Start: 2357km
End: 2797km
Distance travelled: 440km (278 miles)

And so it comes to the final stretch of our road trip adventure. We breakfast again; cereal followed by pancakes and jam – today rhubarb and blueberry. Then we pack our bags, load up the jeep and head off back down the ring road, west for the last time.

First stop is the little grass-roofed church at Hóf with the really nobbly churchyard – that is after a brief, final look at Jókulsarlon. Then on to Klaustr where there are supposed to be more pseudo craters and a basalt pavement, but there is nothing much in evidence.

We head on on the long straight road across lava fields towards Vík. It’s weird but, aside from our trips and excursions for this entire journey we’ve had the country on the right side of the car and the sea on the left. We listen to Sígur-Ros and Múm on the road – it seems somewhat appropriate somehow for the landscape and the gloom. The seeds of an idea and the beginnings of a story for a – not sequel – but a follow-up to The End Of All Worlds begins to form itself in my mind. Where the first was all about the environment, this new story will be more about the people.

Vík, when we arrive is just the same as ever – grey, wet, and dreary. We fill up on petrol and lunch on hot dogs from the filling station. Then we continue on our way and finally leave the flat plains of the south coast for more rolling pastures. Between MýrdalsjÖkull and EyjafjallajÖkull we reach Skogafoss – the last of the impressive waterfalls. It’s one of those that you feel you want to walk round behind of to reach a secret cave. Mythology has it that there is a treasure hidden behind but that the last person to see it only got one of the latches from it’s trunk before it disappeared, never to be seen again. The latch now adorns the church at Skogar.

From EyjafjallajÖkull the road gets progressively busier and the landscape more developed. By the time we reach the town of Selfoss we are properly getting back to a
more urban way of life.

By half past three Emma navigates me back through the Reykjavik subhurbs and to Janet and Adi’s house and to journey’s end. A cup of tea and a catch up with Janet before Adi takes us down to Cheap Jeep to return the old girl. We feel a bit sad, but won’t miss having to fill her up with petrol. Registration OV 151, 10 or 12 years old, a 2.3 litre engine, she drank petrol for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She might have had characterful doorlocks and a dodgy handbrake, but 8 days she was our gas guzzler.

Day 13: Berrying and Family Gatherings…

Start: 2097km
End: 2357km
Distance travelled: 260km (161 miles)

Cereal for breakfast followed by pancakes with rhubarb jam and a tour of the animals on the farm. They have calves, and a pig and a load of different varieties of rabbits, and chickens and turkeys, goats, to go along with the sheep, and in the winter, reindeer. Magnus, it appears, spends quite a lot of time on the internet finding out about breeds and buying new animals, sourcing them from all over the country.

We set off in the direction of Jónkulsarlón again, arriving there with it looking different again in low cloud and fog. Past Jónkulsarlón and we arrive at the turning for Ingölfshoðhi – Einar was right about the roadworks when we spoke on the phone last night – and we time our journey on to Skaftafell. It’s only another quarter of an hour so we know when we need to leave again to get back for the tour.

At Skaftafell we have a look round the information centre which gives some interesting background into the geography and geology of the region, and we watch the video presentation of the 1996 Grimsvotn eruption and resulting jokulhaup. I find the choice of jaunty background music to what can only be described as a natural catastrophe somewhat inappropriate. We have a hot chocolate and a cake in the centre café to warm ourselves up before heading back on the road to Ingölfshoðhi.

From speaking to Einar last night I was expecting at least one other couple on today’s tour but there are several car loads and a handful of children. We pay our early fee and board the back of the hay wagon before the half hour tractor ride out across the salt marshes and beach to the narrow spit of land and headland that forms the spot where Ingolfs first arrived in Iceland before settling in Iceland.

We are told how on arriving in Iceland he through his totems of the Norse Gods into the sea declaring that he would make settlement where they were washed up. The following summer he moved to Reykjavik, and well that he might for a massive eruption later occurred near to Ingölfshoðhi and the resulting jokulhaup destroyed all the communities that had built up around it leaving the landscape that we have today.

One of the big draws of the tour at Ingölfshoðhi are the puffins but they are almost all gone for the winter now. Two days ago Einar found some still on the cliffs, yesterday they were on the sea down by the cliffs, and now they are further out. Tomorrow Einar expects them to be all gone. The Great Skuas are numerous though, as are the Fulmars and they are both impressive birds to watch. Our guide, Einar, seems vaguely familiar when he mentions leading a tour on the glacier earlier in the morning I wonder if 11 years ago he was one of the guides who took us ice climbing? Probably not, but he is a very good likeness for Finnur in my novel.

He does tell us through that this is all his land that he farm’s and I discover that he’s the son of the old farmer who too me on the tour 11 years ago. When I ask, Einar asks me, with gestures if he had a beard. I say yes and he goes on to say how his father spoke, very fluent, Icelandic. Yes! He’s right! His father spoke very little to no English beyond that needed for the tour.

Our tour ends down on the shore of the black sand and blue sea. There’s a rotting Pilot Whale, six metres long and providing food for the sea birds, and lots of whale bones, and driftwood – and a fair amount of rubbish we are somewhat disturbed about – how much just washes up from the sea. And then tractor ride back to the shore.

We head back to Skaftafell for lunch – a bit cold from the three hours on an exposed spit of land we seek out hot dogs at the local petrol station but surprisingly (and disappointingly) they have none. So we have a sandwich and a hot chocolate back at the visitor centre before our short walk to the glacier.

Eleven years ago when I first came here you were able to walk right up onto the snout of the glacier. Not it seems now. They are also some weird walkers around – like the grumpy looking lady who walks the path, head down with two hiking sticks even though the path is made for mobility scooters and returns so fast she can barely have looked up once. Very, very weird.

We get back to the visitor centre and Emma is wilting with tiredness, but we drive to the second car park and from there we can walk up to Svartifoss. I get possibly forar two excited from seeing steps, culverts, and stepping-stones and bridges that I helped to build all still there eleven years on. Well, I find it exciting.

Heading for home and its still raining between Skaftafell and Ingölfshoðhi but we drive through that and arrive back at Holmur in the perfect evening sunshine with views over three glaciers. We arrive for dinner at 8 o’clock which tonight is asparagus soup followed by pan-fried trout. Magnus’ wife tells us that we missed the first Northern Lights of the autumn over Holmur last night. Damn it for early nights. We spend some time with the last of our Freyja beer and a coffee and write our journals. Emma goes to bed early as she is tired and I stay up a bit later writing and going out into the cool country air to check on any Northern Lights but see nothing.

Day 12: Hólmur to Reykjavik…

Start: 1779
End: 2097
Distance travelled: 318km (197 miles)

We get up extra in order to get through the bathroom before the other guests as there is only one bathroom for three rooms. Our plan almost works, except for the German couple. She beats us to the bathroom before us but as soon as she finishes we are out and ready and get in before her husband. Why they both didn’t go in at the same time like we did, and also the French couple after us, we don’t know. After packing our things upwe are still early for breakfast and decide to find a table with a view and write some more of our journals. The German couple have, oddly, their own early breakfast and they yaffle, badly, from the table behind us.
Breakfast is good, but not a patch on Vilborg’s spread. The guesthouse in general is nice but not as homely and happy as Vilborg’s – she truly spoiled us.

Stefin helps us to our car with our bags and we set off driving south alongside the lake before the N1 breaks away to go further east. At some point the N1 becomes a gravel road – which we had been expecting, and indeed it is because of this that we decided earlier on that we would take a small short-cut and skip a sizeable fjord or two from the route. So we take the 989 which proves to be a lesser brown road – though still navigable in a small car (we are glad for our cheap jeep though!) – that takes us over an interesting, high, and steep pass. It is stunningly beautiful and possibly even more so in the lowering cloud.

A journey that we imagine would take us most of a day actually only takes us about three hours, and wewe get to a picnic spot not far from Jökulsarlón by 1 o’clock – moving on after lunch in time to get a 2 o’clock sailing in Klaki (thanks to Vilborg’s teaching we now know that Klaki is Icelandic for ice) a duck boat that takes us out onto Jökulsarlón.

It is such an incredible, awe-inspiring place and we are so, so lucky. Today is the first day in 10 days that the fog and the rain has lifted. We’ve definitely chosen to go round Iceland in the right direction – taking the weather with us. There are Grey Seals swimming in the lake, and whilst we’re out on our boat trip several huge bits of ice break off and turn over in the lake with a tremendous crashing noise. Our guide drags a lump of 1000 year old ice out of the lake and breaks it into pieces for us to taste. It’s so, so pure – the best ice/water you will ever taste. Apparently it melts slower than normal ice and so is good for whisky if you like having it on the rocks.

After our boat/car drives us back out onto the land we go round the back of the centre buildings to meet Tapi, a Great Skua who has become almost semi-tame through frequenting Jökulsarlón. We warm ourselves up with a hot chocolate before returning to to the lake shore to watch seals. A piece of ice breaks free and begins to drift down the river towards the sea. We decide to walk with it down onto the beach. Then more seals, we look the other way – the iceberg – we look back – and back to the seals. The seals win.

Down on the beach and its weird to see icebergs on the beach – weirder to see icebergs on black sand. There are loads more Grey Seals in the sea. We probably spend another hour on the beach watching icebergs and seals before heading back on the N1, east again to our new guesthouse at Hólmur y Mýrum.

Our host Magnus shows us to the room, we’re staying in a room in the family’s newer house (the old farm house is entirely given over to guests). He also introduces us to the Persian cat with attitude, Mona Lisa. The farm has a view of three glaciers and a petting zoo of animals that we can see have an out of hours tour of tomorrow morning.

This guesthouse also does evening meals and tonight is a traditional meat soup. Perfect. At 7 o’clock we arrive at the dining room in one half of a converted barn (the other half still has animals in it) and dinner is served in a big earthenware bowl which gets refilled. I end up eating three servings of it it’s so good.

