Catastrophe and Exhilaration

31 May

Egilsstadir

If I get through a whole day without shouting STUPID MAN at myself, it's a good one. By those standards, or any other come to that,  today was terrible. But, it was also fantastically wonderful.

It began early: 5 am. I've just been through 3 time zones so my body clock has lost its way a bit. It would have been 6am Faroes time. I wrapped up, put on the gloves and cycled down to the lake shore. A small party of Long Tailed Ducks were mooching around a boathouse. This is a first for me, but more exciting was hearing, as I rode back, 2 pairs of snipe display calling above me: chacka chacka chacka. It's a sound I remember well from my twenties when we lived near a marsh in Wiltshire. Breeding snipe are rare now in Britain and the only ones I see in Wales are either in nature reserves or flying rapidly away from me, jinking from side to side.

It was a sound I would hear many times during the day for breeding snipe are everywhere in this part of Iceland.

I took some time to get the measure of Egilsstadur.

It's an outback frontier town, complete with airstrip, and decorated with feral lupins.  I rode round it on the bike, found a supermarket with proper vegetables, rode past the school where all the bikes were unlocked:

and finally set off for Borgafjordur Eystri. I hadn't got more than a mile along the road before I smelled something burning. Within seconds the cab filled with smoke. I leapt out opening the doors and releasing the bonnet catch. It wasn't the engine so it had to be the battery compartment which is under the cab. I then had to find a screwdriver to undo it and no sooner had I lifted the padded lid than flames burst out! This was a serious electrical fire, but I had a powder extinguisher a few feet away. It took precious seconds working out how to fire it, but once I pressed the lever the fire was snuffed immediately.

Phew. I knew what had caused it. I had connected the relay to charge the leisure batteries via a 100 watt fuse link, but couldn't find the actual fuse so put a nail in it for the time being to get the thing working. There was another fuse between it and the batteries so I wasn't too worried at the time. STUPID MAN! I pulled the remains apart and resigned myself to having no relay charger, at least until I got to Akureyri. If we get some sun the solar charger will do the job. Otherwise I'll have to pay for a 240 v hook up one night and use the mains charger.

Relieved it was not worse I carried on and it wasn't long before my spirits rose. This place is bird heaven. Much of it is rough heathland and there are no dogs. Golden plover, the Icelandic icon of Spring, are all over the place; Whooper swans keep popping up, a jack snipe dives into the ditch, and best of all, just by the road a male red-throated diver guarding his mate sitting on the nest!

That head down stance is to reduce her profile. She's not sure if I am a threat. He doesn't seem too bothered though.

In the gravel by the next pond pairs of Arctic Tern are nesting - and mating.

Where I stop for my lunch some wild ponies are tussling with each other. A field away are two dark long winged hawk-like birds, but they can't be hawks. Could they be skuas? They don't look like the dumpy bonxies aka Great Skua which are quite common across the North. Get the bird book - Ah that's it they're Arctic Skuas. Wheee!

I get to the coast and start on the winding gravel road which goes over a mountain before I can get to Borgafjordur. The wind gets stronger and cloud comes down. There's a rattling on the roof - the ventilator is loose. STUPID MAN. I knew it needed fixing, but thought it would be OK until I could find a ladder and get up on the roof. Now I'm trying to hold it on from underneath, with pliers in one hand while I look for some wire or string with the other hand - nothing. I'm stuck, and then it moves, twists and it's gone! There's a gaping hole in the roof and the rain is coming on.

Fortunately it hadn't gone far. I retrieved it, pulled the blind over the gap to help keep the rain out and drove on looking for a sheltered spot to do some repair work.

On the other side of the mountain it's much calmer. The rain has stopped and the sun comes out. I manage to haul myself up on the roof, put the ventilator back in position and, amazingly, manage to dismantle the handles which hold it on, re-fit them and screw the assembly back. It's poorly made, but if I'm careful not to open it while driving it should be OK. And the bird feast goes on - Grey lag geese in small groups flying round, Whimbrel and Curlew,Kittiwakes and Fulmar, just yards away,  in small colonies with everything below the nests covered in shit;

Puffins, though not as many as on Skomer;

lots of Eider drakes hanging around looking useless while their dull brown (but still subtly beautiful) females do all the nest work. Soon the males will give up any pretence at helping and go off to moult. That thrush-like bird is a Redwing in its breeding finery. We only see them looking duller in the winter. And there, just by the road, to round off an extraordinary day, is a male Black Tailed Godwit in full breeding fig - wonderful.

Most of the buildings in the hamlet are box like single story utilitarian structures, but often painted and in this frontier setting they have some charm: