Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

Tuesday was another bright, blue sky, sunny day. I had an evil little plan. I decided to head for Grandi, the area on the other side of the Old Harbour, to decide whether or not I wanted to go to FlyOver Iceland while I was there. I strolled along the seafront, same route as the night before, turned right at the new H&M and shopping redevelopment and popped out at the familiar bottom corner of the old harbour. Strolled out, past all the little green wooden buildings that are now cafes and seafood restaurants and found myself in the Grandi district. Some good museums here – the big Maritime Museum, Aurora Reykjavík, the Saga Museum, Whales of Iceland and FlyOver. I went past them all to the rocks at the end of that bit of peninsula. Good views from here, all the way across to Akranes and snowy mountains even further north.

I came back via a bit of a shopping trip along Laugavegur. Mostly postcards but I bought a pair of volcano socks while I was at it. Then home for a late lunch and a lazy afternoon.

Because my evil plan was to go back to the Sky Lagoon. I wanted to see it in the sun instead of a winter storm, I wanted to see the views across the fjord and I wanted, if it was possible, to see the sunset.

I got most of it. A big cloud came down ten minutes before I left, which was a bit before sunset and that ruined the colours a bit. I was getting the 9:41 bus back to Hamraborg and even that closer stop is 15 mins walk. There are two buses serving this peninsula – one clockwise and one anti-clockwise. I’d got the 35 out which takes 4 minutes but the 36 back, also taking 4 minutes, had finished an hour ago. I thought that meant I’d have to walk the 2.5km back to Hamraborg but I realised the 35, even though it meant going the long way round and taking 18 minutes, would get me back five minutes before the bus to Reykjavík. It would be a pain but more comfortable than walking.

So after a huge loop of Kópavogur I got back on my bus to Reykjavík and got home about 10:30 which is the latest I’ve been out all trip.

On Wednesday the demolition started at 8am. I went off to Vesturbærlaug on the bus, the last of the three local pools in central Reykjavík that I hadn’t visited yet. It’s ok. There’s no real reason to pick it over Sundhöllin (really close and convenient) or Laugardalslaug (further out but amazing pool). Then I went for my walk, back along Laugavegur heading downtown, stopped in a few shops, walked back along the seafront. The usual.

I had to pack. I couldn’t pack everything: my swimming things were still wet and I’d need them again in the morning. I still had food for breakfast and my electronics and whatnot. I’d considered doing the airport transfer via the Blue Lagoon which is a popular trip on the way home but decided against it. Pointless, really. I was being picked up at 12 which meant between 12 and 12.30 and getting to the airport at hour later. What could I do in Reykjavík for a couple of hours in the morning?

Sundhöllin!

Or was it worth it? I needed to be out at 11 to dress, do my last shopping on the way home, pick up my luggage from the apartment’s storage room and be at bus stop 13 in time for 12. By the time I’d got up, had breakfast, finished packing and done my walk, it would hardly be worth it.

Until I found myself wide awake at 6.30 this morning, Scroll social media for an hour and a half until my alarm went off or get up and get going? By ten past seven I’d had breakfast and everything was packed. I went for my walk, taking in two things I’d noticed last night that I’d missed – the two-towered church at the top of my road and Cold War negotiation site Höfði. I’d put my big bag in the storage room and was sliding into the warm water of Sundhöllin by 8.30.

I did 50 lengths and sat in three hotpots. Then I got out, did my shopping, came home to retrieve my luggage… and discovered that whatever they said about luggage storage, checkout was at 11 and I was 12 minutes after that. My door code had expired and I couldn’t get back into the building to pick my bag up! That was a complication I hadn’t factored in. I pressed Call on the keypad but no one answered. Luckily two girls left at that moment and I grabbed the door and got in. That left me more than half an hour to rearrange my stuff, put my swimming stuff in the big bag and have lunch sitting on the pavement before the bus arrived. That was 25 minutes ago. We could be halfway to the airport but we’re waiting for nonexistent passengers at bus stop 5 outside Harpa right now. No, real passengers have finally just boarded, at least six of them who clearly didn’t get the “pickup starts at 12” memo. No… maybe 14 of them. Where on Earth have they been?? Can we go now?

And at last we’re at Kef. I’m in a queue to drop my baggage but at least I can kick it across the floor and don’t have to carry it.