After dinner we sit for longer at our table writing our journals and working out how to organise tomorrow. Originally we were going to see puffins and skuas at Ingólfshoðhi but forom a poster at Jökulsarón we discovered that tours finish for the summer on 18 August. From looking them up on the internet and telephoning the guide, Einar, we discovered that there is still a tour tomorrow at 12 o’clock. So we will go to Skaftafell first, maybe walk to the glacier, then go to Ingólfshoðhi and return to Skaftafell for lunch and Svartifoss. Or at least that’s the plan…

Day 11: Ingólfshoðhi and Skaftafell…

Start: 1427km
End: 1779km
Distance travelled: 352km (218 miles)

Our last breakfast with Vilborg and we are both very sad about it. She is a lovely person and a wonderful host. In doing a last check round our room I find the sheet of A4 that tells us a bit of history about her and the farm. She was born in a farm in the south of Iceland before studying to be a nurse before marrying the farmer at Ytra-Laugaland. After his death in 2005 her son took on the running of the farm and she extended the original farm house to open it as a guesthouse for travellers which has always been her dream.

Over breakfast, Vilborg’s “friend” talks to us about how he learnt all his English since staying at Vilborg’s with all the travellers who come. He also shows us a traditional Icelandic wooden eating container with a lid and the carved horn spoon from 1926 – just one year earlier than Ytra-Laugaland was originally built.

And so, with some sadness at leaving Vilborg’s homely house and excellent breakfasts we set off on the next leg of our journey. We set off past the decorated postboxes for the last time and back onto the N2, the high pass again to Mývatn. Past the Laxa river, stopping for half an hour to explore the pseudo-craters of Skútustidir, look for golden-eyes fruitlessly, see more widgeon and miscellaneous brown ducks and try and avoid breathing in the swarms of midges that made a beeline for our carbon-dioxide.

One more stop at Reykjalið for petrol and then onwards again past Bjarnarflag and Namafjall to the open road to Dettifoss. Last time I was here the only way to Dettifoss on the west side worth speaking of was the 4×4 only track from Vesturdalur in the north. Now there is a new, paved road from the N1 in the south. I find myself worrying about this – if there is a brand new road serving Dettifoss that is every bit as good as the N2 at its best what will the car park be like. It used to be a circle of cleared gravel borded by large rocks cleared from the centre and the only convenience a solitary compost toilet. I pray that there is no staffed information point and café…

There is no information point beyond a board and no café. The car park though is humungous with separate coarch park, painted bays, curb stones, and paving. The original car park is still visible around whare there sits a modern toilet (still of the composting variety).

It’s all a balance I suppose. Yes Dettifoss is now more accessible than it has ever been but I cannot be cross about that as the early work that I helped with a decade ago was to improve access.

We walk the path to Dettifoss and it is as it ever was. I remember working this same and it all comes back to me. I remember now that Chas had someone bring a little digger to clear some of the bigger rocks but that on day one it broke and so we had to do some rudimentary levelling in the interim. There’s a picture of me with Jennifer Tait, each with a rock bar easing a massive bolder into a new position. Sometime in the intervening 10 years they have fixed (or got a better) digger and shifted the stones so that that now it is a fully accessible gravel path that is the ‘regulation’ width of one rake handle. We pass a small group of volunteers working on some new/improvements to some steps. I recognise their boulder carrier as the exact same one I used 10 years ago if changed by 10 years of wear and tear.
Dettifoss when we reach it is as raw powerful as it always was. The noise from it as it thudners to, and over the falls, is deafening and the water a churning, seething mass of water straight off the Vatnajokull ice cap with all the stones and soil churned up with it. Dettifoss is not the prettiest. It’s not even the biggest. But it is the most powerful waterfall in Europe. It’s breathtaking.

Leaving Dettifoss, we rejoin the N1 and turn left to the East and new territory for me. For the next 100km or more the road is almost like a desert, a canvass of greys and browns and no green at all; no farms; no villages, just miles upon miles of tundra-like desert. We cross the Jokulsa-y-fylum river via a huge single-carriageway bridge that creaks and wobbles when a lorry crosses it and the river, wide and fast races on beneath.

Then there is a range of mountains of the jettest black I have ever seen. Black mountains amongst the low cloud. It seems somehow appropriate that today we get our first real dose of rain.

Eventually the road does descend into the lower slopes of east, but on wild, unkempt greenness of rough fields and pine forests in contrast to the lush, fresh meadows of the west. I stop for petrol at one of the lonliest petrol stations I have ever seen. And then we journey on, driving about 3km of roadworks on the N1. Unlike back home where they would close a lane, here they just do the whole road in one go and you drive on whatever surface (or not) that they have got to at the time.

Descending further down through the valleys the communities and farms become more numerous and the fields lusher, and then we cross the bridge into Egilstadir with its curious modern church up on the hill. There doesn’t seem to be a lot to the major town in this region apart from the two supermarkets (one of course, a Bónus) and the ubiquitous purveyor of hot dogs and fast food 0 the local petrol station – and not much else in the way of eating. Heading out of town to find oru guesthouse we pass Gistiheimild Egilsstaðir and it does look very nice. With its speciality of locally raised beef we decide that even if it is slightly on the pricey side we should definitely eat there.

Our own guesthouse – the still unpronounceable Utnydingsstaðir is set back a couple of kilometres down a gravel track – a farm specialising in horses and horseriding. It’s a very nice, if a simpler affair to Vilborg’s. The family are also in a separate farmhouse although we are in the original farmhouse with other guiests (if you don’t count the old turf-roofed farm that used to stand here).

I write some of my journal whilst Emma has a sleep and then we freshen up before heading out to dinner. Gistiheimild Egilsstaðir is altogether a grander affair – almost a villa beside the lake it is like a proper restaurant inside and we feel a bit under-dressed for the place. A book about the restaurant, the guesthouse, their history, and their values is on each table, and the menus are given to us in beautiful hand made sketchbooks.

We try to be good and to only look at things on the cheaper end of the menu, but our eyes keep flitting back to the steaks from beef raised on the Egilsstaðir farm next door. We decide that having had some reasonably inexpensive meals, just this once we go for it. For both of us we have the soup of the day – parsley root soup (parsnip?) – followed by T-bone steak. It’s delicious and very, very special.

Following our meal we take a stroll down to the lake which is quietly serene, say hello to some Icelandic horses, including a young foal who is still getting used to his legs, and then we head off for home to writes some more our journals. Emma entertains me with her dying fly impression in honour of all the rooms we have stayed in with an annoying (and dying) fly…

Day 10: Egilsstaðir to Hólmur…

Start: 1176km
End: 1427km
Distance travelled: 251km (156 miles)

Another good breakfast from Vilborg to begin our second day in the north, before we head out for the high pass over the mountains, but this time past the turning for Husavik and on to Mývatn, arriving at its southwest corner, crossing the Laxa river to ‘midge lake’.

It’s an ethereal place with its irregular shape and little islands formed by the steam vents through an ancient lava lake that once formed under a massive glacier. More recent remnants of volcanic activity (still a very long time ago) can be seen in the rock formations of Dimmuborgir and the neighbouring ash crater of Hverafell which we climb and circumnavigate getting great views over the whole lake, Rekjaliđ and the dangerous peak of Krafla beyond (last eruption 1987 and with a magma chamber refilled).

We drive round towards the power station at Bjarnarflag where I discover with pleasure that the Blue Lagoon-styled nature baths are across the road from, and not actually on the site of, the lake where I swum 10 years ago. I don’t know if it is now completely forbidden but in all other respects the site is exactly as it was when we parked up our bus beside of the lake, and changed, men to one side and girls to the other. A bit further up the N1 and we stop at a viewing/picnic place with a fine sulphurous smell lingering and a view of steaming vents in the ground. Here we have our lunch.

After lunch we continue up and over the ridge to the bubbling, boiling sulphurous hot pools of Námafjall. If Hverafjall was like walking on the moon then exploring Námafjall is like taking a stroll across the surface of Mars. Steam vents from the ground, fizzes and pops at every turn, and great, gaping chasms of fractured ground that splurge and splutter mud continuingly. The place stinks – not unpleasantly – but unforgettably. The ground and the hillside is every shade of colour: primarily a rusty orange, the palette sweeps from smudges of dark green or red ochre, to bright, lime greens, virulent oranges, yellows, to purple and white. And still plants and flowers cling to life in places.

We head back over the ridge to the relative calm of Mývatn and after a quick stop at the information centre cum petrol station cum supermarket at Reykjalid. Across the other side of the lake we could see a storm brewing out over the mountains.

At the information centre we find out more about the Fuglasafn Bird Museum and decide to head over there in the hope that it will be the starting point for some Mývatn bird watching. In a beautiful location out in the middle of the lake, the building is of a circular stone construction with a grass roof. A pond that starts outside goes through the café/entrance area and into the ‘dead bird museum’ in the centre. At first, unsure of the dead museum aspect of it is actually really good for identifying what you might have seen and possibly more importantly what you might not have…

During our short time there sitting in the sun we see whooper swans, slavonian grebes, widgeons, and tufted ducks, but sadly no golden eyes.

On our way home we break our journey at Godafoss where a religious leaded is reputed to have renounced the Norse gods in favour of Christianality by throwing his statues into the waterfalls. It’s impressive but small in comparison to the falls that we shall see tomorrow…

By the time we reach the high pass this side of Akureyri we are in thick rain and we discover that our cheap jeep comes with the noisiest of windscreen wipers – so much so that it is worth letting the rain build up more than you would do normally in order to save on the noise. We feel lucky that one week into our two week holiday and we have not had any rain.

At about 6 o’clock we drive straight into Akureyri for dinner, parking at our usual spot by the Culture House and then walking almost out of town again to find our chosen restaurant under constant threat of rain and the heavens opening. Which they do, but thankfully not until we are safely inside the austere-on-the-outside-but-nice-on-the-inside Greifinn restaurant. We both opt for pizzas, myself for a saltfiske pizza of locally caught cod topping, and a light Viking to go on the side.
Back to Vilborg’s for one last time we have a long leisurely evening to just sit and be, and write our postcards.

Day 9: Akureyri to Egilsstađir…

Start: 401km
End: 845km
Distance travelled: 444km (275 miles)

Breakfast at 8 o’clock. We have one other couple, French, who are staying at Vilborg’s. The table is laid with every care and attention and the food is epic in a simple, understated way. Cereal with yoghurt and milk – followed by homemade rye bread with cheese and cold meats, homemade cakes and toast and jam with fresh orange juice and coffee.

