Day 11: The Calm After the Storm

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Day 11: 10th October 2009
9:10 AM

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of nothing. No howling winds that had battered us for the previous 30 hours or so, just a quiet calm. I’m not sure if it was the silence that woke me up, but it was the first thing I noticed.

I didn’t write a song in the end last night, but John did beat me at chess and we whiled the night away playing games, reading books and eating. It was quiet, but pleasant. This morning it is as still as when I woke up at whatever silly hour it was, and the stillness was also the first thing John and Lyndsey commented on when they got up. Losing a day shouldn’t be a major problem for us, we had planned to spend yesterday in Vik and walk along the coast towards the stacks, but we need to be back in Reykjavik tonight so we might have to miss out on that. This does mean that we will have to drive straight through from Hvoll to Reykjavik, broken about half way back with a pre-booked tour on the glacier, weather depending, but we get a steady drive throughout the day where we can stop off at various places, so it is not a major hardship. The mountains in the distance now have far less snow on them, presumably blown back onto the glacier behind. The pond looks like a pond again, and the waterfall is once more flowing freely. No sign of the ducks yet, but they generally waddle up to the front door of the hostel at around 9.30 waiting for people leaving the hostel to feed them, so I guess they won’t be far away.

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