EE & S Adventures

Today was a driving day. We expected the rain but I didn’t expect the cold. It is bitterly, deeply cold. The wind chill factor is incredible. And it is only autumn. The driving was so different to the west of Iceland. Where before there was colour and vegetation today’s driving was mostly through large expanses of black basalt. The blackness was only broken by the odd bit of hay like vegetation. We saw the distinct areas where the lava flowed and cooled. We were crossing the fault line! And yet there is still so much to see. Godafoss (waterfall of the Gods) was a high flow waterfall, you could feel its power and the spray. We spotted this pretty bird We also saw Dettifoss, another fantastic scene. Both were beautiful but the walks to them were so cold. The wind made it even more so and the spray from the falls and rain wet everything. I could still feel cold in my bones well into the evening. Next we explored the Myvatn valley area. The highlight was M artian lik...

Our drive took us on from Varmahlid to Akureyri. It was beautiful, no rain, just cloud. The scenes were so vast that the camera can not do them justice. So much of Iceland is so beautiful but tricky to photograph. Once in town we visited the botanic gardens. It was nice to be in an environment with trees. The general absence of trees in Iceland is notable (and was caused mostly by Viking settlement back in the 1000s). The trees in the botanic gardens prove that trees can grow in Iceland and they rang with the sound of birds.  Our journey allowed us to observe flocks of geece, swans and ducks feeding and preparing for migration. It is weird to see geese just flocking about, eating, the cold is obviously prompting their movement as we see v shaped groups of birds in flight. They fly very, very fast, almost keeping up with the car sometimes. A highlight of the Akueyri area is the whale watching so we took a tour. It was so amazing, as it always is to see whales. I think we ...

Leaving Westfjords we rejoined Highway 1 to continue our circumnavigation of Iceland.  First stop after a long drive from the Westfjords was a luxurious rural guesthouse near Gauksmyri where we treated ourselves to a rare restaurant dinner and, due to rain, made the most of the offered late checkout the next day.  We did little on this day - just a few scenic stops and a bit of shopping for Elise (an Icelandic woolly hat). It was obvious we were heading quickly towards winter with an overnight frosting of snow to the hills around Varmahild where we stayed the next two nights.  The snow was low enough (near sea level) that Samuel and Eric could make snowballs out of the icy residue on our car the next morning.  Luckily our accommodation had two outdoor hot tubs (one hot and one hotter).  It was great for Eric to relax in the outdoor tubs after chilly evening runs in howling wind. The morning after the snowfall the weather continued to improve with a gloriou...

There is not much tourist information about the west fjords of Iceland. For such a beautiful place I’m surprised. The welcome note at the accommodation here says only 5% of tourists to Iceland come here. As a result we had to find our way to the local attractions ourselves. Eric’s research and our hosts fortunately pointed us in the right direction. We travelled a very short distance to Ísafjörður, the next town to the one we are staying in. Our first stop was actually above the town at Bolungarvík, a lookout which is also a coast guard post. It was almost like a Martian landscape, except for the vegetation clinging to the rocks and the eerie mist. The view was really pretty, that not obscured by the cloud.  Next we followed another gravel road in a valley to a black beach called Skalavik, again it felt isolated and other world like. Eric’s desire to take in the wild beauty and to run lead him to convince Samuel and I to drop him off in a valley and drive on to ...

The west of Iceland round the Snaefellsnes Peninsula reminds me of the desert in a wet kind of way. I know this does not make sense.... It has been raining constantly since we’ve been here, everything is totally soaked, the ground sodden, our clothes and feet are wet, waterfalls and creeks are everywhere yet the area still reminds me of a desert. It is the visibility of the folds in the land, the hollows, valleys, dips and ridges. Despite the obvious rain, the vegetation is grasses, not bush and certainly not trees.  It clings so close to the land. It makes it feel like the desert, in that you can really have contact with the underlying land formations. Baejarfoss waterfall Lava shapes near Buoakirkja Black Church Raudfeldsgja Gorge And yet there are far more colours than the deserts I’ve seen: reds, ochre, yellow, orange, green, lime green. The patterns are innumerable, I see so much colour in so little space. The land itself is volcanic black...