About 8:45 we are setting off with a deadline to get to Husavik in time for our 10 o’clock boat. Deadline or not we stop a viewing spot by the side of the road opposite Akureyri. The water is like a mirror and the sky is a perfect blue and the view and the view is picture postcard perfect.

And then we are off once more, climbing a high and steep path over the mountains and down to the flood plain of a glacial river to navigate down and around and straight into Husavik with just minutes to spare. We’ve booked our tour but have to pay still. When I ask if we are in time the 10 o’clock sailing the girl looks over her shoulder at the boat preparing to set sail. She says with a smile, ‘Can you run?’ So we do. Not that I thik we need to as they have already radioed through our presence and a bus load turns up after us.

The North Sailing boats are traditional old oak boats and lovely. They also have 98% reliability at finding whales. When we set out across the bay for the first 40 minutes of the three hour tour we don’t see much besides the occasional Fulmer and I worry that we are not going to see anything…

And then we have our first sighting. A humpback whale, first blowhole, a dorsal fee and then its fluke before a deep dive. I can’t believe what I have just seen, and I also feel guilt at having seen it in case that is our only whale and Emma hasn’t seen it.

I need not have worried, as by the end of our tour we have seen a total of six different humpback whales, some more than once, and a couple of pairs doing synchronised swimming between our boat and a sailing schooner, and fluking right up close. Amazing! Then years ago all I got to see a few lethargic minkies.. As we return to Husavik, the crew serve us steaming mugs of hot chocolate and warm cinnamon buns.

Upon arriving back at Husavik we decide to eat out at lunchtime and snack ‘in’ on flatbread and cheese later. Our restaurant of choice is Salka, an old, traditionally timber built, green-painted building in the heart of town. Ten years ago I ate puffin in this building. Today we both opt for pan-fried arctic char – delicious! And very relaxing – a perfect end to a perfect day – except that it is not the end. Sadly we don’t have time to add the Icelandic Phallogical Museum to the itinerary with its ‘bizarre collection penises’ including ‘silver castings of each member of the Icelandic hand ball team’ as we have places to go. The place in question being Ásbyrgi with its horsehoe canyon, reputed in legend to have been formed when Ódinn’s eight-legged horse clipped the northern edge of Iceland as it jumped over. Actually formed by a massive glacial flood that eroded the Jókulsa-y-fylum river that now runs nearby seem positively small and insignificant by comparison.

Now the canyon is forested in birch trees and abundant with wild blueberries that we pick and eat. It is tranquil and peaceful with its clear pool at the far end, and its viewing platform from which you can survey the whole canyon. There is also the concrete ‘slab’ where tradionally the locals would gather for dances and feasting and the filed where rock concerts are sometimes staged.

Sadly we don’t have time to venture further south to Vesturdalur and its castle-like rock formations, and I am very sad about that as it is one of my favourite places.

Arriving back at Ytra-Laugaland for our second night we discover that we are the only guests and Vilborg shows us to our new room.It’s upstairs in the old farmhouse with a view down the valley and even nicer than the last room.

Day 8: Birds, Bubbling Mud and Ash Craters…

Start: 401km
End: 845km
Distance travelled: 444km (275 miles)

The wind definitely whistles through Brautaholt, and blustery as it is outside it is in nowhere near as blustery as it sounds. The day is bright and sunny, and it’s a shame we have to leave so soon, but we must and pack our bags once more, and depart.

The neighbours who we met last night who’s key it was in the side door and who share use of the hot tub have locked one door and I discover how to lock the front door to the shop. The downside being that once we leave there is no way to get back in. Better that I figure than to leave it unlocked…

Our road trip continues by, bizarrely enough taking the road south by way of a high pass, half way back to Borganess to get back onto the N1 north. The road is good and we arrive in Viđimyri for lunch and to visit one of only three tiny grass-roofed churches left in Iceland. Timbered inside, and around, the pulpit finally decorated it is beautiful and cosy as well it might for all the turf exterior. The gable walls are like dry leather, and make a solid wall to the building.

We have a picnic lunch outside the church whilst a friendly, heavily pregnant cat makes himself known to us, and then we continue on our way taking a slight detour – to Hólar.

‘Welcome home to Hólar’ is the traditional greeting to everyone when they arrive here, because no matter who you are or where you ar from or going to, Hólar is always home. There’s possibly the smallest cathedral in the world here and it was here that Christianity came to Iceland. It’s also home to one of the first printing presses in Iceland, and because of this one of the first copies of the Bible to be printed in Icelandic. There are also tales of beheading Bishops as well. Now it is part of the University and an agricultureal school and very, very peaceful – unbelievably peaceful.

Our journey continues – for another couple of hours back to the N1 and along – east – to Akureyri. Akureyri is the second city in Iceland but is little more than a small town by most standards. It even has its own international airport even if the runway is a reclaimed strip of land behind the causeway in the middle of fjord.

Our guesthouse, Ytra-Laugaland, is about 10 km south of Akureyri. There is something going on in the local community – all the postboxes at the ends of the drives are decorated, sometimes elaborately, sometimes incredibly inventively, with animals, birds, and people. And so we arrive at our destination – just like it looks in the brochure, a little red-roofed farm overlooking the river. Viborg, our host is an austere looking older lady who welcomes us in warmly, apologetic from the outset that the room we will be in tonight is not the same room we will be in for the following two nights. It doesn’t matter. The rooms are very comfortable. Vilborg is also quick to provide to use post-it note and the password for the wifi network – bonus as it means we can save £3 on Vodafone charges today.

We freshen up and change and head back out almost straight away to find somewhere to eat in Akureyri. Since my last, brief visit to Akureyri ten years ago (when Chas and Sarah left the rest of us in a gravel car park at the back of some industrial units whilst they did a Bónus shop) they’ve tidied up the water front and built The Hof – the Akureyri Culture House. Basalt and concrete it is a perfect circle and reminds me a little of the Harpa in Reykjavik.

We park for free and wander up into the main street. It doesn’t take long because Akureyri is a very small place. There are life-size trolls in the main street and lots of lovely shops and cafes. We make for Bautinn at the top end of the main street in one of the oldest timber buildings in town.

We both go for the soup of the day, and then Emma has a burger and chips, and I, hashed local fish and rye bread – very yum but oh so much cheese!
After dinner we wander in the setting sun (of 8.30-9 o’clock), admiring the dresses hanging across the street outside the opera house and the little church with the stained glass saved from the now bombed Coventry Cathedral.

Down by the main street and we find little souvenirs and gifts for people and another boat sculpture and head back to our guesthouse for a well-earned rest.

Day 7: Whale watching from Husavik and the Great canyon of Ásbyrgi…

Start: 0km
End: 401km
Distance travelled: 401 km (240 miles)

Having collected the jeep last night we were free to take a more leisurely approach to breakfast and to getting all packed up and ready to leave. At 10 o’clock I reversed not just my first 4×4 but my first automatic vehicle out of Funafold 13 and onto Janet’s quiet side street. First time too, driving on the right, I made it the short distance around the block to Oli’s filling station, and we were off.

From a hazy, misty start to the day we soon hit thick fog through the Reykjavik suburbs and this caused us to think we had missed the road to the Akranes tunnel – then the sun came out as we entered the tunnel – carved out from the actual rock deep beneath the fjord rather than being built from concrete. Out of the tunnel and the road to Borganess was of thick, thick fog, that cleared in time for the bridge and the causeway across Borgafjördur.

Quick stop for provisions a the local Bónus and we were back on the rod, leaving the main N1 until tomorrow and taking the road to Snaefellsnes. We carried on watching the white-capped mountain that is Snaefellsjokull loom closer.

At lunch time we arrived at the tiny black-painted wooden church at Budir. Nestled in the sand dunes above a sandy beach with rock pools in the black lava outcrops, surrounded by lush meadow grass, bathed in bright sunshine and blue sky and watched over by a glacier, it is an utterly breath-taking and beautiful spot to have lunch. Lunch is Icelandic flatbreads with cheese and salami followed by a mjolkurkek and an apple. After lunch we head down to the beach for a paddle and a stroll before continuing on around the peninsula.

Three more stops follow: at Pulabarg, where there is the dark, rocky remains of a troll amongst a forelorn lava field and teeming with Kittiwakes. Then to Malarrif where we are told there is a very pretty beach of round black stones, the remains of a wreck, and a lighthouse. We don’t find the wreck but for the rest they aren’t wrong. We’ve overshot our turning (deliberately) and so lastly we visit the exceptionally small and pretty Amarstapi – a little fishing village set down amongst the familiar hexagonal baslt rocks, that form, in there arrangement, a natural harbour. Breaking for a cold drink and a toilet stop we are on our way, Emma driving for the road up and over Snaefellsjokull. From the turning it is a gravel track, and from the start it is perilously steep and rutted. Until now having the jeep has been fun but now it is essential, although over the brow of a ridge we do come across parked cars, including a Toyota Yaris. It is actually the Yaris that follows us up the path on a road that we don’t think is made for it.

The road takes us right beneath the main glacier but above some of the snow and the views both north and south are spectacular. As nervewracking as it is spectacular, the road down is, in places, ‘interesting’.

Back on the main road we wind our way over hill and round fjord to Stykkisholmur for dinner – arriving about 6pm. It’s Danish Day today on Snaefellsness – the day wen all its people celebrate their Danish ancestry and the menu at Fimm Fiskur (Five Fishes) is a special Danish one. Great food and great service: we both have the mushroom soup and I had the fish of the day for mains – we’re still not entirely sure what Torsk is but it was very nice.

After our early dinner we had a short stroll round a very windy harbour, enjoying the otherwise quietness and checking out the curious knitted hand pump and knitted bin – to go alongside the knitted trees of Reykjavik.

Leaving Stykkisholmer we pass a petrol station on the edge of town – for a moment we do deliberate whether or not to fill up but the gauge looks okay and so we go on, keen to get to Brautaholt. It’s not long on the surprisingly gravel road along the norther shore fo Snaefelsness that we decide we have made a mistake. The gravel road is long and the petrol gauge drops alarmingly and the journey is not as enjoyable as it might have been.

