What have I learnt from my Bucket List Trip?

Iceland is a wonderful playground for the adventurous young. If, like me,  you are old and feel the cold then a camping holiday is not for you.

A flourishing tourist industry is always a mixed blessing - for all that it gives it also takes away something of great value, some essence of what human societies should be. Iceland is in great danger of losing something it won't be able to get back.

It's cold: during June the weather was mostly dry and mostly sunny but a cold north wind kept the temperature between 2 and 10 for most of the month - a British winter with leaves.

The campervan is a mixed blessing. It gives you great freedom and a level of comfort, but I found it isolated me from other people and led me to do a lot more driving than I intended. There were places where, with hindsight, I should have stayed put and waited for the weather to change - something fairly reliable in Iceland. The temptation is to use a cold wet day to drive on to the next destination. I am though still fascinated by the challenge of living in a small mobile space so will continue to improve the van. Would I do another conversion? If it could earn me some money then yes.

It seems that everywhere you find greenery in Iceland there are birds nesting, and not just any old birds, but the most elegant and charismatic birds, the waders, wildfowl and seabirds. It's a visual and aural feast and a delight to photograph.

The landscape is breath-taking, and the light a photographer's dream.

The people: With two notable exceptions, I met only those who were working in the tourist and service industries. They were almost all young and always polite, speaking excellent English with mid-Atlantic accents, but too many were unsmiling. I did not often feel welcome as a person. The exceptions were Imgimar Garthanson, the nice old hippie with the long grey beard at Reykir, and Runar, the camp site manager at Seidisfjordur with the Nottingham accent, and also with a long beard! (Beards - what is it with beards now? I hardly saw a smooth cheek on a man.) I had great difficulty understanding Imgimar, but still managed some sort of friendly relationship.

So this I suppose is the big learn: a deaf man in a camper is not, without huge effort, going to forge relationships with other people. As a handicapped communicator I had largely failed.

The Faroes of course are different in several ways.

• Tourism is a minor factor, so their society has not been distorted by it in the way that Iceland's has.
• There are no lava plains or geothermal vents so the landscape is green and mountainous - sheep country like Wales.
• The summers are even cooler than Iceland - average high in the summer is 11 compared to Iceland's 13.
• The bird and animal life is poorer with fewer species and all of them available  in Iceland.

Much as I liked the place, for as long as my focus is on photographing birds I am unlikely to re-visit.

So would I visit Iceland again? Yes, but not by sea! I would focus closely on the wildlife I wanted to experience and pay a local expert to get me to the right places. I would fly and either use buses, or hire a 4x4 and stay in hostels. A two-week stay would be plenty unless I was with a family or in  some other social situation with people I could hear and communicate with.

So here I am at home and back into my old routines, the future an open book. I've enjoyed writing this weblog and all the comments I've had, so I will probably start a new one soon.

If you have been, thank you for reading.

Home again

It felt good arriving in Denmark in warm sun. Now all I had to do was drive 1000 miles and I would be home.

I won't bore you with all the details. It was an ordeal. The motorways round Hamburg are being doubled in width and all the traffic is restricted to narrow lanes for mile after mile. Despite this we all drove at normal speed - completely hair-raising. I stayed the night at a campsite just south of the city, hoping to do the last 750 kilometers to Calais in one day.

I didn't make it. Desperate to stop driving I drove round in circles in a seaside resort to the north of Ostend until by chance I found a campsite. At 5:30 next morning I was away and reached Calais in time to find out that the reservation I had made for the Shuttle was for Folkstone to Calais. They wouldn't change it so I had to go on the ferry - wished I'd booked the ferry in the first place. They are amazingly quick and efficient - many years of practise I suppose.

I still had to get from Dover to Cilycwm, and get used to driving on the left again. I drove from warm sun in Kent to the familiar cool cloud in Wales, and I was glad. Cool Cilycwm was wonderful. I was home.

