík a bit after 7pm. Having had fun playing with the camcorder, I decided I really couldn’t spend tomorrow wandering the city. I also couldn’t face another early start and long day so I decided what I would do was start lazily, go and have a hot chocolate and get my petrol station photo (we went past it again on the way home!) and do the afternoon Golden Circle trip. It’s a mere two hours shorter, which I deduce must be caused by not spending an hour and a half at Gullfoss for lunch and skipping Skálholt – I still get Þingvellir and Geysir and a look at Gullfoss but I also get a morning off. I tend to come to Iceland and spend every day wearing myself out seeing things and doing things and waking up far too early. Still, things to see, places to go. I think I’m now reaching the point where I could do with hiring a car so I can get to all the places I want to and spend as much time as I want to there. Half a day at Þingvellir, at least. As much time as I want at Skógarfoss. Stopping at the roadside to take photos of all the things I keep seeing but can’t get pictures of. An hour or two in Selfoss, which I’ve driven through so many times. Who wants to volunteer to come with me and do the bit of driving that involves navigating Reykjavík? I’ll drive once we’re out of town and I’ll do a tour guide-style commentary of everything I know about this place (quite a lot now although I have come across one question I can’t answer – where in Reykjavík can you find a pool table?) and I’ll even make sure you can pronounce Eyjafjalljökull by the time you go home.

Iceland autumn 2012: Horse riding

Despite the late night, I didn’t sleep as well as I’d have liked and I was awake by about 6.30am, ready to get up and pack for the day and then have breakfast (warm bread and butter, apple juice). I got a wifi password from the man on reception and then took to the internet for half an hour before it was time to go and wait for my bus.

We did a quick trip around town, picking people up, getting diverted on Laugavegur because of roadworks and then down the other end. Esja was almost hidden in the mist but there was a little bit of snow-capped mountain visible and looking beautiful. We turned up Kringlumýrabraut and at the western end of Laugavegur, there was the petrol station from Næturvaktin, which is an Icelandic comedy series I shouldn’t even know about, let alone have watched, let alone be excited to see in real life. As far as I understand, it’s the most popular and successful TV show ever made in Iceland and the main character is playing by Jón Gnarr who is now Reykjavík’s mayor. On Saturday I’ll walk up there and get my photo of it.

Today’s trip was horseriding, on the special Icelandic horses. They were brought over with the Viking settles from 874 onwards and a ban on further import of horses was brought in during the tenth century, which means no foreign disease and no dilution of the breed. There are actually more Icelandic horses exported around the world than there are in Iceland itself but once a horse has left the country, it can never come back. They’re smallish, more furry than most horses I’ve seen, quiet and good-natured and they have five gaits, including the tölt which is unique to this breed.

We drove out to Hafnarfjorður to Íshestar’s stables, where we were put in wellies and orange rain stuff if we wanted and then taken out to be paired with a horse. I was given Socrates, a gingery-brown horse with a blonde mane, who is very wise and very good with children and therefore good for a beginner. I can’t remember the last time I was on a horse but once I got my balance it was ok. I was a little bit disappointed that he didn’t have an Icelandic name but on the other hand, I can pronounce, remember and spell Socrates, even if I did immediately rename him Soc (partly because it was easier and partly because Socrates is actually pronounced slightly differently in English and Icelandic) and then keep forgetting and calling him Cos by accident. Other horses were introduced by their Icelandic names and then seemed to be known by their English translations – among our group were Flame, Thunder and Socks.

We set out onto the lava field, the horses walking quietly one behind the other, most of them so close that they had their noses in each other’s tails. The horse in front of me was going slowly and refused to be hurried, while Soc clearly wanted to overtake, so eventually we did, although Soc decided to go up the front side, onto the lava field rather than along the path (which may or may not have made me shriek in panic “I’m going off-road!”)

The experienced riders who wanted to go faster and try out the tölt split off from the rest of us after a little while. We mostly walked, did a very little gentle trotting. It was misty and slightly drizzly. I’d failed to get hold of any gloves so my fingers were freezing, my glasses were so speckled I was completely dependent on Soc, my feet were going numb (because while my wellies were of course waterproof, they weren’t insulated and I was wearing normal socks). It was a seemingly-endless slow walk, one behind the other, across a landscape I couldn’t see.

We stopped eventually beside what I concluded must be a school, somewhere among the Blue Mountains, in a little nest of walls that might have once been buildings. We jumped down and kept hold of the horses (so they didn’t 1) wander back to the stable on their own and 2) didn’t step on the reins and break their legs). Soc was hungry so he stepped into one of the ex-houses, found a patch of grass and soon flattened that. I decided to try out actually pulling him around, so I gave him a tug and managed to get him over to a newer patch and chattered away to him. The sun was coming out, the view began to become visible and Soc began to dry and turn really fluffy.

I don’t know how long we stayed there. Eventually the faster riders began to prepare to go. The slower ones were going to wait, so our horses didn’t follow the others and decide they wanted to gallop too but it seemed to be time to go so I dragged Soc out of the walls and back onto the field. That was ok for a moment but Soc very quickly decided that as we weren’t going immediately, he’d like some more grass. By now I’d mastered not getting trapped between him and a brick wall and I’d mastered getting him to lift his head so I could get the reins under his nose but I hadn’t really mastered making him stay where I wanted him to. We made a very awkward climb over the wall again and there was a very loud metallic clank. By the time it came to actually getting back on him (which meant getting him back onto the field again) I discovered that the loud metallic clank was the sound of Soc losing a stirrup – a very odd occurrence, according to our guides.

I scrambled back up, both stirrups in place, feeling restored to fingers and toes, glasses cleaned, sun shining, Soc fluffy and fed and obedient again. The ride back was more fun. Partly because we were now at the front of the group instead of the back, partly because I was more comfortable, partly because I’d got used to Soc. We moved a little bit faster, trotting fairly regularly instead of a tiny bit every now and then. I’d learned to control Soc’s speed and eventually he got used to the speed I was comfortable with. I could keep my balance ok by now, I could hang on when he picked up the speed a bit, I was quite enjoying the ride. The only thing was that occasionally Soc would throw his head down, which pulled the reins – and therefore me – forwards which was a bit disconcerting. He was good as gold. I hear horses are like cars, some have more buttons than others but if you ride a horse with more buttons, you have to know how to push them. I don’t think hungry little Soc has a huge number of buttons but what he has are the best buttons in the business, if the business is teaching a beginner to stay on a horse while it moves a little faster than a walk across a lava field.

We brought them back into the paddock, to find that just about every horse Íshestar was out there too. Soc wanted to stop just inside the gate but by now, I could get him moving and steer him a little so I triumphantly got him out of the way, jumped down and took him to a railing to be tied up. There was another horse on the other side who was very interested to meet me and who I used as an improvised handwarmer by putting my hands in front of his nose and letting him breathe on them. A guide came over to show me how to take the saddle off and I grabbed her to take a photo of me with my horse. The other horse was far more interested in the camera than Soc and eventually the guide had to shoo him away and I had to give Soc’s reins a tug and show him the camera before saying goodbye to him and taking the saddle inside.

Everyone else in my group appeared to be going whalewatching afterwards, so once we’d been given diplomas for successfully not dying on a gentle two hour trip over the fields, got back into our own clothes and collected our stuff, they were all given a packed lunch and we got back into the minibus.

I sort of intended to go into town but I thought first I’d come back to my room, warm up, have something to eat and leave half my stuff behind. Three hours later… well, I was cold and tired because I didn’t sleep much, I sat on the radiator until I’d thawed out and then eventually decided I had no choice, I had to go and get some money and some food. Yes, I came out with a grand total of about 140 krona, which translates as 71p. Icelandic money is hard to get hold of – the only places you can order tend to demand a minimum that’s quite a way above the amount I want.

I got back into lots of warm clothes and ventured out. Obviously, I started down Laugavegur because that’s the main shopping street and it also is the way into the town centre. I stopped in just about every tourist shop along the way, got some cash out at Austerstræti, which is the far end of the pedestrianised area. Quick stop in my two favourite tourist shops, down to the seafront only to find not only is Esja invisible in the fog but so is the sea itself and I headed back up Laugavegur, via Hallgrimskirkja because I hadn’t been up to say hello yet.

I stopped off at the 1011 just round the corner to stock up on food, both for tonight and for a picnic tomorrow on the south shore somewhere. There are plenty of 1011s in Reykjavik – I have at least four on my mental map, plus the Bonus. And they’re not open 10am – 11pm. They’re open 9am – midnight. And now there’s a Subway open on Laugavegur. Iceland hasn’t been short of Subways but none of them have been accessible to me. I can’t get out to the one at Hafnarfjorður on my own or the one where you come off the ring road. But I’ve resisted the temptation to actually go in the handy one. I just like the idea that it’s there if I want it.

I’d left the heating on while I was out and I returned to a veritable greenhouse. Even before I’d got my boots off, I was turning off the radiators and flinging open the balcony door. Warmth is nice. Heat beyond my ability to cope is not.

Tomorrow I’m off to the south shore, to play on some lava beaches (should have brought my sandals but I didn’t, for the obvious reason that it’s October in Iceland), see at least two waterfalls – Seljalandsfoss, which I already know and Skogarfoss which I don’t and finish up at Vik which looked like a very pretty little town when I passed through it over the summer.

Iceland autumn 2012: Flying by night

Leaving work at 3.30pm and getting a late flight seemed, at the time (about a week and a half ago) like an inspired idea. It would effectively give me a whole extra day.

Once I’d survived check-in (and the less said about that the better), I thought the best way to pass the time at Heathrow would be to have something to eat and I even managed to find a café that was perfectly happy to do a plain cheese toastie. Except that it took twenty minutes to arrive and one side was burnt almost beyond edibility.

The plane was a little delayed because of late arrival and it was Hengill, who I flew home on in the summer – a 757-300, which was packed. I hadn’t expected so many people to be getting a late evening flight to Iceland in October, which is hardly the height of the tourist season. I had to sit next to someone! Someone who decided, before he’d even sat down, that he really wanted a newspaper and who read it across me. The screens weren’t working so I tried to sleep for a while. Meanwhile, the screens were restarted two or three times and I suddenly realised my neighbour had put his newspaper down and was looking through the films. I decided to have a very careful look at Prometheus. I knew I’d hate most of it but I also knew that some of the beginning scenes had been filmed in Iceland. I saw some very nice bits of Landmannalaugar and some rivers and a big waterfall and then an alien did something that I didn’t like and I may have looked a bit of an idiot stabbing desperately at the screen in an attempt to make it go away. Instead I settled down with The Town, looking out of the window every two minutes just in case the Northern Lights decided to show up. Next to me, my Icelandic neighbour had decided to watch Prometheus and I giggled when he spied a waterfall he recognised and prodded his neighbour to excitedly point it out.

We landed after 11pm (that’s after midnight, UK time, collected another plane – Herðubreið – I need to count but I’m probably only missing pictures of about four planes out of the entire Icelandair fleet by now), got through passport control (collecting another “as we say in Iceland” poster on the way past) and baggage reclaim and so on. I strode over to the kiosk to collect my bus ticket and then out into the Icelandic night to get on my bus, where I was greeted – in a strange country – by someone I recognised. Matthias, the guide who took me caving in December and to Þórsmörk in the summer, Matthias who had been so perturbed by my sandals. Matthias who forgot to switch on the headlights until we were a few miles away from the airport and had been flashed at twice by passing cars. Even out in the wilderness of the Reykjanes lava field, there was no sign of the Northern Lights but I did see something that I see every time I’m here and always forget to mention.

The houses in Hafnarfjorður often have white roofs. This is confusing because it looks like they’re covered in snow. It’s not snowy in Reykjavík – it may well be further out in the Highlands but not in the south west yet – but my brain has difficulty making sense of snowless white roofs.

I reached my hotel at one o’clock in the morning (or 2 UK time…), at exactly the same time as a group who’d presumably been out hunting for the Northern Lights. A rabble of people came in, most of them went straight for the lift or stairs and one hung around in reception, looking lost. I’d deliberately chosen a hotel for the simple reason that there’s someone on reception all night, whereas the owners of a guesthouse might have been less than delighted with a visitor checking in at 1am. There was no one there. I began to consider the possibility of sleeping downstairs in a chair but there was a bell so I dinged it and immediately, a man was there. He thought I just needed a key and was a bit astonished to find that no, I needed to check in, I’d only just arrived. He hadn’t realised; I looked “so casual”. I’m not sure whether that was my ability to stroll into the hotel as if it’s perfectly normal to arrive so late or if it was that I was only wearing a hoodie open over a t-shirt rather than anything that suggests I’ve had a fairly long journey. I got checked in, declined the offer of a personalised map as I already know my way around Reykjavík and came up to bed. My room is four doors down from where it was last time, same view and everything only this time I get a balcony and a fridge. I think I had a fridge last time but I think maybe I couldn’t open it because I definitely remember leaving everything on the windowsill with the curtains closed to keep it cool. Bed by 1.30am.

Iceland summer 2012: Keflavik

Being picked up at 9.30 meant I actually had a good long slow lazy morning. I finished my packing, read for a while and dragged my suitcase outside and up the steps to find my minibus was already there.

I was delivered to the ticket office with my ticket already in my hand – I’d successfully kept it safe for ten days! – and waited for the airport bus. There was a big cruise ship in the harbour opposite. It had been there for at least a day and looked far too big and shiny to be in a place like Iceland.

The coach, when it arrived, was clearly the flagship – all wooden floors and walnut inlay and cream leather and red velour – the effect slightly spoiled by the rows of blue LEDs along the ceiling. I read and marked more Poetic Edda and tried to eat chocolate chip cookies without getting too many crumbs on the floor – it was the first morning I hadn’t had breakfast, as I’d finally run out of mini cereal packets and I was starving by ten o’clock. I successfully checked it using the machines – usually the first machine doesn’t work but the second does but this time it all worked fine first time. I just slotted my passport into it and it printed all the paperwork I needed. I dropped off my big heavy bag – 22kg, just about within Icelandair’s weight limits and went out to see the sculptures when they weren’t under snow. I hadn’t realised the dinosaur egg was in the middle of a fountain, even if the fountain wasn’t switched off. I hung around departures for a while and then decided there was very little keeping me there, whereas there was plenty to entertain me on the other side of security. I am a master of getting through security now and I think it’s been a year since I’ve been searched, although they did search me pretty thoroughly at Innsbruck.

On the other side, the first stop was the tax free counter to reclaim the tax on some of my shopping, which I immediately spent on a breakfast of bread rolls, my favourite overly-sweet Icelandic apple juice (probably not actual Iceland apples, though – it’s a matter of practicality, apple trees take up too much room in the greenhouses to really be worth farming there) and some Honey Loops and then I spent a while going through the various shops before I settled down with my netbook for an hour while all the shops closed for lunch.

Eventually I decided to wander down towards my gate. No luck – I was boarding from somewhere completely different this time which involved going through proper official passport controls which weren’t opened. I went backwards and forwards for a while, had some food sitting at a table in an abandoned café, went back to the main shopping area and then settled down with a lot of Americans and Canadians waiting for the passport gate to the American flights to open too. It seemed there were no flights either coming in or going out between about 10am and 4.30pm, at which point there was the London flight and three or four US flights all arriving and then leaving again pretty much at the same time, which explained why the airport had been such a ghost town for a few hours. I’d have arrived later but the airport buses had been a bit awkward with times and I’d had a choice of the 10am bus which would get me there a bit early or the next bus which might have been a little closer for time than I was comfortable with.

Just after 3, the passport gate was opened. I went through, had a quick look around the small shops on that side and then discovered that flights were starting to arrive and I could start collecting planes again. I collected nine in all – Askja (a volcano in the east Highlands that has a fantastic little geothermal lake in the side of the main caldera), Grímsvötn (a volcano under Vatnajökull that eruped in 2011), Hengill (the active volcano near Reykjavík where the geothermal power stations are), Oræfajökull (a volcano I don’t know of), Eldborg (the pretty crown-shaped volcano near Snæfellsnes), Skjaldbreiður (the original Shield volcano near Þingvellir), Surtsey (the newest island in the world, the second-newest volcano in the Westman Islands), Katla (the big bad one under Mýrdaljökull that’s overdue), Krafla (another volcano I don’t know) and Keilir (the perfect cone on Reykjanes).

Once I’d finished darting around trying to take photos of them all, it was time to board. We were clearly on a bigger plane this time. I was right at the back again but this time, the last six or so rows were sectioned off from the rest of the plane and it was quieter. There were enough spare seats that people were invited to find somewhere more comfortable if they wanted. I was reasonably happy where I was. There was a non-English speaking person sitting on my row but not quite next to me and he wandered the plane most of the flight.

While we waited to take off, I took photos of the in-flight magazine of the pages where all Icelandair’s planes are listed. With the nine I’ve got today, plus Eyjafjallajökull which I got last time, I only have five left to collect: Grábrók (a volcano I don’t know), Hekla (the other big bad overdue, near Landmannalaugar), Herðubreið (another one I don’t know), Magni (and another, although I do know it shares its name with one of Thor’s sons) and Snæfell (not actually Jules Verne’s one – “Snow Mountain” is a good enough name to have been used twice and this particular one is north-east of Vatnajökull).

