Whale hunt

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There’s something rather nice about lying in bed all wrapped up warm listening to the rain hammering on tent canvas, or in our case van roof, all night. That’s what we had last night. The only main problem is no loo in this van but I made Ian park right outside the loo block so a mad dash over isn’t too bad.

It’s not so nice to hear the rain hammering when you are about to get up. Loo dash is essential so it has to be done.

We had hoped to do a nice walk this morning then go to the swimming pool. But the weather is not nice. Black clouds overhead. We have a slow start and debate an alternative.

We have a slight break in the cloud and decide we will go whale watching. We return to old Akranes Lighthouse where we saw something a few days ago. Sadly today there us nothing.

We are making our way slowly back to Kefvalik so we take a detour to another area known for whale spotting. Ian has plotted it carefully on the sat nav and we find ourselves in the middle of an industrial area which is belching smog. We can see the sea but no sign of anything in it there either.

Our third location fir a possible sighting is in Reykjavik harbour. We decide to tackle the traffic again to try our luck.

We make our way to the lighthouse area - the path has been closed but we are nevertheless beside the ocean. Still nothing to see though.

Whale hunting abandoned, we return to the car park in the centre. We are going to do the sculpture walk which also takes in the modern concert hall which we missed yesterday.

The futuristic glass architecture of the Harpa building is impressive and we can see why it has won a number of architectural design awards. We are free to wander inside to fully appreciate its sparkling splendour.

We continue our walk to the Sun Voyager sculpture…it’s a shiny steel representation of a dream vessel by Jon Gunnar Arnason, not a Viking ship as people often think.

We’ve been lucky that the weather cleared up, but now dark clouds are threatening again. We decide to make tracks for our final campsite in Sandgerdi. We are just in time as the rain is with us again.

Although this is our last night, and we are just biding time before we have to return our van, we did think that Sandgeri looked like a nice little seaside town on the map. We take a stroll down to the harbour after dinner. Hmmm, this is no quaint Cornish village…more like another industrial estate!

OK, back to the van to dive under our nice warm quilts for one last night!

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