Angry, uncomfortable and bored.

26 June 2017

The Norrona en route to Denmark.

I'm pissed off, angry, disgruntled, fed up, bored, lonely, homesick and tired of all these foreigners.

It shouldn't be like this because the morning started well. I woke late feeling refreshed and went for a shower. I undress and begin to run the shower, but there is no shower head - just a single jet of water. I get partially dressed again and move to the other one. It has a shower head but the heat control is broken and even after leaving it to run long enough to get my feet wet, I can't get it warm enough. Dry feet, put shoes, pants and t shirt on and stamp up and down the corridors looking for another male shower - Ah, there's one, thank goodness. It's locked. There is not a single male shower available on the couchette deck.

Sod it. I wash as best I can and decide to blow £16 on the full breakfast buffet. An hour later I'm cursing myself for having eaten too much. Greedy pig. I even saved a Danish pastry to eat later.

Ah well, I'll go and enjoy the sunshine on deck. It's a bright sunny morning with a stiff breeze and the gannets and fulmars are gliding along-side the ship, coasting above the white tops with effortless grace, ever in search of a meal. The Great Skuas too are doing the same sort of thing, but they are bulky and brown and lacking in grace. I'm looking at a string of islands and we are passing close enough to see details - smooth green on the tops and black cliffs cut into jagged shapes. It's the Shetland Islands and they're British!

What? How could I possibly feel homesickness at the sight of a place I've never been to and know little about.  It's an even stranger reaction from someone who would like to see the now Disunited Kingdom broken up. I don't wave a flag for the British state, but when someone asks me what my country is I say "Britain". I can't say "Wales" because Wales isn't a country and even if it were, part of me has to remain English.

When I've had enough of the cold wind I sit down to check on the email on my phone. I bought £20 worth of data last night - 20 megabites. I've checked a few emails, read a couple of news articles and I get a message saying "You've used all your data, but don't worry you can buy an add-on." How can I possibly have used all the data? Somehow I'm being ripped off, but the wifi here is so slow and expensive that I have no means of finding out what's happening. I have a contract for 500 megabites of data per month and in both the last months it ran out on the first day. Could it be "background use?" I go through the phone turning off all the "bloatware" I can find. What is all this crap and why is it legal? It's an Android phone so I'm being ripped off by one of two massively wealthy organisations: Google or the unpronounceable EE. They will probably tell me it's my fault.

It's 12:30 Faroes time, which is also GMT. Normally I would be hungry now and ready for a frugal lunch, but I don't feel at all hungry after my late breakfast. Unfortunately my lunch is already paid for, and the set lunch is a dreary meat and 2 veg type of things which I wouldn't fancy anyway. Perhaps I can get it credited to the evening meal. The supper would still cost an arm, but I might save the leg.

Done. Full marks to the young staff here. A couple of toes of the saved leg go on coffee 39DKK - that's £4.60. Is it a total rip-off or the result of our Brexit-devalued currency.

Bah Humbug!

A Strange Life

24 June 2017

How strange to be sitting here in a car park on the edge of a fjord. It's gloomy and cold with rain dotting the water; the mist half concealing the mountains that go straight up from the water's edge in geological strata, each one divided by a band of grass  until they taper to a peak now lost in cloud.

This is - and I have to look at the map to find out - Fuglafjordur - Bird Fjord, though the only birds are a few gulls, and was that a Great Skua? It's not cold but I have a fan heater going to bring my 8 square metres of living space up to normal house temperature. The fan heater is courtesy of the hook-up electricity supply here which nobody monitors. It comes with the price of camping, but  it's Saturday night and the information office closed at mid-day so there's nobody to pay. There are supposed to be toilets and showers and wifi in the Culture House - that's the building with arty murals on it just over there. But it's Saturday evening and the Culture House is locked up, with a dark, dead look which does not bode well for Culture on Saturday nights in this otherwise lively looking town.