This time I did watch the Hunger Games on the way back. I turned the sound up so I could make out what they were saying and soon realised I had a race against the plane as to whether I’d have time to make it to the end before we landed. For a while, I seemed to be in the ridiculous position of landing with less than two minutes of the film to go but then we had to do a big loop just east of Oxford (I’d turned on the maps on the screen belonging to the empty middle street so I could watch the film and the route at the same time) and that meant it finished ten minutes before we hit the tarmac. It was dark in London. That was new. I hadn’t seen dark for a while, only inside the volcano or when the curtains were closed in the common area of the guesthouse. Coaches only going every two hours, I had some time to kill before I got on mine. I got something to eat and watched something peculiar at the Olympics across the bar which later turned out to be the steeplechase.

We left Central Bus Station at 10 and it took maybe twenty minutes to get to T5 via T4. We then sat there for a very long time. For a while I entertained myself watching the light and water display of the fountains outside the main entrance but we were there so long that they got switched off. It transpired we had a problem with one of the tyres. Someone was coming out to fix it, they’d be ten or fifteen minutes and it would only take ten minutes to fix and then we’d be underway. No. Soon a lady was sticking her head in and saying we might have to change coaches later. Then the luggage came out of the hold and was put on trolleys. I watched it from my window, now starting to get properly fed up because it was eleven at night by now, I’d had a long day and I didn’t want to be in the UK at all, let alone still at Heathrow after all this time. The luggage was wheeled away and I picked up my stuff, preparing to change coaches. The luggage came back. I had no idea what was going on, whether we were coming or going or staying, starting to think about reclaiming my suitcase, finding another pod and spending the night there before making my way home in the morning.

At long last we were indeed put on another coach and an hour and a half after we’d first departed, we were finally on the road. I could see the moon – something else I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

Almost everyone got off at Bournemouth, leaving just me and one other man, who got off at Frizzell’s Roundabout, leaving me with my own private coach for the last ten minutes. Richard met me at Poole and brought me home and I finally got in at ten to two in the morning.

Iceland summer 2012: Vestmannaeyjar

January 23rd 1973 was a stormy day in the Westman Islands. Heimaey’s fishing fleet hadn’t been able to go out and all the men were home for once. The children were too excited about all their brothers being home to study for their exam at school the next day.

In the middle of the night, there was a big earthquake through the island as a fissure a mile long tore open. Fire and lava spurted up through the gap from hundreds of craters. Some of these craters only lasted a few hours. The largest got bigger and bigger and built itself a cone-shaped volcano, later called Eldfell (Fire Mountain). As the lava flow began to engulf the town, the island was evacuated using the fishing boats which wouldn’t normally have been there. 5000 people were evacuated in four hours.

The new volcano continued erupting for six months. A third of the town, five hundred houses, were buried under lava and tephra and the lava got closer and closer to the harbour. A few islanders and some rescue workers noticed that when it hit the seawater, the lava solidified so they had the idea of pumping cold seawater on it to try and hold it back, to stop it slithering across the entrance to the harbour up to the cliffs on the other side and sealing it off. It worked and by the time the eruption was over, the harbour was safe and in fact, better than before as it was now sheltered from the open sea with a narrow entrance. The island was 20% bigger – there being a volcano and a lava field where there had been sea. The Mayor of Heimaey had had to make a decision – whether to let the lava take the town or the harbour and it had been decided that the harbour was more important – fishing being the lifeline of the town. The villagers of Heimaey took on a volcano and won.

The name of the Westman Islands needs another story. Having heard tales of a vast unpopulated land, a Viking by the name of Ingólfur Arnarson and his brother (it’s not actually as simple as that with Vikings; I’m not actually entirely certain how they were related or if they were related at all) Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson set sail in 870AD for Iceland, along with the slaves they’d taken from Britain and Ireland on the way past. Coming into sight of the new land, Ingólfur declared that he would let the gods decide where he should make his new home. He threw his seat posts, a symbol of being head of a household (although Icelandics make it sound like “chief posts” so that may be it) into the sea and declared that wherever he washed ashore, there he would make his home. For three years he lived around and explored the south west coast of Iceland while his slaves searched the land for these posts. They turned up eventually on the northern side of a peninsula on the south coast, a piece of coastline covered in steam vents. Ingólfur named this place Smoky Bay – Reykjavík and there he lived as Iceland’s first permanent settler. Meanwhile, Hjörleifur’s slaves had rebelled, killed him and settled on some small islands. When news of this eventually reached Ingólfur, he tracked them down and had them all killed and they gave their name to the islands – the islands of the Westmen, ie from the British Isles, west of Norway.

