The Road Trip
Of course I knew exactly what I was going to see. Half a dozen or more YouTube feeds had prepared me for the view, and beyond that quite a few of you had evidently been here too. And even by Iceland’s celebrity A list standards, this was a location that I knew was going to have my eyes springing from their sockets and bouncing about on the ground like table tennis balls. Arriving here in July as we did, most visitors were standing just to the left at the spot where the nearest puffin activity was taking place a few yards further away, which did at least mean that despite the numbers present, there wasn’t a jostle of togs trying to shoot the epic view in front of them.
By now, Lee and I had driven most of the 1,100 odd miles around the ring road in our rented bright yellow VW camper, to which you can add the Snaefellsnes detour. Great swathes of the north and east of the country had been bypassed on an eternally dreary and damp afternoon in our eagerness to get to the south coast and its collection of landscape jewels. Only the previous morning we’d waited in hope at Eystrahorn, over two hundred miles to the east, and then Vestrahorn before heading into the small town of Hofn for supplies. Both locations had remained elusive, making themselves completely invisible under grey shrouds and foiling our ambitions completely. From there we’d headed west to overnight beside the unworldly Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and take photographs among the chunks of ice washed back onto the black sands of Diamond Beach at midnight under an endless veil of soft rain. The following morning we continued west, to a place where we joined the crowds on the narrow footpaths above the canyon of Fjadrarglufur before arriving sometime later in the small metropolis of Vik, hungry, tired, excited, and brimming with aromas that made other humans maintain their distance. By now, we were in a condition that only two middle aged unchecked males can achieve after five days on the road, and made straight for the local swimming pool to shower and wallow in the warm water, contemplating the eminence of Reynisfjall in front of us. Later, rested, watered and decidedly less pungent, we wandered onto the beach to photograph the stacks from the east, before hiking up the mountain to see what we could see from the top. In fact we took a picture or two while we were up there as well. Talk about whistle stop adventures! Twenty-two hours of daylight certainly gives you the chance to take a lot of photos, that’s for sure.
Even after that the day’s activities still had one final outing lying in wait as we drove a few miles further west to stand on the clifftop at Dyrholaey from where we could gaze happily at the vista before us. That classic view, so often photographed was about to become the subject of yet another viewfinder or two. In the foreground stood the Shrek-like monolith of Arnardrangur, the white tide washing lazily across the sand and around its imposing circumference. At the other end of the long black strip of Reynisfjara were the outlandish and huge sea stacks of Reynisdrangar, they in turn dwarfed by the enormous flat shelf of land jutting out into the ocean that we’d climbed just a few hours earlier. With a time machine we might have seen ourselves a mile or two away, squinting back into the low sun. For a while we watched the puffins and planned a pit stop here for the following day with the long lenses. Everyone loves a puffin don’t they? You can see mine in this album if you feel moved to do so. No pressure, but our hero does have a beak full of sand eels; just saying.
And those two paragraphs pretty much encapsulate the experience of our first trip to Iceland three summers ago. Non stop driving interspersed with non stop photography and only a couple of visits to the pool complex at Vik and a strangely spontaneous whale watching trip out of the handsome harbour of Husavik to break the rhythm. In a single week we managed to come away with images from more than twenty locations, some of them successful missions, others abject failures. Add to this the album full of random phone snapshots from downtown Reykjavik to the subarctic northern bays of Akureyri and Husavik; from the remote sulphurous moonscape of Hverir in the northeast of nowhere to the random red chair by the roadside near Hofn. I often look back at those rapidly composed phone snaps and grin at the memories. It’s the way of things when you only have a week and there are so many things you daren’t miss. We had at least managed to visit every place on the itinerary we’d made and agreed upon, and found a couple of unexpected gems to add to it too.
And now, Iceland awaits our return visit. This time we have double the days available and rather fewer miles to cover. With four bases there will be opportunities to return to some favoured locations at least once or twice, and catch them in different moods. As before, a list of beauty spots has been drafted, some of them brand new, while others will come forward to greet us like old acquaintances. Beside the utter failures of Eystrahorn and Vestrahorn in the south east, there are places where justice wasn’t fully done as we rushed hither and thither across the barren yet bewildering landscape. Kirkjufell – what on earth was I up to there? Need to do better this time. And then there are places like this, where I was happy enough with the image I came away with, but I’m in no doubt that there are more compositions to be had both on and around this headland. Maybe we’ll even manage to drag ourselves out early enough to capture a sunrise here.
And do you know what? We might even get to see the aurora. Of course lots of non togs assume that's all we're going for, although in truth we'd barely considered it. But it's very much a possibility in September so the books tell us. I even know which website to check now. I’d better start practising some night time photography again then. Now then, focus manually on the distant lamppost………….