There was another van here with an F plate but they've unplugged and gone. I feel a twinge of discomfort about this. Do they know something I don't? I keep checking my travel details to make sure I've got the date right. The thought of missing the ferry and spending another week here fills me with dread - not that in other circumstances I wouldn't love to spend a week here, but the extra expense and another week away from home would be hard to take. I've even calculated the hours it would take for the ship to get to Hirtsals, turn round and get back here, and there is no way they could do it by tonight, so it has to be tomorrow night. I still don’t understand why they are doing this double trip though.

There were perhaps 30 or 40 vehicles which left the ship in Torshavn, and all of them have foreign plates so they are not hard to recognise. Most of them are German and most of the Germans seem to be of late middle age, the men with grey beards and the women - well, they are European women of a certain age. I'm sure they are all good people but I don't feel much in common with them. The others are a mixture of French, Belgian and surprisingly at least 3 or 4 other Brits.

I met one of the couples last night at the campsite in Vestmanna. The man I'd identified earlier walking round the decks of the Narrona with a confident stride, short grey beard and long grey hair and a sort of smock shirt - I had him down as a German art teacher or academic of some sort. It turns out he and his very pleasant wife live near Lampeter!

Earlier today I stopped at a place called Vid Air. It's not much to look at but it's all that remains of the last whaling station in Iceland, and there are only two others like it in the world, one in Australia and one in South Georgia. It's an appropriately grim looking place. They plan to make it into a museum but only the flensing deck has been started:

Now, it's 20:45 and I feel I should go for a walk before sealing myself in here. It's gloomy out and will probably stay gloomy but light for the next 8 hours or so, but its not raining so I'll give it a go.

Half an hour later:

Whoo - fierce wind blowing and I wished I'd put an extra layer on when I got down to the industrial area - yes, a fully fledged industrial area in a place barely large enough to be called a town. It's not light industry either this is Big Fish, with four big trawlers parked up and one just leaving. According to the guide book 20% of the country's exports pass through here.

There's a fish filleting factory, an oil depot, a shipyard and a net making factory.  In fact one of the things that impresses me most about what I've seen of the Faroes is that all these pretty fjord-side villages are each centres of different industries.  The houses are painted in all these nice colours out of pride, not to attract tourists. I detect an important difference between Iceland and the Faroes. Here people smile at you and seem pleased to see you, and that's it. In Iceland too many of the front line staff don't smile. For them it seems to be business. Here perhaps it's more pleasure or pride in their unknown country. To be fair, Iceland has enjoyed or suffered a huge upsurge in tourism in the last few years and there are probably not enough people trained in how to deal with strangers. This place barely features on the tourist trail. It's less exciting than Iceland but kinder. Duller but nicer.

The rain did stop.

- for a while anyway.

I got plugged in, set the voltometer going in the right direction, (charging the batteries for the un-techies) got the wifi sorted, found a big supermarket tucked out of site in the harbour, found a cashpoint at the other end of town, went back to the supermarket to get some change and then got my washing in the coin operated machine. Phew.

In the process I had a very pleasant walk round town and have come to a few tentative conclusions about this strange little country:

It's rich - everywhere there are smart buildings, good tarmac roads, new tunnels.

It's egalitarian - no big posh houses

It's tasteful - Farrow and Ball eat your heart out, these are very trendy colours:

It has plenty of hydro - the two power plants in this little town supply the whole of the main island.

It has a healthy fish farming industry - no lice or pollution here.(In the distance)

I like it.

Back to the Faroes - for 3 days

It began bad and steadily got worse.

The ship was supposed to dock at Torshavn in the Faroes at 3:00, and we were asked to leave our "cabins" at 2. I set an alarm, and woke at the time it sounded, so not sure which came first. I quickly packed everything up and headed to the green stairs where the door to the car deck was - nobody there. I couldn't open the door so waited a while and then sent back up a deck or two where I met a crewman who said it had been delayed and wouldn't dock until 4:00 Evidently there had been an announcement on the tannoy none of which I could understand.