Still daylight, but it is getting late, and we are incredibly relieved to finally meet the metalled road surface. We find Brautaholt easily too – the middle of three houses on the side of the valley. We drive past it though to Budadalur, hoping beyond hope for a petrol station. There is one. It’s closed of course but the pump is an automat self-service one and we guess at the amount of money we want to put in.

With a full tank once more we speed back up the road and arrive at Brautaholt, our destination for the night. However, a different kind of panic is to set in. None of the four keys that Adi has given us fit the front door – indeed only one of the keys actually slides into the lock. I remember Adi saying something about the back door never being locked anyway, so we go round into the back garden with the view down over meadow grass to the shore of the fjord. I try and rember if tis a grave or just a memorial to Adi’s parents in the back garden – I can’t.

The back door is firmly locked. Starting to fear the worst now Emma goes to look at the side and I go back round the front – I think I had seen another door to the old shop. The door is unlocked – I enter in and find Emma coming towards me. The side door was unlocked with the key hanging out of it.
Forgetting our panic of earlier Emma is drawn immediately to the old shop which is just the same as it was eight years ago when I first saw it, and was for Emma strangely, impossibly familiar from having read the descriptions of it in my book.

We fetch in our things and have a proper look around – the miscellany of objects from down the generations , the 1950s kitchen and the old wind-up telephone in the hall, to the family photographs. Then to further instructions: we find the light switch in the kitchen to turn on the electrics in the kitchen okay but the hot water tap in the shower room…? There are seven identical taps in the shower room all at different positions and with signs tied next to them. We have to phone Janet for some translation and eventually we figure it out.

The house is old, creaky, and a little bit creepy but we settle in happily with some toast and tea. Ideally we would snuggle into the lounge and write our journals and play scrabble but it has been long and (mostly – if you discount the 70km of driving near the bottom of your tank on a gravel road) enjoyable day and we are shattered.

Day 6: From Brautaholt to Akureyri…

Another nice, leisurely breakfast this morning after another good night’s sleep, if a disturbed once at around 4 o’clock by Emma climbing up from under the back of the bed, across the pillow and trying to get out the window. It is important to remember that Emma, in this instance, is a cat – if named after t’other Emma.

Drífa and Kjartan arrived shortly after breakfast for our day out doing the Golden Circle – a trip that Reykjavik Excursions charge £100 each for the tour that has no admission charges and only involves a few hours of driving. This way we get to see some famous sights but hopefully in the company of less tourists, and we get to spend some time with the family.

The journey starts with a pitstop at a bakery at Mossfellsbaer – I say bakery but it was more a deli-come-chocolatier at an out-of-town retail park. And then we head off away from the N1 inland to Þingvellir.

I have been to Þingvellir just once before at the end of my 2002 holiday in the north. Then, the visitor centre was brand new, but the day was heavy rain and thick, low cloud. The place was completely different. In fact it took me ages to realise that where we were today in the bright, clear sunshine in the rising heat, was the same place.

Þingvellir, seat of Iceland’s first government is on a large fissure in the ground – a massive cliff that runs through the ground. To the east you are standing on the Eurasian plate and to the west you are standing on the American plate – and this is the only place where the great mid-Atlantic ridge is visible above sea level. It’s weird to think that just a few hundred metres in either direction and where we are standing would be the bottom of the ocean.

From Þingvellir we head on to Pengingagjá or the Chasm of Coins – deep pool in a fissure of rock where we toss coins in to make a wish. Some one it seems has made a wish on an old credit card – a new maybe to term ‘loose change’.

As we drive onwards and up to Geysir we can see the great icecap of Landjokull beyond the mountains. The great Geysir – father to all geysirs in the world has been long dormant but his smaller brother Strokkur is reliably active and does its thing every five minutes or so and see it spurt several times in the time that we are there. Watching water gurgle and splutter before activity. The water, always at least 80–100°C of naturally hot water starts off almost serenely quiet and eerily blue before slowly rising and falling, with ever increasing difference in water level, faster and faster, until whoosh it gushes out in one huge fountain leaving a gaping chasm beneath, back into which the spilt water is sucked.

We have our lunch, bought earlier at a picnic table within sight of Geysir. And after lunch we move on to Gulfoss – Europe’s largest waterfall. It’s not far but I do realise that in my novel I have relocated it closer to Reykjavik – so much so that Ben, a state of shock and upset is able to drive out of Reykjavik to face his fears at Gulfoss. Again in contrast to the low cloud and persistent rain of ten years ago, today it is warm and sunny and a rainbow – could it be the Bifrost – lingers long over the waterfall which is stunningly beautiful.

On the drive back to Reykjavik, Kjartan and Drífa take us by way of the hillside location on the edge of a lake where last June they got married. It is indeed a fantastic and beautiful spot to get married.

Just between Snorrabraut, the indoor swimming pool and the back of Hallsgrimkirkur we find the new location of Cheap Jeep but unfortunately the man there, like before on the phone, is worrying laid back about things. There’s no jeep for us as our vehicle has been dropped off at Keflavik and it won’t be ready for an hour maybe. He takes our phone number though and says he will call when it is ready for collection. We leave again, without jeep wondering if he will or not and what our vehicle will look like when it does…

…it’s not long after we’ve finished dinner and Emma and I settle down with Janet in the lounge to read and write our journals and talk that the man phones us in characteristically laid back fashion to say it will be ready in 20 minutes. Drifa comes back to the house and takes us back down into Reykjavik to collect our jeep. A Blue Daewoo which is fully functioning, automatic, and cheap by merit only by being old and having a slightly peculiar door handle to the back door.

As it begins now to get dark I catch up with writing these pages and think about repacking my rucksack for the round Iceland road trip ahead of us. For bedtime reading tonight, further to something that Kjartan said, I will make a start on Halldór Laxness’ Independent People.

Day 5: Reykjavik to Brautaholt…

Plans change. Given second thoughts Janet had decided her Peugeot 206 might be a little small for four people and two dogs so we belayed the trip to the golden circle. Instead, after a leisurely breakfast Janet took us down to see Signý and Noí in their new flat. Noí is very cute, and very strong – he would stand on our laps and really grip our fingers.

Signý served us a wickedly delicious Hairy Bikers chocolate cake and showed us around their new flat – so bright and airy. The kitchen is very similar to ours with the same oiled oak worktops and I recognised immediately one of Grandpa’s old oak coffee tables that he made, and that Signý is attached to, possibly, more than anything else. The other thing I notice about Signý’s and Níls’ flat is that, like all the houses in Iceland, even the smaller places – they still have generous utility/wet rooms and lots of storage. I guess they need them with the sometimes harsher conditions in the winter but its still 100% more storage than it is usual to find in UK houses where instead there is always precious little storage even for the vacuum cleaner or the ironing board.

After our visit to see Signý, Janet dropped us at the BSí bus terminal so that we could catch the tour out to the Blue Lagoon. Getting there was swift enough along the long, straight, main road that lead us almost back to Keflavik airport to the Spa built next to and using the waste water from a power station. I have a family connection to the Blue Lagoon in that it was my uncle’s father who managed the power station when they realised that the waste water and the silica mud that it created had restorative properties. There is now a sister spa up in the north near Mývatn which I remember bathing in ten years ago almost to the day when it was like this was in the beginning – a lake on the edge of the road where we parked the van and changed, girls to one side, boys to the other before wandering down and in.

Not now with the Blue Lagoon with a £25 or 5000 IKR entrance fee. It’s worth it though and we spent a good hour and a half lounging in the warm, slightly salty, sulphurous waters – even if the wristband-operated lockers do provide a bit of a challenge. The journey takes us out of Reykjavik under clear skies and we can see the rolling, tumbling expanse of an old lava field with old and new building perched in amongst it all. Out across the water we can clearly see Snaefellsness Peninsular and the glacier at its tip.

I’ve been to the Blue Lagoon once before – I guess twice in 8 years isn’t too bad for a frequency rate. There is a comfortableness in that, although there has been more development like the new ‘Lava Restaurant’ and a neighbouring clinic where you can stay. It is otherwise exactly the same as it always was. I’m sure the locker system has changed though as I don’t remember the system of electronic bracelets to set and lock the catches.

We lounge about in the warm, milky-blue waters, plaster the white silica mud onto our upper bodies and faces, try the steam bath in the lava cave, and then a waterfall massage – pummelled in the shoulders by heavy cold water.

Our return bus journey is almost twice as long as it ought to have been as the driver takes us to virtually any hotel in Reykjavik dropping off people after people until there are only four people, including us, left and we are a full half hour later for Drífa who has been waiting in the car for us with little Melkorka – only two years and very smiley.

Drífa and Melkorka stay for dinner – yummy smoked salmon filled fajitas and salad. Our earlier plans to do the golden circle are revived for tomorrow – Drífa and Kjartan would like to take us.

After dinner we play with Kelkorka and her toys and I give her her present – which she loves instantly. Its Mr Gumpy’s Outing by John Burningham. I read it to her, adding the odd translation for the animals and she loves the illustrations. Kjartan has been wanting a copy of my book and so I give them a slightly battered copy of my own which I inscribe for them and draw their attention to the illustration on page 200. I tell them that they can have this battered copy so long as they download a Kindle version…

When Drífa leaves we decide that the throaty, sports car sound of Drífa’s exhaust as not as loud as she feared. She just needs a ‘Robin’ to bolt the ends back together.

Day 4: Þingvellir, Geysir, and Gullfoss…

We were not up late, considering the hour that we went to bed, but we had a leisurely breakfast with our cereal laden with fresh fruit and various mjölks. Washing this morning I find it hard to imagine how I can I have forgotten the smell of the water here – sulphury but somehow nice.

Adi gave us some advice over routes and roads for our round Iceland adventure and suggested some places to stop to eat before arriving at Brautaholt on Saturday evening. He also suggested that we should try and get our jeep from Friday night in order to save time and make an early start on Saturday morning. As he was kindly going to run us into town he offered to also help out with the negotiations.

We’re glad he did, as a) we discovered that Cheep Jeep have moved to new premises which are not immediately obvious to find. Find them we do though and Adi sorts the situation. Apparently when we booked the extra time to allow all day on both Saturdays we actually had a full day so we are able to collect the jeep after 6pm on Friday.

