Right is the new Left…

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Vicky stopped over at ours on Friday night so we could get up at 3:30am for Mark to drive us to Luton airport to check in at 5am. I got rather excited at seeing our Totternhoe Nature Reserve from the plane during take-off! A good tail wind meant we arrived at Keflavik International Airportjust after 8:30am. We met up with Chavaunne whose flight from America got in even earlier (she even saw the northern lights from her plane!). We picked up the hire car (Dacia Duster 4WD) & I got voted as first driver due to (a) having driven on the right before & (b) not being jetlagged! This meant I had to get us out of the airport then into the centre of Reykjavik & park in the car park by Hallgrímskirkja (the tallest church in Iceland at 74.5m). Whilst getting used to the car & lanes with busy traffic on the way I managed to kerb the car which set off the low tyre pressure warning - uhoh! We quickly headed to a garage & after some faffing worked out how to use the air machine. After toping that one back up we checked the others & found they were higher than the label stated so ended up taking ore air out of most of them! Luckily the tyres remained good for the rear of the trip. We had a quick look inside Hallgrímskirkja but didn’t go up the tower. We then headed down towards the old town & harbour stopping to grab some very tasty burgers on the way - tey even did vegan burgers!. We pottered around the town, saw the hillock Þúfan but didn’t go into any museums (except once to use their loo!). We also saw lots of ducks & other birds on & around the lake Tjörnin & Vicky started her bird species list for the trip…

I then drove us out of Reykjavik heading north on route 1 & through the tunnel at Hvalfjörđur before turning off onto the 54 and heading to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula with only a brief stop off at a view point on the way. At Stykkishólmur we stopped to buy food, including frozen pizza as our accommodation said “fully fitted kitchen”. Turns out that Air B’n’B doesn’t think an oven is needed to be a “fully fitted kitchen” (!) so we had chilli wraps instead. After supper we headed out to the harbour & up the basalt island Súgandisey saw the northern lights from the hill top! None of us attempted photos this night which in hindsight was a shame as the lights whilst not very bright were across a lot of the sky & we had a few nice waves of light. An American chap there was trying to film then too, but we never found out if he got it to work. We also got a few bonus shooting stars! Pretty great start to the week!

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Photos

Girls together!
(Photo by Chavaunne)

First view stop!
We stopped for a leg stretch & to take photos on the drive up from Reykjavíik.

Bleak lake
The landscape was rather barren & dramatic... & very few trees anywhere!

Gerald chilling out
Gerald is one of Mark's mega blocks figures who comes travelling with me when he can't.