Going to the Westman Islands meant a fairly early start, in a minibus with Dee Dee of the Golden Circle tour, who recognised me and asked if I was stalking her. We were a bit late leaving because some of the passengers went missing, so Dee Dee drove like a mad person. It should have taken us two hours to get to Hvolsvöllur – Dee Dee managed to get us there in an hour and a quarter and half an hour later, we were at Landseyjahöfn – the new harbour for the quick ferry from the mainland to the Westman Islands, half an hour instead of three and a half from Þorlákshöfn on the Reykjanes peninsula. Because it was the weekend of the National Festival of the Westman Islands (Þjóðhátið in Icelandic, more generally known as “The Festival”) – the Icelandic equivalent of Glastonbury – the car park was packed and eventually Dee Dee had to drop us at the terminal and go off to park the minibus.

We were given our tickets and told that if we lost the return part, we would be stuck on the islands and then Dee Dee discovered she had a couple of spare tickets and began to muse about selling them – “Do you know how much these tickets are worth this weekend?”

I am incapable of staying still on a ferry. Having befriended a French girl called Cécile on the minibus, we settled down at the back, where we could see the sea and the islands and what little of the mountains were visible under the mist on the mainland. But within minutes of getting underway I’d decided I wasn’t staying still and spent the rest of the crossing roaming around what little of the ferry was accessible to passengers. I’d always expected the Westman Islands to be quite flat but I’d seen them from the Ring Road several times during the last week and discovered that they’re actually big jagged things. That should actually have been pretty obvious. The weather had heated up a lot since we’d left Reykjavík and I was pretty comfortable even on deck in the wind in just a t-shirt. We were also accompanied by a lot of people heading to the Festival, who’d clearly started drinking about the time they left home. And alcohol is not only expensive in Iceland but also only available in state-owned shops called vinbuðin. There’s one in every town and the opening hours are usually mid-morning to evening although there’s one town I’ve come across and now can’t find where it’s only open for one hour a week. These festival-goers were already into the drinking songs at 10.30 in the morning.

We arrived on Heimaey after thirty-five minutes, coming in between the old brown high jagged cliffs and the new lava that had threatened to seal off the harbour thirty-nine years ago, disembarked, met Dee Dee on solid ground and were immediately taken off to our first excursion of the day – a boat ride round the island on a motorboat called Viking.

On the smaller boat, the waves were much more noticeable. It was still incredibly smooth and flat – I suspect beautiful calm days like that are fairly rare in the Westman Islands but we were still bouncing along like we were on a ride and I had to keep hold of the side. I am not and never have been susceptible to seasickness and sadly not everyone on the boat was like that. I kept my distance from one particular passenger.

We had a guide with a microphone pointing out various sights and giving a constant commentary on the place but it was impossible to make out much of what he was saying over the engines and the wind and the waves. Mostly I ignored him. I know he pointed out Surtsey but as there were three possible candidates, I just took photos of the group and decided to find out later. Surtsey is even more extraordinary than Heimaey. On November 14th 1963, there was a huge volcanic explosion a few kilometres south-west of Heimaey and within a week, there was a volcano sticking out of the sea. The eruption lasted three years and by the time it was over, the newest island in the world had been born and had become the second largest island in the Westman group. The sea is not kind to new lava and it soon shrank to half its birth size but within about fifty years, it will settle at its final size and stay that size for a few million years. It’s named after Surtr, ruler of the Norse world of fire called Múspell, who will fight Freyr at Ragnarok and then engulf the Earth in flames.

We also saw lots of kittiwakes nesting on the cliffs and lots of puffins swimming in the sea or flying over the surface. They’re fairly easy to see because their wings are a different shape from the other birds and they look awkward but they’re almost impossible to get photos of. We stopped off in some sea caves – going into volcanoes from the bottom, effectively – which had incredible coloured stripes and after an hour and a half we were heading back into the harbour. There was just one more stop. There was another sea cave in the big brown cliffs and this one has an echo. Our driver parked in there, came back onto the top deck and produced a saxophone.

Dee Dee had given us some mini-guides to the Westman Islands which included this line: “Accompanying you is a guide who might perhaps be in the mood to play a trumpet or a saxophone inside one of the caves” and now I understood.

Back on dry land, Dee Dee showed us to the Café Kró, right opposite the boat trips where she’d organised lunch for us – soup and bread. Cécile was concerned about it possibly being fish soup. I didn’t care what it was because I had no intention of eating it but I hoped the bread would be good. It was. Little fresh baked mini baguettes, still warm. No plates but I was quite happy to eat bread out of a bowl. We sat with the Italian man and his young son, who were from Florence. The soup turned out to be pepper (which Cécile was also not too keen on, as wasn’t the Italian boy) so we all sat and ate bread and then the Italian man and Cécile had coffee and brought back lots of sugar cubes for the boy to eat.