After being dropped in downtown 101 Reykjavik we wandered down by the harbour, said hello to the only stream train in Iceland on a short length of track you will find and made our way to Bæjarins Beztu for one of the best hot dogs you will get in town.

Then, for something new for both of us. Since my last visit they have opened a new concert hall venue on the harbour – Harpa – a building or possibly two buildings contained within one glass box that itself is made to resemble the colours and reflections of obsidian and the shapes of basalt columns. It’s beautiful and affords the opportunity to take make striking and confusingly mind-bending photographs. I am reminded again how both Emma and I can point our cameras at precisely the same thing and both end up with equally good but dramatically different pictures.

From Harpa we walked on round the harbour to the steel sculpture of the Viking longship, if in a fine Scotch mist of rain. For the first time since I wrote it – and maybe ever – I placed my cheek against the cold metal so that it stings in the same way that it does when Ben does this in my novel. It’s precisely the asme. Odd, as I realise now that I have never done it until now.

Next to the Lutheran Cathedral of Hallgrímskirkja which sits above the city and overlooked everything from its simple, elegant concrete wings that flank it – another nod to the volcanic basalt columns of the country.

It’s a 600 IKR ride in the lift up the 8 floors, and then one short flight of stairs to the bell tower from where you get one of the best views across the multi-coloured painted roofs of Reykjavik.

A short walk down the bustling, crafty street to Laugavegur and I bring Emma to my favourite coffee shop/bar in Reykjavik. At first that I worry that its changed hands but no, they just now use the shorter, more easily pronounceable Koffinn instead of Kofi Frænda Tomasar – or Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the translation is a new one on me but it seems strangely fitting). I treat Emma to a hot chocolate floating with Ice Cream – delicious.

And then to home. For dinner we have chicken in a pesto and feta cheese sauce – delicious! Followed up by skyr for desert. I would describe skyr for desert as yoghurt or fromage frais with nobs on but is very, very low in fat – high in protein, utterly delicious and nicely filling. Adi leaves for his fishing trip up on Snaefellsness after dinner and we set about making plan for tomorrow – a family outing with Drifa and Janet and the dogs to Þingvellir, Gulfoss, and Geysir – the golden circle.

Day 3: Cousins and bathing in the Blue Lagoon…

It may be my fourth visit to Iceland but I have never before arrived in the hours of darkness. To keep to our budget we couldn’t afford the normal mid-morning flight that I’ve always had, so we set off for our adventures mid-afternoon to leave our car at Emma’s parents before being ferried to Heathrow in the Jefferys taxi.

We didn’t see any post-Olympics athletes catching flights but there loads of Games Makers in evidence outside. Our bags caused a certain amount of amusement to the cheerful man on the check-in desk as both our bags back-flipped and somersaulted over the conveyor belt.

A dinner of pizza air-side of security and we board our plane just after 9pm for our journey north and having walked seemingly miles to get to our get to our gate. Whilst cruising north over Britain we watched a short ‘how to guide’ on driving in Iceland which was just a little bit scary. Eeek!

On the inflight entertainment I found a couple of episodes of the comedy series Dagvatn (Day Shift) – a follow up to the hit Night Shift which we had encountered during a BBC4 Iceland season – and painfully funny!

As we journeyed further north and it got closer towards midnight it felt weird that it got lighter and lighter outside the plane.

Arriving at the airport we moved swiftly through the sleek lines of angled stone walls and polished wood floors – our bags arrived quickly and we headed out to find our bus. I had a slight confusion over the Flybus ticket, as when we got to the bus I discovered that they had sold me a Flybus Plus ticket which I didn’t need and that I should go back for a refund. So I ran back to the terminal and back again to the bus much to Emma’s hilarity.

The journey into Reykjavik after that was very smooth and Aði was waiting to collect us at some ungodly hour. We were welcomed into the house by Auntie Janet, introduced to Táta and – amusingly – a little ginger cat called Emma(!), chatted for a bit before retiring to bed.

Day 2: Reacquainting oneself with Reykjavik…

Farewell To Alpago

Day 15. 5 July 2006

Wednesday. Two and a half hours after I go to bed, and with dawn already broken Emi returns to the nursery school and goes to bed. Just one and a half hours later, to a chorus of seven o’clock bells he is getting up again to shower and be ready to leave for work, taking three our number to the airport as he goes.

I get up too to see Jenny, Sarah-Jane and Sarah off. Carol has left a note for them to wake her before they go, although there is a certain amount of uncertainty as to who is going in the first trip. Sarah-Jane has, having opted stay out all night, only just got in. She throws the rest of her belongings into her bags and goodbyes are said.

Following the departure of three of our number I return to my room, considering a return to sleep…

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A Party of Two Halves

Day 14. 4 July 2006

Tuesday. We are given a lie in this morning, and I don’t even notice the seven o’clock bells. We breakfasdt leisurely and head out to Chies at ten o’clock to finish up on our steps – a task that does not take long – placing th last couple of stobs in place before errecting a small piece of fencing above a precarious drop, to stop the local school kids going over when taking part in the nature walk that we have helped created.

Loris has not turned up with his ‘spike’ so we are forced to improvise, fashioning a fresh spike from stobs for each of three fence poles. The electric drill, loses its drill bit on one of the bars, and has to be rescued, and one of the posts split and doesn’t go in fantastically well but the other two will hold it, but its not a fence for keeping cattle in.

Job done, there is just time to take a group photo of Italians, English, Canadians, and Norwegians on the woodland steps, before walking back into Chies via the rest of the woodland track, dropping off a bit more wood along the way for another, later, project…

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The Deer Hunters

Day 13. 3 July 2006

Monday. Up early, we descend on the worksite in Chies and set to work on our steps. Part way through the morning, the film crew from the local Belluno television station pitches up in the woods to interview Janet and film us at work. We work hard, and without realising, without a break; working until noon, and the job is almost done with just a little finishing off left to do tomorrow.

Heading off by van, via the shop to pick up lunch, we drive across into the next valley to the Cansiglio forest. Driving in past a golf course we arrive at a botanical garden where we have our lunch in the shade. Following a short siesta to recover from our hard morning’s work, we meet with two of the rangers of the garden. Mauro and Giovanni invite us into their potting shed for coffee made in a proper coffee maker – stained with years of use – on a small primus stove. There is an unopened bottle of Grappa on the table…

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The Ascent is Slight and the Air is Thin

Day 12. 2 July 2006

Sunday. With every night, I sleep better and better, but I still hear the seven o’clock bells without fail. Today is our second day off (not that we did much work yesterday) and it is clear and bright and just the kind of day to go into the middle of the dolomites. Taking to the rattling Alpago Rugby team ‘rust bucket’ bus we drive down the valley, onto the BIG road and to Belluna – and under Belluna – before driving north into the mountains to Allegne – one of the most important areas in this region for skiing.

From the town on the edge of Lago di Allegne we take a cable car and then a chair lift up 1922 metres to Col dei Baldi where the air is clean, and the alpine meadows are lush and brimming with flowers. From our vantage point in the sky the landscape below has the appearance of a golf course; lush meadows marked out with paths, and the ski-runs through the trees like driving ranges. We have a snack lunch at the mountain chalet of café-latte and pizza before setting off dow to climb up further into the dolomites.

On the easy path down to C. va di Piccia I lose my footing on a water culvet and slide, seemingly in slow motion, down to the left, badly cutting and grazing my shin and forearm…

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Beneath The Mountain

Day 11. 31 July 2006

Saturday. Slept well until about eight-thirty although I was disturbed sometime in the middle of the night. Woken suddenly by what I imagine at first were several intruders in my room, rifling trough my bags and muttering to one another, I sat bolt upright, and found the light. The one nocturnal visitor was John, disorientated and sleep walking. He muttered something that I did not catch, and left. I went back to sleep, and did not even, I think, hear the seven o’clock bells.

After a leisurely breakfast, we take the cobbled path down to Lamasano main square and meet the Italian girls, and Janet and Desirée; and Loris even turns up, a little worse for wear after last night, but sporting a Scotland T-shirt. We take to a variety of vehicles; Kate, Sarah-Jane and myself in Desirée’s car.

We drive up the hill behind Lamasano nursery school, and through the tiny village of Funés, perched right on the edge of a huge scar in the landscape with Pédol similarily placed on the other side. Taking increasingly tiny, twisting roads and close to the mountain hut at C. va Crosetta we park up, a collection of four cars, by a set of double, steel doors in the mountain wedged closed with a plank of wood and moderately sized rock. The tunnel into the mountain…

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The Importance of Knowing Where One’s Towel Is

Day 10. 30 June 2006

Friday. Last night, at an hour past midnight I discovered that my towel was missing. Previously hung out to dry on the rails outside the window it is not to found there anymore. I check to see if I left it in the bathroom; in the living area; from each of my four windows. There is no sign.

I sleep well in cooler temperatures, waking only briefly around six o’clock when everyone goes to the toilet. It is then the seven o’clock bells that wake me as the sun and view comes in through the shutters. Raising them up I spy my towel cast down by the wind in the driveway 10 metres away.

By eight-thirty Kate is ringing the (bicycle) bell for the off, and the drive round the valley to Chies d’Alpago to continue our steps. With the logs stripped tow days ago by John, Sarah-Jane and myself, Kate swaaps the groups around and we work on the steeper, higher sections of the path. It’s slow work with our second step – a potentially useful stump actually proves useless as a stob and in the end we require four stobs to the one step…

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Venice Reprise: Trains and Tornados

Day 9. 29 June 2006

Thursday. Up at 6am to have showered and breakfasted in time for the seven o’clock bells – our signal to leave the nursery school, board ‘that’ van and drive down to the one-platform country train station to catch the eight o’clock train to Venice.

A little after 9:30 we cross the causeway over the lagoon and enter Venice once more. At the stazzoni, we board the #1 waterbus down to Rialto, and from there lose ourselves in the labyrinthine streets of San Marco Siestrie before finding a café in which to eat toasted foccacia sandwiches or pizza cornets whilst sipping café lates.