Today was a lazy day. I got up at 6.50 the last two days and not a lot later the day before.

The sun was out and the sky was blue! I’ll take it where I can get it but imagine horse & river day in the sun! Imagine seeing the volcano without a heavy mist hanging over it! It was a good thing it was warm, though, because my boots were still soaked although sitting them on the towel rail had made a big difference. I planned to go to the big pool at Laugardalslaug today but that could wait until later. Since it was nice, I was going to Nautholsvik, the geothermal beach.

I got on the wrong bus. It did say the wrong destination on the front but it was from the stand with the right timetable on it. For the first two or three stops I waited for the sharp right turn as it had headed off in what felt like the wrong direction. Yes, wrong bus. I got off at Artun B which is a kind of mini bus hub along Miklabraut, went under the big road to Artun A with the plan to get the 5 if possible but any bus back to Hlemmur would do, really, only for the 5 to arrive at the same moment I did. So off we went, back to Hlemmur and beyond, to the university next to the Domestic airport. That’s the nearest stop for Nautholsvik. The bus only comes this far at weekends, after 6.30pm during the week and on bank holidays. If I’d gone tomorrow I’d have had to walk a huge chunk of the way but it happened to be Easter Monday.

The beach is fairly small and made of imported golden sand. When the tide is in, the lagoon on the beach connects to the fjord and the hot pot on the sand is surrounded by water. Today the tide was low. I think that’s for the best – there’s no freezing fjord water flooding in and diluting the trickle of hot geothermal water. As it was, most of the lagoon was freezing but if you paddled in a straight line from the hot flow the water was pleasantly warm. Pleasantly hot in places. However, it only took literally two steps to go from hot to freezing. There’s a reason most of the sea swimmers are wearing neoprene gloves and boots and the kids are all in full waterproof snowsuit things. And then there’s me in my t-shirt and sandals.

The hot pot on the beach was empty at this time of year but there’s another at the beach club. Well, it’s not a beach club. It’s a building with changing rooms, showers and a steam room with an outdoor hot pot above the beach. That one was packed – far too packed for me to bother paying admission when I was going to a better pool later anyway. I suspect you can use it for free if you change on the beach but there was a freezing breeze, hence the snowsuits, and that didn’t make the pot any less packed. I walked back up to the university and got the bus back.

Having topped up my food supplies again, I had an extended lunch break before getting the bus to Laugardalslaug. Yes, mid-afternoon on a warm sunny bank holiday. Most of Reykjavík had had the same idea and although there are five hotpots here, they were all packed too. I tolerated it and eventually plopped into the 50m outdoor lane pool. Maybe it’s the better weather but it’s warmer than Sundhöllin’s outdoor lane pool.

I swam 32 lengths because that’s 64 lengths of QE and a mile is something like 63.333 QE lengths. Imagine how happy I was to discover that 1600m is only 0.994 miles! Always do one more insurance length just in case!

Anyway, because it’s Iceland and because I’m out of practice in casually swimming a mile, I did ten lengths at a time and then sat in the 40-degree sunken hotpot for a while before going back for the next ten. The sun was low but still up for several hours and I promised that once I’d done my 32 lengths I could swap my goggles for sunglasses and sit in whatever hotpot I wanted.

I’d been there more than four hours by the time I decided I’d better be getting the 7.55 bus. Mostly because I hadn’t actually done my walk and I wouldn’t want to do it much later. I didn’t want to do it then at all. The sun was about to set by the time I was adequately dressed and fed and going out and the breeze was up. I walked along the shore half-frozen and then turned left to downtown Reykjavík and walked back via Laugavegur which runs straight from the heart of the city to Hlemmur, at the bottom of my road. It’s sheltered there and I was positively hot by the time I got back.

Today was an 8am pickup from my door and a minibus trip 45 minutes east along the Ring Road to Hveragerði for my horse trip and hot river hike.

We were dressed up in luminous orange rubbery waterproofs and riding helmets and then paired with horses. Mine was Vorboðar which means Bringer of Spring. He was brown, relatively tall and had quite a lot of grey in his mane. We were the beginner group, the “done it less than 20 times” group which was a step up from the most accurate box I was forced to tick when I booked, which was “never been on a horse”. The next step was something like “much experience” and although neither were the right answer, it’s better to underestimate for these things.

