Iceland Day 5

---

A quiet day today: most people go on holiday to take R&R; we have R&R days within our holiday. Not that the holiday isn’t a holiday, but if you read our other blogs you will figure it out.



Today we checked out the local town Hella, population 810. Our transatlantic cousins may refer to this as a one horse town but as it is surrounded by horse farms a one horse town it definitely isn’t. What’s more, it is full of amenities: petrol station, supermarket, handicraft centre, other shops, hotels, restaurants and bars. We then moved on to Selfoss. One of our guidebooks describes it as “witlessly ugly”; this is rather cruel to the 6570 people that live there. Although it is described as a city, it is basically a town, it serves the local population, there is a lovely walk along the river and has a beautiful church. We went there to stock up on supplies for the days ahead, and to replace Meg’s hat which has been lost at some point as we have been getting in and out of the car. It is always interesting to see what is available in foreign supermarkets and this one did not disappoint: it had a wool section!



We then took the slow road back following the coast and generally exploring and we were lucky to discover the Urridafoss on the river Pjorsa. These are the most powerful falls in Iceland and for some reason they almost seemed better than Gullfoss to us, perhaps because they are not visited by coach loads of tourists and we came upon them unexpectedly. It seems a shame that if the plans for a hydroelectric plant go ahead these beautiful falls will all but disappear.



We rounded the day off with a lovely meal in Hella at Hellubio. Fantastic simple food, great service and the most reasonable price we have come across so far in Iceland.

---