Losing ourselves in some more streets we find a cake and alcohol shop and indulge our tastes for sweet pastries and limoncello. When we at last arrive at Piazza San Marco it is close on noon and the midday temperature is rising. Seeking breeze and coolness we board the #1 waterbus once more to Academia and seek out eh personal tastes of the Peggy Gugenheim museum…

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Bark Stripping and Step Building

Day 8. 28 June 2006

Wednesday. Today was to be our first day off, but a look at the weather forecast suggested that Thursday might be cooler for a day trip into Venice. As it turns out, the day begins slightly overcast with cloud when we make the short journey into Chies d’Alpago.

Parking up in the town square we take the nature walk started off by last year’s conservation volunteers, and part of the town’s Natural History Museum, up to the old cemetary – not much visited today except by the town’s elderly – and down the ridge through the woodland to where the path takes a downward scramble through the undergrowth…

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Fireflies and Prosecco

Day 7. 27 June 2006

Tuesday. Waking at five o’clock with the birds singing, I lie on my sleeping platform for a few hours more, dozing in and out sleep. I find this morning that during the night I had been joined, on the other side of the sleeping platform, by Sarah, but she has now joined the others sleeping outside under the sky, on tarpaulins. As I get dressed and pack my sleeping bag away I find that a 50 cent coin has been left on the boards next to my bed.

We wash and breakfast and slowly wake into the early morning light as John and the Italians join us for another day of work. Ernesto has not come up the mountain today and so Gianni and Benito have decided that there is a little more work to be done on the sheep fold. Amongst some remedial repositioning of some of the stones on the wall, they have decided to reinstate a third milking stool and gate, and to clear the fold of all the rocks, even the big ones, that Ernesto said to leave. We spend a few happy hours rolling large rocks out of the fold and down the hill…

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Grappa Frisbee, Deportment, and the Eighty Year Old Shepherd

Day Six. 26 June 2006

Monday. Up early on a Monday morning to be ready for the night’s adventure, we pack a variety of packs and sleeping apparatus along with our normal work clothes. At the restaurant at the bottom of the hill we park up the ‘rust bucket’ vn and move all our gear – loosely packed so that it seems to take up more space than our original arrival – to a variety of cars and Desirée’s father’s plush silver off-roader. Whilst some walk, some of us take the more relaxed vehicular route up the mountain.

By the time we have arrived on site, the eighty year old former shepherd Ernesto and his friends Gianni (The Tractor) and Benito (The Chainsaw) have already cut back the grass and nettles and started work on reconstructing the walls. We begin work immediately, working with bars and mattocks and our bare hands to get out the from the ground, the rocks that have fallen, over the years, from the walls of the sheep fold…

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The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music

Day 5. 26 June 2006

Sunday. Church bells and rucksack related aches and pains wake me improbably early. And I drift in and out of sleep to the chorus of birdsong. Following the manic bells of seven o’clock, the clouds sink lower and we get a thunderstorm over breakfast – and some more sedate church-calling bells. As we leave around eight-thirty for C. ra Cate where we leave the rust bucket of a van and walk the sometimes paved, sometimes gravel, seemingless endless track into the mountains.

As we reach the level of the scree the path levels out through an alpine meadow, and we arrive at the old sheep fold that is to be our first worksite. But we contine on a little further to C. ra Pian de la Stete, the site of a small mountain hut and the venue for the local amateur band’s – Chies d’Alpago Municiple Band – first outdoor concert with their new conductor, Deborah; recently returned from music college to lead the band in the town of her birth.

Part of me wishes that I had brought my piccolo, and eye up the large numbers of horns jealousy. The band is as diverse, if younger, as Abingdon Concert Band, and they play a similar repertoire. I think what such a very special location this is, and how you could never get my band to do something similar, not even if we did have a handy 1500 m (4000 ft) mountain to play on. With the sun shining, and walkers, out on the ridge beyond, we are treated to wind band classics and classical arrangements for band, including a very nice arrangement of Glen Miller’s Moonlight Serenade, and an energetic rendition of Mambo Number Five.

The concert concludes with a rousing encore and is folled by a barbeque lunch and party when the old men try to ply us with wine, and we have to decline with choruses of ‘non-permeso’; we will be working later and drinking on a workday invalidates BTCV insurance. That is, we are led to understand that work on the sheep fold will begin after lunch…

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Under Police Guard

Day 4. 24 June 2006

Saturday. A slightly sleepless night last night – humidity was overpowering and I was woken early by the sound of pigeons on the balcony opposite my window, and of refuge collectors on the canal below. I take my last breakfast in Locanda Silva before returning to my room to pack my bags, repacking it for a bus journey rather airport check-in, leaving my hiking boots ready for a quick change later. Then I head out into the still-cool-in-the-shade but already-baking-hot-in-the-sun early morning.

Making directly for the Rialto bridge I stock up on cherries and walk through the fish market once again. Back up onto the Rialto, and I am just looking at some leather bound sketch/note books, hand-made upstairs, when I receive a text message from Sarah. She is 10–15 minutes away from San Marco and apparently wearing a pink top and ‘the only person in Venice with walking boots on’.

As I approach the waterfront and the bus stop, I see someone who I think might be here, but it is a few minutes before I decide to approach. When I do, it is Sarah.

We stand in the shade of a pine tree watching the boats go by, and eeating cherries, dropping the stones into the lagoon. After a while we get a message from Jenny – she will be across the lagoon at about 1pm. We wander back through the town, via Fressaria, to the Rialto and I show Sarah the fruit and fish market, before we settle down in the shade of the old orange market to talk some more and eat cherries, flicking the stones into the Grand Canal…

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Venetian Labyrinth From Above

Day 3. 23 June 2006

Friday. I faired better on my second morning in getting cold milk for my cereal; also realised that yesterday I drank my coffee unknowingly straight from the jug which perhaps goes some way to explain the strange looks that I received from signora upon bringing me my (hot) milk.

Setting off back to a, still mercifully quiet, Piazza San Marco, I take the lift (I am disappointed that there are no stairs to climb – and count) up St Mark’s bell tower. The sun is bright, and the sky, the richest of blues; from the gallery beneath the bells, where there are telephones for ‘Calling Home’, a fantastic panorama of the city and of the lagoon is laid out before me with perfect visibility.

Whilst I am up above the city, looking down, as the bell towers below strike out of the hour of ten – some like the Torre dell’Orologio with it’s life size copper men beating out the time – I notice that the queue for the Basilica is already half way round the square and in full sun. As I leave the tower through a back door within the red brick façade, the queue for the lift too, is lengthening.

Walking the length of Piazza San Marco, I leave through the colonnaded arcade, between the fashionable boutiques and expensive jewellery stores, and make my way back onto Frezzaria and to ‘La Venexiana Atelies’ mask shop where I learn which are the traditional, and which the fashion masks. Heading on west towards the Grand Canal I find another bookshop, piled high with books but with a no less agreeable shopkeeper. Sadly this shop does not have a Tabacco #012 map for the area of the Dolomiti for which I am headed tomorrow…

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Mind The Gap

Day 2. 22 July 2004

Thursday. I wake to the sounds of delivery boats on a nearby canal. After a slight mixup over breakfast with my milk requirements – warm milk doesn’t go best with cornflakes – I am setting out for the ‘straight’ road to the Rialto. Along the way I discover a bookshop selling maps and a helpful member of staff. Although as it turns out the one map that they do have shoes Chies d’Alpago literally right on the right-hand edge of the map. Isn’t it always the same? And as for map #012? The only one that they don’t have.

All the stalls across and beyond the Rialto are teeming with people, and the fish and vegetable market the same; a place of colour, of life, of sights and smells. In faultering Italian I ask for half a kilo of cherries and depart to seek a route across town to catch the vaporetta to Murano.

Standing up on deck but beneath the canopy in order to get the best of the sea breeze I am struck by how even more appropriate the London underground instruction is to this form of transport. At each stop we are pulled in the landing stage by ropes and gates opened. Whilst on the move we stand holding the edge of the roof just like when on the tube.

From the very moment of arriving on Murano – the island of glass – there is a man shouting out directions to one of the glass furnaces. I follow; round to the left and over the bridge. It’s fascinating, mesmerising; if intensely hot, work. Skilled too; in five minutes watching one man turn a ball of molten glass into a horse reering up on it’s hind legs. Another man fashions a large multi-coloured bowl in almost the same time, adding pleating with several, carefully timed flicks of the wrist…

( read more, enjoy, come back and comment… )

Across The Lagoon

Day 1. 21 June 2004

Wednesday. Arrived in Venice ahead of schedule, and, having traversed the plush new airport discovering that you can’t get trollies without a 1 Euro coin and wondering how many people arrive in Venice airport with only notes, retrieve my bags. I then discover that the Lonely Planet has lied to me. There is no train direct from the airport to the city. There is however, for 11 Euros a waterboat that takes me direct to San Marco.

Across the lagoon – there is a refreshing – and my welcome breeze. It is extremely hot – if overcast – every bit the promised 34 degrees and maybe more. I stand in the bow, under a canopy and watch Venice proper grow as we cross the lagoon – via ‘roads’ marked out clearly with wooden posts. Our routes take us through the picturesque isle of Murano, famous for it’s glass blowing. It looks to be a charming little island filled with little streets and less of the grand buildings and towers that I can see on further islands. I thought, in the planning stages for this trip, that I might take a valporetta out here. I think now that I have decided that I will…

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Sightseeing a City in a Day

Day 2. 15 July 2005

Friday. I woke early for breakfast to make the most of the day to find myself disappointed to find the fifth floor of the hotel in thick fog. Reassuring myself that it is not raining and that this grey weather will most likely burn off soon enough, I head downstairs, chirpily, towards breakfast. Pausing at reception I am told that the forecast is for sun and 28 degrees.

Breakfast is served in a poolside room of modest grandeur; small details fashioned from concrete and painted in simple white. Starting with cereal fruit juice, this is followed by a platter of bread, meat, and salty, creamy, goats cheese; all washed down with a large mug of black coffee.

In the early hours following breakfast and before the shops and museums open at 10 o’clock, and whilst the fog still lingers, I reccy the town. My Rough Guide mentions two museums in Timisoara, the Museum of the Banat, which although it is to be found in the fourteenth-century castle, the curators have spared ‘no effort […] to make the voluminous display of historical exhibits as dull as’ possible. I decide to give it a miss, and instead settle on finding and visiting the Ethnographic museum, of which I have heard very favourable reports.