Off we went and five minutes later, just as we were getting comfortable, Molly announced that we were going to cross the river. Even on horseback, my feet were nearly in the water and I was petrified Vor was going to get swept off his hooves. Icelandic horses are very strong but they’re not very tall and this was a lot of water!

We walked nicely more or less in parallel with the Ring Road for a while then turned sharp left. We were going to try the tölt, the unique fifth gait that Icelandic horses have. It’s about trot speed but while it looks a bit crazy it’s supposed to be very smooth. With Íshestar, it’s the experienced riders who get to try the tölt, not the people like me who hardly know which end bites and which end kicks. And it was terrifying! I can hang on while Vor walks sedately but when he picks up the speed you realise actually there’s nothing to hang on to!

We covered nearly 9km and by the time I got back I seemed to be getting used to tölting. It is more comfortable than walking – my legs ached from being held in the stirrups but somehow they hurt less when we tölted and I found I didn’t need to hang on as tightly as I thought at first.

Soon realised what had been happening to my legs when I dismounted. Ouch. Hobble waddle hobble waddle. My boots were soaked through and squelching and my trousers were damp for reasons I still can’t figure out, except my orange rubber trousers clearly weren’t 100% waterproof. The enormous jacket had done its job though.

Once we were unchanged, we were sent into the canteen. The morning riders had coffee and cake and those of us hiking were sent across to the farm’s hotel for lunch (or to eat our packed lunches as discreetly as possible in the hotel). Over the course of that hour I began to suspect I was the only one doing the hike. Yep! I admit, if I’d been booking it on the day I wouldn’t have done it but I wasn’t expecting this kind of rain and fog three weeks ago. So we put on our own non-orange waterproofs and off we went. Yes, I don’t know my guide’s name. She’s young, German and from Bielefeld (which doesn’t exist, so she can’t be) but no idea what her name was.

The hot river is up the valley behind Hveragerði. It turns out “up” is the operative word. It’s the opposite of a valley. It’s an hour-long hike up a mountain. In the pouring rain with no view and boots that were sloshing before we began. Worst of all, we knew when we started that because of the rain, the river wouldn’t be warm enough to bathe in. I was fine with that when I was imagining three gentle kilometres through a valley. But an hour of trudging uphill to a fast-flowing ice-cold river?

I bought a t-shirt when I got back to Eldhestar. Everything in my bag and pockets was soaked. My boots were soaked. Since they were already so wet I’d splashed through a few streams instead of risking the slippery stepping stones. My sleeves were soaked. My gloves had got soaked on the horse so I’d pulled my sleeves down over my hands. My raincoat and heated coat were both wet but my t-shirt was reasonably dry and so was anything above the elbows of my thermal top. But I bought this t-shirt and sat in the canteen with my wet stuff scattered around me until the afternoon horse lot were finished and then I sat in the back corner of the minibus to gently steam all the way back to Reykjavík.

Back home I scattered my wet stuff everywhere. That’s everything from my waterproof coat to the spare camera battery I had in a bag in the belly of my backpack. There wasn’t space to put all the wet stuff. I had to spread some of it on the floor. I changed, I ate, and since it was earlier than I’d expected and I’d missed my dip and I’d checked the Easter opening hours, I went to Sundhöllin to properly warm up in the hot water.

Today was another 8am start, indecent when you’re supposed to be on holiday. Golden Circle plus Secret Lagoon. I’ve done the Golden Circle as a tour at least three times and I’ve driven bits of it or all of it even more times. It remains both fun and interesting.

Bára dropped us at the Þingvellir viewpoint and gave us 50 mins to walk down through Almannagjá to meet her at parking 2. I detoured through the park to see a cleft with clear blue water which meant wading through two fluddles. I was wearing my sandals. My coats had dried out and I had more clothes but my boots were still soaked. So I waded through those fluddles. I’ve paddled in cold things in Iceland and in cold things right here below the Drowning Pool in Þingvellir but this was cold.

Next stop: Gullfoss, possibly my least favourite of the Golden Circle’s Big Three. There’s a path out to a rock that sticks out into the middle of the waterfall, literally, with only knee-high ropes to stop you falling in. I’ve often wondered how that’s even allowed. Well, it isn’t anymore. There’s a gate and the path is closed. Maybe it opens when there isn’t ice on the path or when the flow is low or… I don’t know, maybe it’s not permanent but it was closed today. I walked along the cliff at the top to above that rock. Never seen Gullfoss from that angle.

