Blogs from Iceland, Europe - page 116

10:00 PM A strange thing happened last night. We were just cooking our tea, having finally got into the kitchen around 9.30, when a bearded bloke came up to me and said “Excuse me, are you from Wolverhampton?” I was slightly confused as to how he might know this, so I gave him a look that said “Yes. Explain” and started chatting to him. It turns out that he is a friend of a friend of mine called Dan who I have met a few times. The last time I saw him I don’t think he had the beard, or at least he was in the early stages of bushy growth, which I count as a reasonable excuse for not recognising him until he actually told me who he was. It’s strange how we can come ... read more

8:20 PM By the time the car had crossed the south coast’s flat plains, gradually moved in an upward direction and then back down a steep slope into Vik, it was starting to get dark. We quickly checked into the hostel, which was more like a family guesthouse on the hill, and went straight out for a walk into the town before the light completely failed. The others seemed a bit dubious of going out for a walk at first, mainly because the howling winds seemed to be threatening to rip the hostel away from its hillside residence, but I think we all silently agreed that if that did happen, it was probably best if we were elsewhere at the time. On the way down, we took the main path that we had driven up, crossed ... read more

We're in the driest part of the country, so it comes as no surprise to me that i go running early in the rain. It's a sort of whimpering, nagging drizzle, nothing like the extreme conditions of the South east, but still a little disappointing. We go to the excellent Blaa Kannan for coffee (looking through the daily Icelandic newspaper, Morgunbladid, I see Chelsea have beaten Manchester United on penalties in the Charity shield - that's not my great command of the Icelandic language shining through, but rather seeing John Terry and Frank Lampard with the shield makes it kind of obvious) have our store bought breakfast in our room and head off. Because it's such a novelty - not because we actually like these things much - we stop at the shopping center on the ... read more

9:30 AM The trip back down from the volcano was a particularly quick one, which was partly because it was steep and running seemed the only course of action, but mainly because Molly had told us the night before that there was a bar in town that had a big screen that played the football, convincing John that he could watch the Liverpool game this afternoon. After walking around the town for a while, however, it became clear that nowhere was open, and John would have to make do with text updates from his dad (they lost). Instead of watching the match, we decided to do something much more interesting, and promptly headed for the Natural History Museum. The museum’s odd opening hours or 3-5PM on a Sunday were perfect for us, and we had been ... read more

10:15 AM Heimaey was almost abandoned in 1973 after an unexpected eruption formed a brand new volcano, destroyed half the town and almost sealed up the harbour. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to come here in the first place - not only to see the result of a recent eruption but to see how the town had avoided near disaster. I also wanted to climb a volcano at some point, and it helped that the two on this island were nowhere near as big or challenging as Hekla and some of the others on the mainland. After we had dropped our supermarket supplies back at the hostel, we took a walk up a small, grassy trail towards the back end of the harbour. The grass soon gave way to great mossy rocks, ... read more