We were then put on a coach for our next excursion – a ride around the island to see what we couldn’t see from the boat. Stop one was just out of town, by the bay where we could see an elephant in the corner of the cliff. Not a real elephant – Iceland can be weird but not that weird. Just like a natural sculpture of an elephant. A few of us took photos but we’d already seen it from the boat, much to the driver’s disappointment. We were also right across from the Festival campsite. It seemed quite quiet but then it was still only the middle of the day and I knew a lot of the festival-goers either hadn’t arrived yet or were still in town.

Next we stopped at the opposite end of the island, at Stórhöfði, which is the windiest place in Europe. The wind stops there only four times a year – not four days, our guide made clear, four times and the last time was three weeks ago. It’s a great viewpoint.

We spent a little while there and then went down the side of the hill, parked the bus on the side of the road and climbed over another hill to spend a while puffin-watching. First we had to contend with sheep – in Iceland, sheep roam freely over the summer and then everyone helps collect them up at the end of August and the farmers reclaim their own and put them away for the winter. If you don’t want them on your land, you fence them off, rather than fencing them in anywhere and you often have to stop, even on the Ring Road (which is the Icelandic equivalent of the M25 except bigger) because there are sheep in the road. In this case, there were sheep on the hillside with an amazing island and blue sea background. I’m not used to seeing sheep with the sea in the background.

I’d had the sense to bring my binoculars so once I’d taken photos of the hillside in the hope that the puffins would be visible in them, I settled down to watching them closer up. They’re very cute. They hop around on the grass and then they stand and stare around for a while and then they hop around a bit more. It was quite idyllic, actually, sitting on a hillside in the sun, watching the puffins below us.

Next stop was a toilet stop at Vestmannaeyjar Airport. Little Bournemouth Airport is Heathrow compared to here. Compton Abbas is Bournemouth compared to here. Better view, though.

Back on the bus, we headed off to Eldfell. This is the volcano that nearly destroyed the place in 1973 and the driver told us one of my favourite Icelandic stories. I heard it from Geir on my second day as well, so I’m absolutely convinced it’s true.

Eldfell is still hot nearly forty years later. As little as 20cm down, it’s 300°. When important foreign visitors – royalty and world leaders and the like – come to Iceland, they’re always taken to Heimaey and they go up the volcano to inspect the crater. The Mayor of Heimaey has some dough buried in the volcano the day before, in a milk carton wrapped in foil, and the heat of the ground cooks it, so they dig it up and eat it as a gesture of international friendship. One day the King of Spain was due to visit and he’d heard about this volcano bread and was looking forward to tasting it and had been talking about it. Two hours before he was due to arrive, the Mayor discovered the dough hadn’t been planted – according to our Viking Tours guide, the man from Viking Tours who’d been meant to take it up there hadn’t. The Mayor panicked – the King of Spain wanted to eat this bread – they had to do something about it. So he asked a local baker to run up there with a loaf of bread. The ground would warm it and the King of Spain would never know. The baker did. Later the Kind of Spain arrived, they went up Eldfell, the bread was dug up and eaten with great ceremony. The Mayor asked the King what he thought of the volcano bread. “Very good,” the King said. “But I didn’t know it came sliced.”

We had a choice at Eldfell, whether we wanted to look at it and then go back to the bus or whether we wanted to walk up to the crater and then walk back down to meet the bus in half an hour. That’s not a choice. Of course you walk up to the crater. The ground is red and quite loose and the same ultra-light pumice I found all around Hekla and at the top of Þríhnjúkagígur. Cécile flew on up and tried to walk all the way around the top of the volcano instead of stopping at the edge of the volcano. During the eruption, the crater became so high and fragile that the north side of it collapsed and for a while, a colossal lump of rock floated in the lava, threatening to crash down onto the town. When you’re visiting the crater, you stand where that broke off and look down into the bowl and up at the high fragile side opposite although you can walk around like Cécile tried to, but there’s not much path there and it looks like you have to be very careful not to fall into the crater. Apparently if you’re not wearing hiking boots, you can feel the heat radiating off the ground. I’d decided if I was walking up a still-steaming volcano, boots were a better option than sandals. I looked at the crater, then I looked down at the town, at the grey and black lava field. Forty years ago, where I was standing just did not exist. It was sea. To put it in perspective, the rock under my house is anywhere between forty-five and two hundred million years old. The oldest part of the Westman Islands is only six thousand years old and the part I was standing on is only thirty-nine years old.

We half-walked, half-slid back down the cone to the bus, just in time to hear the guide talking about puffins. They eat puffins in Iceland. Foreigners tend to say “But how can you?! They’re so cute!” and he was explaining about exactly which ones they eat. Their beaks change colour and pattern as they get older, like rings on a tree so they only eat puffins between three and five years old, before they’ve started breeding and basically, they eat them because there are lots of them and they taste good. There are strict rules and limits on how many and where and when the puffins can be caught and when the little ones get confused and fly into town instead of into the sea, the islanders catch them in nets and send them on their way.

Now we were coming back into the other side of town. We’d passed a house with a turf roof, the workshop of an Icelandic MP and Eccentric Character. He’d caused a bit of a stir in the news recently. He’d had a car crash on Reykjanes, hit a big brown boulder. Talking to a local clairvoyant, it seemed a family of elves lived in it. He asked her to ask them if they wouldn’t mind moving to the Westman Islands. Apparently the elves were fine with this, so he had the boulder put on a lorry and ferried over to Heimaey and he went on foot, carrying a cardboard box which contained a jar of honey and the elves. He even paid the elves’ ferry fare. “Love this nation,” said the guide.

Fishing, as I said, is an important business in Heimaey. They dry fish and export it. But during the twenties or thirties, when Iceland had prohibition Spain had threatened to stop buying their dried fish unless Iceland started buying their wine again. So Iceland quickly changed its laws – so quickly that it forgot to also un-ban beer. Beer was banned in Iceland until 1989. “Love this nation…” the guide said again.

We drove through the new lava field. Our guide is a Heimaey native, born and bred, who was there the night the volcano erupted and is of course the one who told us about the school exam due the next day. He pointed out all the sights. He pointed out exactly when we driving over the swimming pool he’d learnt to swim in, where his house had been, told us about how he’d illegally sneaked back over to the island when the volcano was still going and about how when he saw fire in the sky, he was excited because he thought his school was burning and he wouldn’t have to do the exam the next day. He pointed out everything.

Our final stop was at Eldheimar, or “Pompeii of the North” – an archaeological dig in the east of the town, where they were slowly and delicately uncovering some of the streets and houses buried in tephra – the lightweight flying rock. Most of the houses were actually pretty intact. I suppose the tephra is light enough to not collapse the roof. There’s not much visible – the project hasn’t been going very long and isn’t welcomed by all locals. Just a few corners and a bit of roof here and there, along with signs showing what house is where, what it looked like, who the occupants were and a before and after photo. You can just about get into the first house – not that it’s open to tourists, but the former owner went in to see it when it was first uncovered and she said everything looks exactly as it did the night she evacuated.

Then we were taken back to the harbour, left at Café Kló for an hour. Dee Dee had told us repeatedly to be back at the ferry by five and it was just after four. Cécile wanted a cup of coffee so we went inside the café, only to find it had turned into a cinema for the afternoon. All the doors were shut and the lights were out and there was a film about the volcano – probably the one that’s on at the Volcano House in Reykjavík. It really was horrific when seen like that.

I left Cécile to her coffee and went to wander around the town. I quite fancied getting across to the big brown cliffs and I know it’s possible but I couldn’t figure out how and besides, I didn’t really have the time. Once I’d done a circuit of the nearest streets, I settled down on the pavement in the harbour to enjoy the view and watch the ferry coming in before going to board at five to five.

The ferry had been a bit late coming in and so it was late leaving. Our little group managed to gather together on the steps inside the terminal with Dee Dee and stood there and waited while Dee Dee looked at her watch every five minutes, unable to understand why we weren’t on yet. She’d spent the day at the Festival – her friends tell her she has to come every year and she always refuses because she doesn’t drink alcohol and doesn’t think the noise and crowds will be much fun if you’re not drunk. But this year, she volunteered to take the Westman Islands tour even though it was supposed to be her day off because then she could visit them without having to stay for the noisy drunken bit and could then tell them “No, I’ve been!” when they demanded in future years. All she’d really had to do was drive us to the ferry, make sure we knew when we had to be where and then take us back again so she’d had quite a relaxing day.

Eventually we were allowed on the ferry. I settled on the back with Cécile again until we started moving and then I was off again. This time I managed to spot puffins off the sides as we crossed back over to the mainland. We found the minibus, parked right at the back of the crowded car park.

Back in Reykjavík two hours later, I had lots of packing to do.