Third was Geysir and our lunch stop. I always like Geysir. Explosions of boiling water don’t get old. This was where the group split. Those of us going to the Secret Lagoon had an hour and everyone else had nearly two hours because they had to wait for Bára to drop us off and return for them.

The Secret Lagoon is quite good! It’s very rustic compared to the Sky or Blue Lagoons – just a roughly rectangular pool 1.2m deep fed with water from the surrounding hot springs. The bottom is gravelly and the sides are furry with algae. They have crates of pool noodles so everyone’s floating around on a few. There’s no temperature regulation. Near the hot springs (which are separated from the pool in one place by just a rope) the water is painfully hot and it varies around the lagoon although as our time there zoomed to an end, the entire lagoon seemed to become painfully hot. I loved the first 50 minutes but five minutes later I was ready to escape.

Bára distributed Easter eggs. Pre-plague it was samples of Icelandic flatbread but that’s not allowed anymore. The eggs contained what I assume is quotes from Hávamál, the Old Norse classical poem that appears in the Poetic Edda. I haven’t opened or eaten mine yet but people did on the bus and then yelled their mál down to Bára to translate. As you might expect, what got yelled by non-Icelandics was usually incomprehensible and the piece of paper had to be passed down the bus to be read.

We made one bonus stop on the way back. I’m not allowed to say where it is but it’s a red scoria crater that’s being mined for gravel. Yes, a gravel pit – but a pretty one! Its walls are red in places and green and grey in places and almost tie-dyed in between. It’s not a standard Golden Circle stop – it’s an active gravel pit with mining machinery in it but it was very beautiful and there isn’t much left on a Golden Circle itinerary that’s new to me now.

We got back to Reykjavík quite early – 5, 5.30 maybe? I could have had another hour in the Secret Lagoon and got back by 6.30 but never mind. Today is Easter Sunday so the pools close early but at least I have a free evening to rearrange my damp stuff and catch up on the blog. Tick. Done that.

Tomorrow is a lazy day. I’m not getting out of bed until at least nine. I’m getting the bus to the big pool (I’ve checked the opening hours; I just have to check the bus times) and if the shops are open I’ll top up my food supplies. Mostly the bread.

Volcano day! I walked down to BSI, Reykjavík’s main bus station if the bus in question belongs to Reykjavík Excursions, sat outside on a concrete bench and waited, as I’d given myself over an hour to walk 2km. I wonder why I didn’t opt for the customary pickup. Maybe I booked this as soon as possible, before I’d settled on accommodation and so didn’t know where my pickup would be?

There were more of us on this volcano hike/visit to the geothermal wonders of Reykjanes than I’d expected, given that the weather is pretty horrible (April & May are spring in Iceland, which means winter) and the eruption stopped six months ago. A full size coachload (well, 43 seats as best I could tell) with only one pair empty and the odd one here and there where solo travellers haven’t had to pair up.

We drove 45 minutes to Grindavík to borrow their campsite’s toilet facilities since there are none at the volcano and the usual stop is closed for Good Friday. Then onward to the volcano!

The group was too big to hike together and I’d managed to lose Halldor, our guide, by the time I’d got off the bus. Fine. Follow the track up onto the ridge in front of us and the lava is on the other side.

Oh yes, it is. A valley filled with black lava, steaming and smoking in a thousand places, all of it rippling in a violent wind that made hot but solid rock look like the sea. It was incredible. We had two hours to explore. Climbing the mountain to see the original crater from the top was an option was it was cloudy and a long way up and I decided I’d rather see the lava up close. We were told not to walk on and especially not where it’s steaming because it’s still hot and there might be thin patches of crust which can break and drop you, or at least your feet, into the molten rock underneath but tourists will tourist because they’re stupid and there were plenty of them just marching out across the steaming lava. I stood on a nice cool solid-looking edge for a photo and felt guilty enough about that.

Two hours was plenty. I could have spent longer looking at this amazing thing but it was so windy. So so windy. I walked back down from the ridge leaning forwards which isn’t a thing you do when walking downhill in normal weather.

Two of the group were late so most people had eaten most of their lunch by the time we departed. First to Grindavík again for a lunch break at Cafe Bryggjan where almost everyone disembarked despite me watching them eating their lunches twenty minutes earlier.