After a whirlwind tour of the modern, and tediously dull and uninteresting department store next door to my hotel (just to see what is there), I strike out north towards the old Bastion; in which it is said that the ethnographic museum resides. Within about five paces turning the corner, I find it. Old, crumbly, red brick it is built with sloping walls, and topped by a roof of grass and bushes. Constructed as a series of triangles, these structures used to circle the old city. Now, only two parts exist, the rest having succumbed to demolition in the name of town planning. This section, in the northeast of the town, is the larger of the two, and now pay host to an internet café, and English bookshop, and a other shops, including a car showroom.

Following the road round, the lanes cut through the old archways in the city walls, and I follow the road round the outside of the Bastion. I’ve passed a Violin Museum, but it’s closed, and browsed in an antique furniture shop, but as yet have found no Ethnographic Museum. Consulting my map again, I peer into ever door and window, ask in hesitant English and broken Romanian at cafés and magazine stalls where I can find the ethnographic museum. Nobody knows. Suddenly, thinking that I have found it, I enter into a vaulted brick chamber, only to discover that it is the back – or maybe the front – door of the antique furniture shop I was in earlier…

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( Waymarking in Romania )

A Thunderstorm for Dinner

Day 1. 14 July 2005

Thursday. The journey began like any other; at Heathrow Terminal 2 a little after 7 o’clock. After a swift check-in I made way through to Departures. Whilst stood outside a branch of Virgin megastore reading a text message on my mobile, I’m suddenly aware of someone stood opposite. It is Tom Fyson – of the Estonian Adventures of 2003 fame – and my leader again on this; Romania 2005.

More or less on time, we depart England to fly east over Europe, landing two hours later in Vienna to be whisked across the airport in a bus and back again, to board our transfer plan. What we find is the tiniest, oldest aeroplane that I’ve ever flown in. With propeller’s on the wings, and luggage stowed under the tail fin, the slimmed down seating is just two deep either side of gangway, and the only separator between first and standard class were two bits of clear Perspex etched with the logo of Tyrolean Airways – our carrier for the last leg of our Austrian Air flight…

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Tales from Transylvannia

(can you wait)

The Journey North
Day 1. 15 June 2004

Tuesday. A circumfluent route is taken to get to Oxford when Julian arives at my house a little after 7 o’clock. Missing the turn that will take us through the Oxfordshire villages of Ambrosden, Merton, and Islip, and instead we take an alternative road through the squaddie village of Arncott, with its Tornedo, and the bouncy rouad through Horton-cum-Studley.

When I get my Heathrow bound bus from the shops in Headington, I am leaving myself way to much time for a 11 o’clock check-in but it’s either this or pay for a grossly expensive taxi and all the cuffufal that that entails.

I am a little concerned when the first bus drives straight past the bus stop, but the next one stops and I make way to Heathrow with no further excitement — by one o’clock we am taxiing across the airport complex in our Icelandic Bowing 757.

Descending in across the I Icelandic coastline, we land amongst the lava fields and lupins at Keflavik airport, and I am back. For the third time in as many years I am walking through the clean stone lines and glass frontages of the arrivals building and then through the airport, within no time I am walking out the doors to the carpark and boarding the bus to Reykjavik.

( read more and illustrated )

Adventures in Estonia

…complete with an Endnote and an Afterword.

Which means that I can get back to the business of Blood & Fire — a part of me that I’ve been away from for far too long!

Day 11. 6 August 2003

Wednesday. Bed at 2am, I wake at 8 after an interruption at 6 when Shaun leaves without so much as a goodbye leaving his lunchbox behind for us to remember him by… I’m awake now, so I get up despite still feeling a tad sleepy. When I descend upon breakfast Tim is already there. He’s off to the Russian quarter of Tallinn this morning in search of Soviet memorabilia. We reflect that both Shaun and Hannah have now departed, one for Finland, one for Yorkshire (via Copenhagen). Now we are eleven.

During breakfast Tim, records that Ele and Karin had asked last night if anyone had come on the holiday together (apart from the obvious two couples) — because they thought Tom and Alice had. He tells me that he noticed what was later to emerge between them on the first day in Saaremaa: it was at the old fort and Ester was telling us about how it was built to defend Saaremaa and its people from invasion, but how in the end living with the enemy just seemed easier, that Alice was listening to what Ester was telling us, but that all the time her feet were turned towards Tom. This is (allegedly) a tell tale sign of *interest*.

When Alice surfaces, Tim offers to show her Shaun’s lunchbox…

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Day 10. 5 August 2003

Tuesday. Today I lie in to the grand ol’ hour of 8 o’clock. I’ve slept well — having settled surprisingly well back into the comfort of beds rather than the boards we’ve been used to on Saaremaa. I shower, and find my way to the breakfast room for cornflakes, appelsin, kohvi, karma and sandwiches, and work on noting down the rest of last night into my journal. Gradually the others join me in various states of wakefulness and we begin to make plans.

The List is produced and and we decide in what order to attack it. Tom tells us that he’s read in the Lonely Planet guide that you can buy Tallinn cards at the train station, and get the bus from there to the zoo — it then being a pleasant 15 minute walk along the coast to the Outdoor Museum. It sounds simple. It sounds like a plan.

At 10 o’clock we head out (a party of nine) — the Extended Crazy Gang plus Shaun — across Tallinn, veering away at the Town Hall Square down Pikk Street and out the gate at the far side of the town. We soon reach the railway station via an exceptionally clean and pleasantly fragrant subway. The ticket office is easy to find too. However the Estonians behind the counter seem to have never heard of Tallinn cards, or at least feign incomprehension at our request despite the presentation of a leaflet all about it. We try other shops — no one knows anythign. Tim asks a man a locksmith. No luck. Then the locksmith has a change of mind — maybe he can help us? He locks up his shop and leads us through the station to the ticket office we tried first. He too has no luck. He leads us on further down the platform, and left, and left again into a another booking area. The kiosk is closed. He explains the situation to a lady in a neighbouring counter and it seems hopeful, so we thank the man and he leaves us. As it happens the lady can’t help us, but tells us to try the travel agent out the door, along the street, turn right at the end of the station building, and it’s on our right…

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Day 9. 4 August 2003

Monday. Wake at 0700 hours. Seleft reasonably well last night despite the 2am-ish finish of the Truth or Dare and the cold feet in the early hours of Monday dawn. I am one of the first packed despite having (by far) the largest rucsac. Quite ironic really.

Breakfast is as usual served up in the baar and is our now fond selection of malted-black and rye bread, cold meats and salad. Vicky is absent for much of the meal as she is still packing, and Jane, more asleep than normal. Everyone is (unnaturally) quiet. Our Russian landlady has mercifully left off the looped taped of Elton John and Ricky Martin — for which relief we give much thanks. I don’t think any of us could have coped with it after the night before…

Tim had a dream where he’d drunk a lot of pepper vodka — that, we tell him, was not a dream!! He later suggested a comparison photograph of mine and Steve’s rucsacs — from the sublime to the rediculous — but to this day we are not sure which is which. With our waterfalls refilled at the baar, we lounge around, for the last time, at the tables outside whilst we wait for the bus to arrive. In the end the bus arrives early and we sling our bags into the trailer, appoint Tim, as before, on shadow watch and pile on. Unlike before, the original Crazy Gang take each of the single seats down the side of the bus thus disseminating the craziness and the coolness throughout the bus, rather than confining it to the back seats. And so it comes, at last for the last, tearful farewell to Annika. We showered presents on her last night, and she had taken half a dozen or so orders for the cool *flying squirel* Elfond T-shirts and Tom had off-loaded his BTCV T-shirts to her to spread the good word. In the goodbyes, Annika, admits that we have been the best group she has workid with (but does she say that to all te groups?) and she reminds Tom (Tim-Tom) pointedly that she really does want to visit the UK again, do the tour of her new friends and maybe take in a conservation holiday along the way. And with that, we depart Sutu, and hit the main road to the ferry and to Tallinn.

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Day 8. 3 August 2003

Sunday. The second of two leisure days. So, what’s on the itinerary? A boat trip, riding native horses (but round a paddock rather than the countryside) and a trip to a farm museum. I don’t think any of us were expecting from this the eventual day that we got…

On route to where we will get the boat from we stop to pick up our guide from Friday afternoon, and we continue around the coast, eventually arriving at the narrowest of lanes, down which the bus lurches from side to side, arriving at last outside a run down group of buildings. Grabbing just our cameras and our sun hats and sunglasses from our bags, we are led through a yard full of bits of old boat and fishing nets, to the jetty (with it’s gaping hole wretched through the middle). As we approach the fisherman finishes emptying a small launch of eels. This boat, the seats now (mostly) clear is to be our transport.

Our fisherman, throttles up the engine to a good musical beat, we cast off moorings and away. Steering our way between reed beds, the water is flat calm and is not much worse when we venture further into open water. We see plovers and auks, and sea swans, and the sun pours down upon us. I trail my hands in the water for a while, as we head out to and around a lighthouse. Quite why we have our guide on board we never find out, as no explanation is given – nor is one frankly possible – above the noise of the engine…

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Day 7. 2 August 2003

Saturday. “The interesting thing is that…” there’s something else that I have to tell you. Ester is one of those people – a historian, archeologist and history teacher – who’s command of English, despite her protestations otherwise, is excellent, and who has a way with her words that can make everything she tells us something that we really do want to know. She joins us again for our second full day of leisure and sightseeing, taking us first to the smallest church on Saaremaa – at Kóljala.

There are many interesting things about this church, and funny too, not least the paintings on the arched ceilings (sadly we were unable to go up through the walls into the roof space of this one!) – one motif in particular brings back the antics of yesterday. The leg swapping, bending over and looking between the legs by Alice and myself at the farm…

We leave the church just in time, as the biggest coach load of tourists descend on the quiet church surrounded by trees. We hasten to our bus, and drive on to Karja – and the traditional windmills. We enter into the main windmill, paying our 8EEK to enter and ascend up through the sweet-smelling wooden interior, looking upon the inner workings of the mill. Later, we peruse the visitors’ book for an entry from previous BTCV groups but find none, and so Tom enters one in for today and we each sign beneath.