I was tired and irritable and the wait seemed interminable. To really shove it in our faces, those of us waiting at 4:00 on the green staircase were eventually told to move to a red staircase because the doors wouldn't open.

Finally I drove out to pouring rain - Welsh type rain which just goes on and on: everything dark and gloomy. I stopped and made breakfast with what I had left. That improved things for a while, but I had no internet, no google maps to guide me and found myself driving over one stretch of road three times.

I needed electricity to charge the leisure batteries - with what amounted to negative sunshine I wasn't going to get any power from the solar charger. I also needed food and wifi to buy more data for the phone. I tried the first town I came to  - actually more of a village called Kollafjordur but no campsite and no shop - so went on to the main town on the main island: Vestmanna, and here I am in a dreary looking campsite but with full facilities and a nice Swiss girl called Dagmar who I can barely hear but who is very patient with me.

She is travelling by bus and tent camping for 6 weeks.

I think we are both waiting for the rain to stop, which looks at least possible now. Perhaps it's not real Welsh rain but more like the Icelandic variety which tends to move on.

The End of the Fjord

This is Runar who seems to the boss man at the campsite in Seidisfjordur:

I thought he was a Yorkshireman, but it turns out he is Icelandic but spent a lot of time in Nottingham. Anyway he was very helpful in sorting out some wifi for me and was one of the many reasons I enjoyed the last two nights in this charming little town. It has a real Scandinavian feel to it - a lot of Iceland settlements look and feel more like US or Australian frontier towns. Here are some pics.

I have lots more but I'm now on board the ship heading for the Faroes and the wifi here, like everything else on the ship, is expensive and unbelievably slow, so I'll have to sign off until a better connection is available.

Magma - the power and the stink

With two days left in Iceland I had one final stab at getting a decent picture of a Gyr Falcon. I took all the gear including tripod and extender lens and, for the second time took the long route round the lava crags of Dimmuborgir, where my Dutch birder friends had seen one, and the spectacular pale morph at that. Last time it was cold and wet, this time I arrived well before anyone else and it was warm and dry. If you've ever walked in Scottish or Welsh forests in June you'll know what to expect. I was prepared - I had extra strong insect repellent - so strong it melted the plastic on my hearing aid!

The equivalent to our midges here are little flies. They don't bite but they do everything they can to get in hair, eyes, mouth, ears and nose. I could keep them at bay as long as I was walking, but stopping was inadvisable.

The only birds I saw were the omnipresent redwings, but I'd bought the tripod so I set it up for a self-portrait. I just about managed it before being overcome with flies:

So, that was it. I'd got plenty of bird, landscape and animal pictures I was well pleased with even if the big ones were missing. I decided to do some touristy things, and there are several tourist hot-spots round Myvatn. I went for the site of the last irruptions in the eighties.

It's a grim landscape with everywhere plumes of steam and the stink of sulphur. I realise now that whenever I'd worried about a fleeting smell of gas, or held my nose in the shower because of the drain smell, it was the gas from the hot vents I was smelling.

The most interesting thing here was the geothermal power station, but the crater was pretty good.

I find it astonishing that for so many people the idea of a holiday in a place like this is driving round a pre-determined circuit stopping everywhere flagged up as a "sight". You see the sight, take a few pictures, get back in the car or camper and then drive on to the next one. Half a day of it was enough for me and it felt great coming over a high mountain pass and down into the steep fjord where the ship dock - Seidisfjordur.

What the Duck?