Message from the Dark Side there is! said Yoda’s voice suddenly into the silence as we waited for the last few cafe-goers to return and the entire front half of the bus burst out laughing.

Next we had to experience the wonders of Reykjanes, which I’ve seen before in equally revolting weather. I was expecting to go straight from the volcano to the Blue Lagoon so I had no enthusiasm for this waste of three and a half hours anyway but on and off the bus every fifteen minutes in howling wind and rain to look at something grey when the entire world was grey… well, it was eating into my Blue Lagoon time.

We visited a bit of cliff with a blowhole (actually just curved concave cliffs that throw violent waves upwards. Ok, that was quite fun when one of the waves splattered the viewpoint), Gunnuhver (hot spring area consisting of one massive steam vent and lots of hot reddish mud, plus the remains of the old boardwalk twisted and broken under the steam vent – a ghost did it), the bird cliffs at the tip of Reykjanes (more black gravel car park and violent waves than birds) and the Bridge Between the Continents (bridge, yes. Between the continents, no. Between two low cliffs over a sandy hollow that you can walk down to from both sides in ten steps and a hop if you’re feeling adventurous).

And at last, at nearly 5pm, we made it to the Blue Lagoon. I thought this was a combined volcano & Blue Lagoon tour but somehow 25 of the ~30 of us were just doing the volcano. So Halldor dropped the five of us in the car park and everyone else went home v

A few small changes since I was last there. Now they don’t give you towels at reception – there’s a man with a little booth just inside the lagoon door who gives you a towel when you’re ready to return to the changing rooms. The face masks are now ladled out by a person in a little box instead of kept in a plastic tub under a grating for you to scoop up with a long spoon. And the in-water bar has moved. The new corner was open last time I was here.

Oh, and you check out at the self-service machine. Scan your bracelet, pay off anything you spent in the water and then use it to open the exit gates, which swallows the bracelet as it opens.

Anyway. The wind howled. It was cold enough for huge clouds of steam to come off the lagoon which the wind then whipped up into a low dense mist. I went out with my glasses on but they were permanently steamed up and I got fed up with having to push them down my nose and look over them, leaving me half-blind in an unusual horizontal way. I got a towel and returned them to my locker (you’re not allowed in the changing areas while wet).

Anything out of the water froze while the water itself ranged from scalding hot in one place via pleasantly hot to pleasantly warm to “how is there cold water swirling around here???”. I went in the steam bath and my nose began to throb in an alarming way. Was it about to fall off? Did it have frostbite? I’d worn my mask outside for the last couple of stops just to keep my face warm; my nose shouldn’t be so frozen but I guess it had been out in the fresh air for quite a while as I bobbed around the warm lagoon.

I got the last bus home, far too early. 8.15. That only gave me about two and a half hours and for all I’d decided the Sky Lagoon is better and I like it more, it felt too soon to be getting out. I’d managed my free (it’s not technically free, it’s prepaid) drink of blue ice and my face mask and already it was time to go.

I got the bus. The driver said he wasn’t stopping at bus stop 13, which is my local, but could give me bus stop 10, “which is the same place”. It turned out to be Hlemmur, right opposite the supermarket. 10 and 13 are therefore so close that I wonder why they bothered creating two of them. Anyway. Home, food, unpacking, charging and bed. Pickup tomorrow is 8am but at least it’s at my own door

Day one

Well, most of it was travelling. I’m reasonably certain I was on the plane with – and sitting next to one of, although she’s still unidentified – the Icelandic woman’s football team. My entertainment system didn’t work. Nothing played, not even the map, although the system itself worked. It’s just whenever I selected anything, it was unavailable. Next door’s was available! She had films! She watched (skipped through) Avatar.

I took the Grayline bus into town. Last time I was here, Grayline and RE both sat right outside the door and tourists poured off in two streams. Now Grayline is relegated to the car park and a coach for ~50 transported 17 of us. We were all for bus stops 13 or 6 – this is the system Reykjavík has invented to keep tourist buses to the large main streets. Every hotel or guesthouse is a max five minus walk from a bus stop and mine is 13. I was half-expecting us to go to the depot and change onto minibuses but we were definitely heading towards downtown and then we were driving up Rauðarárstígur and I knew that’s where my stop was so I gathered all the stuff I’d managed to scatter across three seats in under an hour. My apartment is a two minute walk up a hill and using the door that’s further up the hill. The room is a studio apartment which means fridge and toaster! I have a view of the white back wall of the spectacularly ugly Iceland University of the Arts but if I go to the kitchen I can see the backs of some pretty apartments and a bit of noisy demolition that stopped on the dot of 6pm yesterday and didn’t start up again today.