The Road Trip
Of course I knew exactly what I was going to see. Half a dozen or more YouTube feeds had prepared me for the view, and beyond that quite a few of you had evidently been here too. And even by Iceland’s celebrity A list standards, this was a location that I knew was going to have my eyes springing from their sockets and bouncing about on the ground like table tennis balls. Arriving here in July as we did, most visitors were standing just to the left at the spot where the nearest puffin activity was taking place a few yards further away, which did at least mean that despite the numbers present, there wasn’t a jostle of togs trying to shoot the epic view in front of them.
By now, Lee and I had driven most of the 1,100 odd miles around the ring road in our rented bright yellow VW camper, to which you can add the Snaefellsnes detour. Great swathes of the north and east of the country had been bypassed on an eternally dreary and damp afternoon in our eagerness to get to the south coast and its collection of landscape jewels. Only the previous morning we’d waited in hope at Eystrahorn, over two hundred miles to the east, and then Vestrahorn before heading into the small town of Hofn for supplies. Both locations had remained elusive, making themselves completely invisible under grey shrouds and foiling our ambitions completely. From there we’d headed west to overnight beside the unworldly Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and take photographs among the chunks of ice washed back onto the black sands of Diamond Beach at midnight under an endless veil of soft rain. The following morning we continued west, to a place where we joined the crowds on the narrow footpaths above the canyon of Fjadrarglufur before arriving sometime later in the small metropolis of Vik, hungry, tired, excited, and brimming with aromas that made other humans maintain their distance. By now, we were in a condition that only two middle aged unchecked males can achieve after five days on the road, and made straight for the local swimming pool to shower and wallow in the warm water, contemplating the eminence of Reynisfjall in front of us. Later, rested, watered and decidedly less pungent, we wandered onto the beach to photograph the stacks from the east, before hiking up the mountain to see what we could see from the top. In fact we took a picture or two while we were up there as well. Talk about whistle stop adventures! Twenty-two hours of daylight certainly gives you the chance to take a lot of photos, that’s for sure.
Even after that the day’s activities still had one final outing lying in wait as we drove a few miles further west to stand on the clifftop at Dyrholaey from where we could gaze happily at the vista before us. That classic view, so often photographed was about to become the subject of yet another viewfinder or two. In the foreground stood the Shrek-like monolith of Arnardrangur, the white tide washing lazily across the sand and around its imposing circumference. At the other end of the long black strip of Reynisfjara were the outlandish and huge sea stacks of Reynisdrangar, they in turn dwarfed by the enormous flat shelf of land jutting out into the ocean that we’d climbed just a few hours earlier. With a time machine we might have seen ourselves a mile or two away, squinting back into the low sun. For a while we watched the puffins and planned a pit stop here for the following day with the long lenses. Everyone loves a puffin don’t they? You can see mine in this album if you feel moved to do so. No pressure, but our hero does have a beak full of sand eels; just saying.
And those two paragraphs pretty much encapsulate the experience of our first trip to Iceland three summers ago. Non stop driving interspersed with non stop photography and only a couple of visits to the pool complex at Vik and a strangely spontaneous whale watching trip out of the handsome harbour of Husavik to break the rhythm. In a single week we managed to come away with images from more than twenty locations, some of them successful missions, others abject failures. Add to this the album full of random phone snapshots from downtown Reykjavik to the subarctic northern bays of Akureyri and Husavik; from the remote sulphurous moonscape of Hverir in the northeast of nowhere to the random red chair by the roadside near Hofn. I often look back at those rapidly composed phone snaps and grin at the memories. It’s the way of things when you only have a week and there are so many things you daren’t miss. We had at least managed to visit every place on the itinerary we’d made and agreed upon, and found a couple of unexpected gems to add to it too.
And now, Iceland awaits our return visit. This time we have double the days available and rather fewer miles to cover. With four bases there will be opportunities to return to some favoured locations at least once or twice, and catch them in different moods. As before, a list of beauty spots has been drafted, some of them brand new, while others will come forward to greet us like old acquaintances. Beside the utter failures of Eystrahorn and Vestrahorn in the south east, there are places where justice wasn’t fully done as we rushed hither and thither across the barren yet bewildering landscape. Kirkjufell – what on earth was I up to there? Need to do better this time. And then there are places like this, where I was happy enough with the image I came away with, but I’m in no doubt that there are more compositions to be had both on and around this headland. Maybe we’ll even manage to drag ourselves out early enough to capture a sunrise here.
And do you know what? We might even get to see the aurora. Of course lots of non togs assume that's all we're going for, although in truth we'd barely considered it. But it's very much a possibility in September so the books tell us. I even know which website to check now. I’d better start practising some night time photography again then. Now then, focus manually on the distant lamppost………….