If the thought of yet more pictures of birds makes  your eyelids droop, shoulders drop and your mouth gape, you may skip this section, although you might want to read the first bit:

Two days ago I came back to a place I had fled from 2 weeks earlier: Myvatn, one of the most trumpeted destinations on the tourist circle and one of the best places for birds. Though I've been doing my best to avoid the former, the demands of the latter won. I even went back to the same campsite - the one where, as soon as you  have found a pitch, Mr. Smarmy creeps  up smiling and asking: 

"Please to move your car a leetle bit this way so other car can get in here." It's no good me saying it's not a car. For some reason in Iceland all vehicles are cars. The business plan here is to cram as many tents, vans and cars in as possible, and since people continue to arrive up to 11pm, by the time I shut up shop the place is dangerously overcrowded.

However it is cheap because they offer a euro price of 10 as opposed to 1200kr - a difference of £5! It also has some stunning views over the lake.

 

This was at 10:30pm.

And this at 7 the next day. I'm here mainly for the ducks. There are several I have not yet identified, although the Most Important Duck in Iceland I have already found - Barrows Goldeneye, the only bird endemic to Iceland:

Getting portrait pictures of the roster is important, but even more important to me is getting pictures which tell a story, like this one where mother Widgeon is doing a trawl of the tents before the camper wake up.

The other big beasts in the Iceland duck world are these, all of which I've never seen before

Long Tailed Duck

Harlequin Duck (Believe me the drakes are spectacular but all seemed to have done a bunk - probably moulting.)

Common Scoter (by no means common)

Scaup

Add to these the commonest duck in Iceland which play the role of Mallards in Britain, but at home can only normally be seen in Scotland even though for most of my youth we slept under  quilts called "eiderdowns".

Reykir - Can this be real?

17 June 2017

Wherever you go in Iceland you are in a film set with lighting technicians who've read too much Tolkien, or fancy themselves as Romantic poets.

 Without realising it in time to change it, I'd set myself the daunting task of driving 250k this morning, at least half of which was gravel roads, and to make it worse, every time I drove round a bend those damn stage hands  had set up yet another fantastic backdrop which had to be photographed.  Of course it's all an illusion. Nothing in nature could be this picturesque surely?

After many stops I finally got to my destination. The sun was shining but the rain machine was still at work artfully drifting showers across the sea.

The last few days have been difficult so I'm going back to one of the best places I visited on my trek round the north - Reykir, or Grettislaug. The first name refers to the small collection of buildings clustered on a promontory at the end of a 10k dirt road. The second, Grettir's pool, is where, some 1100  years ago, the saga hero Grettir landed after swimming naked across 10 kilometers or so of freezing sea. Fortunately for him there was a hot spring just at that point, and it's still there, still providing water at a constant 40 degrees. It's been tidied up a little. There is an arrangement of driftwood logs which provides some cover for changing and there are handrails to help you in. Otherwise little has changed. Grettir would have recognised the two little turf houses - the basic design stayed the same until the late 19th C.  

What he would have made of the view, let alone the girls in bikinis, I don't know. Perhaps saga heroes were  blasé about such things. If you've spent most of  your summers on Viking raids round Europe and North America you've probably been there and got the tunic.

Here is the modern saga hero, who wouldn't dream of even sticking his toe into the sea, but bravely endures the heat for the camera:

22:45

It seems to be a special holiday today and I was a bit worried that it might be crowded, but not at all. As usual on the Iceland tourist circle a lot of campers don't turn up until late in the evening. A  huge expedition truck turned up an hour ago, full of middle aged people from I think the Czech Republic. They set up identical tents in a row in a well drilled routine. I saw the same group in Reykjavik.

Here are a few more pictures of the surroundings:

  

Why we love a challenge

14 June 2017

Look at this -

I'm feeling depressed. It's raining. There is no wildlife to photograph. All the pictures I took at the local museum are blurred, the internet connection in the van is crap, my photo programme Lightroom has crashed, and now the heating won't work, and my laptop won't charge. I check the reading on the voltometer - 10.2 volts. I've been wondering how low it could go before things stopped working. Now I know. It has to be over 11. With no sun today I've had nothing going in.

So that was the last straw?

No, actually that saved the evening from misery. I had to find a solution and the obvious one was to plug into the hook-up power on the camp site. A few minutes later everything looked different. The mains charger was working, the volts were going up steadily and so was my mood. There didn't seem to be any monitoring on which pitch was using which socket - there are no set pitches in Iceland camp sites. I was tempted to say nothing, but decided that I would  have to pay or I would feel bad. The camping here is charged per person regardless of what you are sleeping in, so it's cheap. The electricity is usually the same price, so not cheap, but here I'm happy to pay.

Big problem: problem solved. That's why we love a challenge. 

A hard think

15 June 2017

Four weeks on the road. This morning, after a good nights sleep, and at a kinder temperature outside, I feel positive about my last week in Iceland, but yesterday I did some hard thinking:

14 June 2017

Why did I so eagerly embrace the idea of an overland trip to Iceland?

Did I want to make a stand against the encroachment of old age?

I certainly wanted to set myself a challenge, and as I saw it when I booked the ferry, there were several elements to the challenge:

I wanted to get to the places where the exciting birds are and to photograph them.

I wanted to do the trip alone to see how self-sufficient I really was.

I wanted to put myself into situations where I would have to communicate despite the deafness.

The vehicle would be my refuge from which I could undertake these tasks.

In the first version of the plan, the old demountable camper on the 4x4 truck would get me to those places, but it was just too uncomfortable to drive.

 I did look at flying and hiring which is the usual way people do this, but I liked the challenge of the sea voyage and getting to experience the Faroes, and in fact like for like, the sea route was cheaper. So with the truck and camper I would get right out into the wild places where you had to ford rivers and drive over rough lava plains. I would spend days finding a gyr falcon nest and photographing the birds.

When I decided that I the demountable had to go, the plan changed. I fitted winter tyres to the van to maximise its capabilities on rough terrain, and decided that where it could no longer go I would walk. I would also use the van as a hide. Part of each day would be spent driving and the rest walking or stalking. I got in training, doing long arduous walks over the local mountain.

Then the conversion task took over and I had no time for anything else, though I did keep up an exercise programme to keep my basic fitness going. Towards the end the goal had narrowed to the one essential - simply getting there: getting the van finished enough to depart on time. 

So how has it worked out now that I've been away for 4 weeks? On balance worse than I'd hoped. My first challenges were the replacement air intake, the fire and the gas, and I managed those well, BUT

I've spent most of my time driving, a lot of it on rough gravel roads. It's uncomfortable and I've lost confidence in the van. I'm afraid there is an exhaust leak and worried that the gear box will break down.

 I've done very few walks, simply because I couldn't identify destinations worth walking to. For the most part the best birds were close to the van, so I have at least used it as a hide quite successfully.

On the whole communication has been bad. The last time I did a solo trip abroad was to Spain and I managed OK then, but that was, I think, 7 years ago and my hearing has got worse.  Too often I have spoken to someone and been confronted with a harsh jabber of high pitched noise, or too little sound to make sense of. I have succeeded in holding conversations quite often, but mostly somewhat one-sided, and only once have I felt able to invite people for a drink and a chat. The Icelanders one comes across (who are mainly those servicing the tourist industry) are polite and helpful, but quite often do not smile. I did not feel that they had any interest in me as a person.

Two things have kept me sane: success with the photography - I've got a fair few pictures I'm proud of, and this blog. One thing I thought about doing but never got round to was to order a sticker for the van advertising "Wales to Iceland by Sea". I should also have had some cards printed which I could give to people. I cherish the contact with friends and family which the blog has given me, but would be even more satisfied if I could reach out to strangers as well. Now the responses to the blog seem to be drying up.

So I must admit to feeling lonely and homesick.

Romantic ideas versus reality

13 June 2017

Amongst other romantic notions I had about Iceland was the one about treading in the footsteps of the great heroes from the sagas - in particular those from Njals Saga. All those hours I spent with maps and guidebooks working out an itinerary! In this last week, having experienced the wilds of the far north west, I would come south to the site of the first  parliament: Thingfellir.

