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Published: August 15th 2018
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The trip from Helissandur to Flokalundur is roughly 300km by road. You can take a short cut across the water by taking a ferry from Stykkisholmur to Flokalundur. The difference in time between the two options is just 23 minutes but you do cut 200 kilometres of the trip. We decided to take the road. We didn't want to cross the water. We were here to travel across the country. We wanted to see that, not water.
Google Maps was insistent that we take the ferry from Stykkisholmur and went to some lengths, including subterfuge, to convince us but we overcame its directions. We were punished immediately for our transgression. The lovely bitumen was replaced by gravel, not bad gravel but gravel nonetheless, and it continued to just outside Budardalur. We did have the option of taking another gravel road around the lump that sticks out into Breithafjordur but another 90kms of gravel against 69km of bitumen? This time, we followed the bitumen.
This is country that few tours apparently come through. Tough for those on tours, not so bad for us. Tour buses would have problems with some of the roads but the prospect of meeting a tour
bus on some of the roads isn't attractive. Meeting any kind of vehicle on some of the roads wasn't attractive. One of you was going to be very close to the edge of, at times, a long drop. Everyone drove slowly and carefully.
The roads actually on the coast line are pretty easy. It is only when you go up, and then down, that life becomes exciting. In this part of the country, it seems, there often isn't a nice flat coastal plain on which to construct a road.
We camped at Flokalundur. The campsite is attached to the Flokalundur Hotel. You pay over at the shop attached to the hotel, where you can also buy 2.5% beer. That is not unusual. You can do so in most shops. For alcohol of any higher percentage you need to visit a Vinbudin - one of the government run liquor stores. At Flokalundur you can climb 300 metres to a hot spring. We didn't but we did wander about down the bottom for a time.
The wind came up that night for the first time since we had been in Iceland. It rocked us around a little during the
night. In the morning we had the opportunity to see how the rig we had rented would stand up to 8-12 metre/second winds. Not too badly as it turned out. It certainly affected the handling of our Isuzu 4WD with a 3.3m high box on the back but it wasn't too unwieldy. Some gusts made me pay attention and things did become a little more tense when we were on a high road, no shoulder to speak of and the wind was hitting us from the driver side. I suspect we will stop driving when it gets much above 15 m/s.
Our primary objective for the day was to see the puffins, and specifically the puffins said to be nesting on the cliffs of Latrabjarg. To get to these cliffs you head towards Patreksfjordur and about 20kms east of the town you cut across the peninsula to Latrabjarg, a trip of about 50km on gravel and, of course, 50km back.
The cliffs called Latrabjarg are 400m high and 12 kilometres long - think of Ireland's Cliffs of Moher on steroids. For most of the length of the cliffs there seem to be nesting birds or, more correctly, the
sites of nests of birds. Gulls, skua, guillemots and arctic terns amongst others nest here at appropriate times. Puffins are one of these. The cutest probably.
We talked to others puffin seekers who had talked to a lady who said there had been two puffins at the lighthouse the day before. We walked for a couple of hours along the cliff searching and found nothing. An apparently avid birdwatcher with a lens on his camera that would shame David Attenborough wandered about muttering that 'there should be millions, millions, where are they?'. We may have been there at the wrong time of the day, puffins may be better at hiding their nests while they are out fishing than we are at spotting them or there may just have been none there. We certainly didn't spot them so the great puffin search that has gone from Canada to Alaska and through Scotland continues unfulfilled.
After our puffin failure there was some concern expressed that we have had enough of these west fjords and their imaginary birds so, perhaps we could skip the following of the coastline and head over the ranges/ridges/mountains that run up the peninsulas between the fjords.
Actually, there aren't really that many options. It was over the top or go back. There were a few roads around the coast at times but not many. Over the top, though, turned out to be one of those very good decisions.
You climb grades of 10% or, at times, steeper for 5km - or sometimes more - up to where there is ice that seems to be permanent. Up to where you are on top of the world. It is bleak and beautiful. Waterfalls start here and you follow them down - a good deal more slowly than they do - to the flats below. Roads are all right. They are gravel, shoulders are optional, they can be quite skinny in places but there are bridges over the streams. You will meet other vehicles and you pay attention as you pass. One of you is likely to be watching very closely where the offside wheels are tracking and how close they are to the drop.
But while you are paying attention to the road you must also look around because this is a beautiful, wild, bleak and fantastic place to be and you really want to embed
Bird Cam
Installed on top of the cliffs at Latrabjarg - a surer way of seeing puffins, probably!! it in your memory. For 4 hours or so we travelled up and down, around and back up with seemingly each turn presenting a more spectacular vista.
We have travelled a bit and there are other roads that have been great. The road from Zabljak in Montenegro over the ranges to Sarajevo in Bosnia Herzogovina was special, as was the Beartooth Highway from Billings Montana to the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park in the USA, but this one from Bildudalur to Pingeyri is up there.
When we descended into Pingeyri, a picturesque fishing village, we decided to camp there rather than continue on to Isafjordur. The camping area was behind the swimming pool. The lady who took our money for the camp informed us with much pleasure that the government had just announced that a tunnel would be constructed to connect Pingeyri to Isafjordur and other places. What for us was beautiful and amazing was, for the locals, largely a nuisance. Your perspective changes when everyday needs are difficult to meet. It is still beautiful though and worth doing even if you have a tunnel alternative. Much like those gravel roads perhaps.
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Sarah
non-member comment
Amazing photos
Looks absolutely beautiful! Shame about the puffins though. Sneaky little things!