I did some essentials shopping and then walked the 600m (but felt less) to Sundhöllin. One naked shower later and I was in the baby pool, which is the 39-degree shallow pool where the adults sprawl if they don’t want to sit in the hot pot. I sat in the hot pot too. It’s the same temperature but it’s deeper and you have to sit on the ledge rather than sprawl so it feels hotter. I eventually got in the lane pool and swam ten lengths against a vicious breeze so I decided to warm up in the rooftop hot pots which have always been a bit hot. The stairs are nominally inside but all the doors are open and that was a wind tunnel. The cooler pot is also 39 degrees and that was actually pleasant, except it’s much windier on the roof (it’s not the roof, it’s a balcony halfway up) than in the pools downstairs in the new extension so I gave up and returned to the baby pool.

Today I got the bus to the Sky Lagoon. Take 1 or 4 to Hamraborg and then you can either get the 35 that goes as far as good roads go and walk 15 mins through industrial estates or you can get an earlier bus and walk the entire 2.5km from Hamraborg, which is what I did. It didn’t feel anywhere near the 31 minutes Google Maps said it would be. Reykjavík, on the next peninsula north, looked depressingly close after a bus ride and a longish walk. I guess if you arrive by car, like literally everyone else, it only feels like a few minutes.

It was good! The water ranged from warm to hot, the lagoon is an infinity pool with a couple of sheltered “bays” within the rocky labyrinth it’s set in. I have no idea how much is natural. Was this a lava field they’ve dug out and filled with water or has the rock been brought in and bolted in place to create this cliff play set? Does it matter?

The water is just about deep enough to swim in although no one’s swimming here. It’s all about the views (except today when it was foggy, misty, cloudy and rainy) and the bar and the selfies. I know lots of phones these days are waterproof but it made me very nervous to see so many unprotected phones in the lagoon. Even worse were the definitely-not-waterproof ones in plastic sandwich bags or ziplock bags held carefully out of the water. The bar sells waterproof phone cases! Please invest in one!

I had a glass (plastic cup) of Egil’s Appelsin, an Icelandic version of Fanta that’s just a bit too orange. Then I did my Ritual.

Step one: lagoon. Done. At least an hour and half of lagoon.

Step two: cold plunge. Very cold (but “not as cold as it should be”). I plunged my ankles.

Step three: sauna. Better from the bottom step than the top. The sauna has a huge full-wall window open onto the sea. I’m astonished it doesn’t steam up but my glasses and camera didn’t either. I saw an eider duck bobbing about outside.

Step four: cold rain shower. Not as bad as I thought. You’re in a sort of high-sided open-top room and cold rain sprinkles down. I quite liked it.

Step five: scrub. Body, not face. Salt, eucalyptus and something else. You sit on the logs in the Ritual room to apply it and then…

Step six: steam room. Covered in scrub, you sit in the steam room and let it soak in. It was very steamy.

Step seven: shower off the scrub and return to the lagoon. I wouldn’t call this a “step” myself. Of course you have to wash the stuff off and of course you’re returning to the lagoon. This is admin.

But it was pleasant and my skin felt soft and smooth. I stayed in the lagoon until nearly 3pm when I decided I should face the wind and rain fully dressed and tackle the Maundy Thursday bus timetable and also get some food. I walked back to the main road until I found a bus stop and it turned out the anti-clockwise bus to Hamraborg was coming in one minute so I got on it. It took five minutes. The clockwise bus wasn’t due for twenty minutes and would take seventeen minutes to finish its loop and end up back at Hamraborg. Then back to Reykjavík on the 4 and get some cheese in Krónan. Actually, they didn’t have everything I wanted. Mango juice, check. Cranberry juice, check. Apple juice? Orange juice? Nope. I had to go back to 10-11 to finish up my supplies for the weekend – between Easter opening hours and long day tours, I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to top up.

Now the wind is howling and I might have a shower to wash the lagoon and the pool out of my hair v