At this point, the plan was that I would spend a couple of days doing urban things in Reykjavik and meeting one or more of my one time musician friends from Steintriggur.Then I would go on a pilgrimage to the country to the west of the city where the events of the saga took place. Finally I would make my way across the interior by the only route open to 2 wheel drive vehicles, visit the bird mecca of Myvatn and make my way back to the ferry in the east.

Thingvellir was wonderful,(See previous post) but the tourist honeypot of the Great Geysir was only 10 kilometres further east, so I decided to go there early in the morning before the crowds arrived. I'm glad I did.

 It erupts about every 6 minutes, so you need to wait, camera paused to catch the first bulge and the roar as boiling water shoots into the air.

Just before I left Geysir, and just as the first of the buses was arriving, I asked one of the girls at a till/information point if I would be able to drive route 36 across the highlands with a 2x4. She risked a smile:

"It's closed and no."

So that was that; total rethink required. to do that you need one of these:

There were two evocative names on the map: Bergthorsvoll, the site of Njal's farm where he and Bergthora were burnt, and Hliderendi where Gunnar lived. The second was on the road which led to all sorts of wonderful places eulogised in the guide books, but only available to 4x4s. The first, however,  was near the coast and I pictured rolling grassland and scrub with the sea as a backdrop. I'd seen lots of places like that in the north after all. What I'd overlooked was that the reason this area was prised by the early settlers was that it was a huge fertile plain with river access. They were subsistence farmers, and this is farm land plain and simple: flat dull fields interspersed with rows of white plastic bales, ugly houses surrounded by typical mechanical debris, power lines and horrible dusty gravel roads.  Bergthorsvoll is now a 70s style guest house, and I was so tired of driving by then that I even asked how much it was - £65 for a single room, which is OK for Iceland, but though they were nice people, communication was terrible - my hearing shot to pieces by the long dusty drive.  I still dithered, but then I thought: what would I eat, and what would I do? There was nowhere to walk, and I probably wouldn't be able to talk to them.

The campsite I had seen on the map a bit further along the coast was closed so I had no option but to go back to the town I had left with some relief a few hours earlier.

I've had a reasonable meal with two good glasses of Freeman's Bay, the site was only 750 for pensioners (£6), and tomorrow I go to the city. Even though more than half of the population live there, it's still smaller than Bristol. I don't know what to expect.

A fantastic end to a great day

So, the ventlator finally blew off and I had to climb up on the roof and tape a piece of plastic bag over the gaping hole.

So, I  fell the last metre or so when scrambling off the roof - the ground was soft.

So even though the neighbouring Swiss family with the demountable don't want to chat . . .

None of this could dent my elation. Why?

Because it's warm and sunny - yes, and…

I had a great afternoon going round the "Settlement Era Museum";  that too, and

Because I'm in a magical place, the Thingfellir, the site of the world's first parliament, the Allthing, and the world's first festival; yes, all that but -

The big one was this:

This is what this wildlife photography thing is all about. I had a glorious cycle ride round the Thingfellir site. It was 9 pm and the sun, though strong, was low enough to give highlights and shadows. As I rode back to the campsite I saw an arctic fox about to cross the road in front of me. Seeing this strange object coming towards him he scooted back into the scrub, but I guessed he might wait for the coast to be clear and have another go. I parked the bike in the ditch and climbed a few steps up to where I could clearly see the bit of road he had used. I only had to wait a few minutes and I saw a shadow approaching. Focus on the spot, full zoom - 400mm, shutter speed 1/ 320, f 5.6, ISO 160. click click. He could clearly see me but I wasn't moving and was partially hidden so he began to move over the road.Click click click.

Again he stopped and stared at me before slinking away. 

I want to go home!

I've had two disappointing days driving for too long in sunshine which should be used for other things. I drove all round a peninsula supposed to be home to several Gyr Falcons and saw nothing but the mockingly similar shapes of fulmars circling the high cliffs which, all round Vatnsnes  slope steeply to a few fields with the occasional scruffy farm, and then the sea.  It seems Icelandic farmers, like many British ones have different ideas about what constitutes natural beauty. 

I stayed last night at a pretty town called Hvamstangi, and when I left at around 7am the wind had dropped and I felt hopeful. It didn't last.

I'm sick of being so cold!  Today began at 3 degrees and reached the a scorching 4 at mid day. Always and everywhere is this horrible north wind. I'm worried about the van too - I'm smelling exhaust fumes, and I'm not sure the gears are going to last. Fifths is beyond retrieval and it's getting difficult to get into 6th. New gearbox? Another thousand pound bill? I've made a silk purse out of a sows ear and now the sow is complaining.

I'm in the Westfjords looking for -  and of course not finding - eagles - white tailed sea eagles that is. There is a grandly named "White Tailed Sea Eagle Centre" just down the road, so I called in to ask about places I could see them. Three ladies of more than a certain age were singing into microphones in a sort of café cum gift shop. I asked about eagles and another lady of the same ilk started to tell me something in what I suppose was English but didn't sound like it. I explained about the deafness and the noise (er, music) and we stood outside.

"You see here - all around." She gestured to the glorious view of scattered islands of black lava and the backdrop of mountains.

"Are you allowed to tell me where the nest sites are?" She took me indoors and pointed to a more detailed map, indicating just the areas the guide book had described. I asked about the singing - clearly a rehearsal for something, but I couldn't understand a word of what she replied.

"Good - have fun!" I said, hoping to cover all bases. I could imagine the guide book rep coming here and treasuring this "authentic" information. The area the lady had waved her hand over was about the size of West Wales, but divided into fingers with the road looping round each one. I went to find somewhere I could park up and scan the area with the telescope. The views are breath-taking, but so is the wind. How do Icelanders breathe? And, like most of the rural areas of north Iceland it is heaving with birds - redshanks everywhere, snipe at every step, godwits, ringed plovers, arctic terns, whimbrels, redwings, all of them in great abundance and all it seems nesting nearby. It's wonderful and I can still get great pleasure from watching them and catching their quirks on camera.

Feeling low, I drove along endless dirt tracks to a place I guessed would be good to sit and watch for any passing eagles. I had the small reward of seeing a redshank chick running around, but it ran off before I could get a picture. Earlier I had seen a merlin briefly, but again not for long enough - oh and a Red Throated Diver, but too far away. Still I got some nice pictures of the striking Black Guillemot.

19:00 I'm now in a grotty camp site at Rejkholar, with disgusting toilets and no shower but a rather grand swimming pool. With any luck I'll be away before they arrive asking for money. Now I'm going to get all the cold weather gear on and go for a walk. The sun is out and likely to stay out until I go to bed and it looks like good walking country: 

20:30 Still bitterly cold but I'm happy again. Within a short walk - but still long enough to freeze my hands - I was surrounded by calling redshank, godwits, golden plover and whimbrel all looking spectacular in the low sun with the golden grass in front and the blue-black mountains behind them. At the end of a marked path is an unassuming looking pond. I approached slowly hoping to see a red-throated diver, and there indeed was one, and quite close, and then there was another one, and to cap it all several chicks, and then there were two more, again with chicks, and more and YET MORE. When they crane their necks to look at me they look rather sinister and serpentine, but relaxed they are simply beautiful. 

I think there were at least 6 families of these iconic birds of the north all in one small pond AND there were horned grebe and phalaropes and long tailed ducks. For a while I forgot my painful hands, snapping away until I could bear it no longer and turned back.

Ahead of me there was some smoke rising from the ground. Not smoke though, steam - a thermal spring, the water too hot to put my hand in so I picked up a rock, whitened with evaporated minerals, and warmed my hands with it. Bliss.