Outside, we lounge around in the sun talking to the billy goats and their children, and watch as Jane, Alice, Paul and Charis play in the children’s playground. There has been less of a talk by Ester here, but I think perhaps she is saving herself for our next stop…

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Day 5. 31 July 2003

Thursday. We return to the farm in our school bus but this time not to transfer to a collection of faithful if ailing vehicles. The woods where we are to be working are just a short walk through the potato field at the back of the farm. To save us the bother of horse-flies and mosquitos Tom performs his Tool Talk in the garden (where we are used to siesta in the mid-afternoon sun), instructing us in the safe use of bowsaws, loppers and billhooks. We then decend on the woodland where Hagrid can already be heard hard at work with his chainsaw.

The work is to gather and stack cut wood, and cut what isn’t in preparation for bonfires and the restoration of this area to a traditional woodland meadow. Steve, Hannah, Jan, Vicky, Paul, Ela and Karin opt to work in the first shady area (and for the sake of convenience we shall them Team A). It is reported later that they quickly adopt Union Rules and adhere to a strict work ethic, involving frequent and regular tea breaks and everyone downing tools and enjoying this communal activity.

Team B, consisting of the rest of us, move further on to woke in full sun clearing a larger area. This group sub-divides, and after some minor confusion as to what we are doing is sorted out, Alice and myself set off to work over the far side. We are joined during the day by Tom, and I get to feel increasing like a spare part as flirtation between Tom and Alice intensifies.

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Day 4. 30 July 2003

Wednesday. Our thirty-seater German school bus arrives shortly after 9.15 to take us to the farm and to our first day of work. It is after barely 5 minutes when Tim rewards us with the first mention of his his leadership experience. The Crazy Gang, seated in window seats down the length bus on the opposite side let out a mexican wave of laughter, scoring the first point in the air. Our outburst is noted, but no one has a clue what it’s all about – least of all Tim…

Once at the farm, we change vehicles for the truck, the car and the van. In the relative cool of morning, the heat within the mobile sauna is not as intense as it was yesterday. On route down the bumpy track, as we all take photos of the van interior for our records, Tim slips in Leader Remark, number two.

Upon our arrival at the hay meadow we layer up with suntan lotion and insect repellent, practice our swatting skills and listen to Tom’s tool talk. We divide into groups, and embark on raking and forking of hay and reads, ready for the bailer. The morning drifts along punctuated with frequent breaks to gulp down water, re-apply insect repellent and suncream. I chat with Paul about this that – and we realise during a break for photos that the farmers car is actually (parked, doors open in the middle of a hay meadow) Mr Weasley’s flying car from Harry Potter 2. Tom reveals that he’s guessed there’s some wager up, so I admit the Crazy Gang’s competition after first swearing all in earshot to secracy.

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Day 3. 29 July 2003

Tuesday. It’s the first morning on Saaremaa and I wake early – this time due to the uncomfortably hard beds – or boards – as we like to call them. The mosquito guard seems to have worked anyway and I have yet to unpack my sleeping bag, finding sheets more than enough to surfice.

I shower and dress and mae my way over to the baar for 8 o’clock for breakfast. This consists of cornflakes, juice and coffee, followed by a plate of white and malted black bread, two forms of cold meats, cheese and salad prepared for us by staff.

Our bus arrives a little after twenty past nine and we set off to Valjala where we collect our tour guide Ester. We take more twisting, turning roads between fields of barley, potatoes and farmhouses surrounded by orchards, arriving at last outside one. A set of ruins – old houses to the untrained eye – Ester soon explains to us enthusiastically that these are fifth centrury graves and very important to the history of Saaremaa.

Where we stand at Valjala is a the very centre of Saaremaa, if you take the old meanings that this is the name given to all of the western isles. The people who lived and who were buried here would have been very important in the community – possibly holding some power or a seat of government. It was also unusual in that the finds of bones had been cleaned carefully in round pits along side the graves. The reason why? No one knows…

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Day 2. 28 July 2003

Monday. Rising from my slumbers at six-thirty, I shower and repack my rucksack for the day ahead. Later, as others emerge from their rooms, and we discuss how much sleep we have or have not managed after the relative disruptions of intense humidity followed by over-active minds circling throught the day’s and future events, and of how just as sleep was about to overtake us, seagulls swooped lover overhead screeching above us. Vicky admitted sleeping well – much to Jane, Steve’s and an my horror and disgust.

We brakfast on Karma – a porridge-like substance of buckwheat and oatmeal and other grains (which I’m sure would have been nicer had I known what I was doing!) mixed with two type of yogurts, some slightly odd looking cornflakes, and coldmeats with dark-malted rye bread.

During breakfast Steve mentions to us the two lads, who, upon leaving the guesthouse as we arrived last night only returned to their beds after a night out partying in Tallinn night clubs as we were stirring. He also informs us (as our spy in shared quarters) that there there are three or four other BTCV volunteers in the guesthouse. We meet one, Alice, straightaway over the kohvi, and she tells us of our flight out yesterday, of changing at Stockholm when it was only her doing this route and of having to venture down deserted passages to ring bells outside of locked offices. She seems eager to join us on a walk round Tallinn but by the time we are ready to leave, Alice has already been whisked away by (the then only supposed volunteer) Hannah, whom we have yet to meet.

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Crazy But Cool

Day 1. 27 July 2003

Sunday. Shortly after 3pm I was joined at Gatwick by Vicky – as promised from the Gatwick Express – and shortly after that by Steven (who I was vaguely aware of propping up a nearby column, listing it seems to names of people with suspicously conservation holiday type rucksacks) who has picked us out from the crowd and approached us with the tentative “BTCV” enquiry. We nod – and introduce ourselves. Now we are three.

Jane joins us moments later with a more confident and assertive “You must be Vicky!”. There’s supposed to be a fifth person – Tim – joining us around here but there was some confusion about a connection from Manchester and whether or not he would make it in time, and he did say he was an erstwhile international leader and would probably be wearing a BTCV T-shirt and we can’t see any of those around – so we decide to check-in. Jane and I trust our luck that our bags will join us in Tallinn as they are suffiently outsize to need to go through the outsize baggage which is currently broken. And so, having already sussed and dissed the elusive Tim as nice but dim, we head through passport control in search of last minute reading from Books Etc and a coffee.

Over coffee, Jane predicts that our flight will go from Gate 28 (reasoning that it will be one of the ones with the longest walk) and we settle back to introduce ourselves properly, enjoy a cup of coffee, and watch the departure board though Jane’s binoculars for news of our gate number. It duly flashes up. Gate 28.

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We breakfast early on cereal, fruits, yogurt, cheese and salad – the Icelander’s definitely know how to do the first meal of the day. This is followed by a leisurely hour in the blissful heat of the outdoor swimming pool watched over by cloud covered peaks and the cathedral tower. The cloud soon clears leaving sunshine for the rest of the tour.

Bjäkk – for ever after known as the fish man from Hölar – introduces us to the history of Hölar cathedral, the sometimes gruesome history and it’s artistic splendors which include a very exquisite carved soap stone baptism font signed by the artist with ‘angel faces”.

He then show us a restored and a reconstruction fo Icelandic turf roofed houses, and takes us on to learn of his aquaculture research, showing us round his aquarium and explaining the limited diversity of Iceland’s freshwater fish. There are only six types of freshwater fish and three are arctic char, salmon and brown trout. Bjäkk goes on to explain how despite this, with the differences of rocks and lava formations beneath the surface, it is possible to have variations within species even with the same lake or river.

By one o’clock we are saying goodbye to the City of Hölar and are back on Route 1 and going travelling around the perimitre of the country.

Faced with ever changing scenery of stunning proportions – lava fields to lush revenues or grassy plateaus – we next stop briefly at Akureyri – Iceland’s second metropolis. We get an opportunity to explore the shopping precinct and stumble into a child’s baptism in the church whilst Chas and Sara gather further provisions from the local supermarket.

As we head off towards Husavik, we leave behind clouds and journey into clear blue skies and warm sunshine – if also a cool, and sometimes bracing breeze.

bv5185.n3At six-thirty and with conditions that are of about two in the afternoon back home, we arrive at our campsite at Vesturdalur and strike camp. With homes erected we make drinks of coffee and hot chocolate and wak up the cliffs to survey our territory. From a high outcrop of rock we can survey first our camp and the ranger’s hut sitting in a garden of green behind a dry stone wall, overshadowed by flag poles and surrounded by the desolation of a dried up river bed – like a zulu encampment waiting for the cavalry to attack. From here we can also see when when Chas returns with the van and trailer with further provisions nadn the mess tent.

All is action again as one group make the night’s supper, another erect tables and chairs, and a further group struggle (easily) to make the mes tent fit in the area between the bushes.

Within a very short time of this we are all gathered together swapping names, trying desperately to remember them together with their correct faces. Three hours later and we are walking away from an uneventful flight into blazing sunshine and clear blue skies over Keflavik airport. Chas Goemans is there to greet us – and recognises me – as does Sara, a VO from last year, and our leader for this years holiday. Within no more than half an hour of our arrival our bags and rucksacks are transfered to a trailer and secured under a tarporlin and bungee ropes. We ourselves bundle into the blacked-out van that disappears for miles to the furthest reaches of the back seats, and drive off towards and through Reykjavik on Route 1 – around the island to our night’s stopover on the north coast.

During the six hour journey, punctuated with numerous stops at petrol stations for toilets, chocolates, or hot dogs we are given ample opportunity to get to know our fellow volunteers. I discover that the ginger haired Alex that I found I vaguely recognised, was in fact the same Alex Martin that I met previously in 1998 on a National Trust working holiday in Mathry, cutting gorse in atrocious weather conditions and repairing the Pembrokeshire coastal path.

bv5185.n1At nine-thirty, and with the sun only beginning to set we arrive at the City of Hölar – agricultural college with a population of 100. We are given a welcome meal of unspecified meat soup and settle into sleeping bag accomodation in two of the classrooms, watched over by some frightening Harry Potteresque dignatories on the walls. In a last conversation before bed we are told a story of some girls who slept in the rooms on the top floor and had their jewelery stolen by ghosts. Thankfully, these ‘ghosts’ did not visit us tonight.

We feast simply on pasta and cheese this first night, cozy in our new home, and retire early (midnight) to bed.