Connected
There's no denying that when you travel to Iceland, you're going to be seduced by the big ticket items on the list you'll inevitably draw up as you make your preparations. After all, why wouldn't you? Of course, you're going to visit Vestrahorn and Diamond Beach. An invasion of wild beasties wouldn't stop you stopping beside Kirkjufell or in the jam packed car park at Reynisfjara. Each of those locations and many many more besides are full of abundant charms that will have you salivating as you reach for the camera that's probably not nestling snugly in your bag if you're anything like us. In fact we'd devised a system, a laughable use of the word really, in that our cameras were laid out across the back seat of the hire car in preparation for sudden roadside for sudden possibilities.
Possibilities such as the moment when we were heading back from Hvalnes, our excited chatter full of the images we'd just collected on our morning visit to Eystrahorn, mixed in with the plans we'd made for a second adventure at Vestrahorn later in the day. Rather neatly, we'd found a cottage at a remote farm, where we were spending a few nights in the third chapter of four in the adventure, and it was situated halfway between the two celebrated mountain ranges that had so shyly eluded our attentions three years earlier. Over the three days of beetling back and forth between Eystrahorn in the east and Höfn in the west, we'd become quite familiar with the road. We knew how many of those faintly worrying single lane bridges there were from the cottage to each location, remembering which one had to be negotiated at a pedestrian thirty kilometres per hour. We'd even got used to the fact that the service road to our lodgings sat immediately after the big bend beyond the long narrow span across the tangled ribbon of waters that led to Brunnhorn - or Batman Mountain as so many people call it. We were almost feeling as if we could call ourselves locals by the time we spotted a convenient bit of verge on which to park the car here.
It was the electricity pylons that caught our eye as they so often do, stretching endlessly for hundreds of miles along the stunning south coast in a neat and tidy file that defies the landscape, putting the mark of humans into this empty wilderness, and connecting the inhabitants of the remote communities to the west, where most of the population live. As you drive around the country you can't help but notice their presence, simple yet functional and seemingly designed with the landscape photographer in mind. And in this they offer us something slightly different from the famous attractions that bring so many of us here in the first place. As you've already seen, and will continue to notice, we weren't at all coy about pulling as many images from the hotspots as we possibly could during our two weeks, but at the same time we always had an eye on the road, looking for the opportunities that might unexpectedly present themselves. A quick ten minute stop here, a brief pause there and occasionally we'd pull the more unfamiliar views out of the landscape. Although in a sense you are in fact looking at the mighty Vestrahorn - it's just that you're looking at it from the opposite side, with Batman sitting there on the end by the sea. More of him later. Sometimes, taking photos seems ridiculously easy, like stealing sweets from a baby. You can wander up and down along the boundary fence to the field you're looking at, slightly changing the perspective of that unending sequence of repeating shapes as they disappear into the hinterland. I didn't even bother with the tripod - now that is unusual. I usually feel naked without it, but it was entirely superfluous to all but the shakiest of hands.
Once again it was a landscape that seemed to beg to be committed to the collection in black and white. On a violently pink evening it might otherwise have been in colour, but we were elsewhere when that happened. More of that later too. And that's both the joy and the overwhelming distraction that Iceland delivers. Almost every single view between here and the big waterfalls on the far side of Vík begs you to stop and gaze, whether they're familiar or obscure. And one of those mysterious side roads will take you further into the magnificence, whether you head towards the stark and windswept coast or into the Tolkienesque interior. The magic will divert you and haunt you as you make your way across the landscape, wherever you go. All you need is a patch of ground to pull the car to one side without causing a pile up, and there's a good chance you'll find something unexpected. You just need to remember to keep your eye on the road as you go - which isn't always the easiest thing to do. After all, this was just an ordinary roadside stop in a very out of the ordinary country. No wonder the speed limit is so cautious, when the scenery is as spectacular as this.
Connected
There's no denying that when you travel to Iceland, you're going to be seduced by the big ticket items on the list you'll inevitably draw up as you make your preparations. After all, why wouldn't you? Of course, you're going to visit Vestrahorn and Diamond Beach. An invasion of wild beasties wouldn't stop you stopping beside Kirkjufell or in the jam packed car park at Reynisfjara. Each of those locations and many many more besides are full of abundant charms that will have you salivating as you reach for the camera that's probably not nestling snugly in your bag if you're anything like us. In fact we'd devised a system, a laughable use of the word really, in that our cameras were laid out across the back seat of the hire car in preparation for sudden roadside for sudden possibilities.
Possibilities such as the moment when we were heading back from Hvalnes, our excited chatter full of the images we'd just collected on our morning visit to Eystrahorn, mixed in with the plans we'd made for a second adventure at Vestrahorn later in the day. Rather neatly, we'd found a cottage at a remote farm, where we were spending a few nights in the third chapter of four in the adventure, and it was situated halfway between the two celebrated mountain ranges that had so shyly eluded our attentions three years earlier. Over the three days of beetling back and forth between Eystrahorn in the east and Höfn in the west, we'd become quite familiar with the road. We knew how many of those faintly worrying single lane bridges there were from the cottage to each location, remembering which one had to be negotiated at a pedestrian thirty kilometres per hour. We'd even got used to the fact that the service road to our lodgings sat immediately after the big bend beyond the long narrow span across the tangled ribbon of waters that led to Brunnhorn - or Batman Mountain as so many people call it. We were almost feeling as if we could call ourselves locals by the time we spotted a convenient bit of verge on which to park the car here.
It was the electricity pylons that caught our eye as they so often do, stretching endlessly for hundreds of miles along the stunning south coast in a neat and tidy file that defies the landscape, putting the mark of humans into this empty wilderness, and connecting the inhabitants of the remote communities to the west, where most of the population live. As you drive around the country you can't help but notice their presence, simple yet functional and seemingly designed with the landscape photographer in mind. And in this they offer us something slightly different from the famous attractions that bring so many of us here in the first place. As you've already seen, and will continue to notice, we weren't at all coy about pulling as many images from the hotspots as we possibly could during our two weeks, but at the same time we always had an eye on the road, looking for the opportunities that might unexpectedly present themselves. A quick ten minute stop here, a brief pause there and occasionally we'd pull the more unfamiliar views out of the landscape. Although in a sense you are in fact looking at the mighty Vestrahorn - it's just that you're looking at it from the opposite side, with Batman sitting there on the end by the sea. More of him later. Sometimes, taking photos seems ridiculously easy, like stealing sweets from a baby. You can wander up and down along the boundary fence to the field you're looking at, slightly changing the perspective of that unending sequence of repeating shapes as they disappear into the hinterland. I didn't even bother with the tripod - now that is unusual. I usually feel naked without it, but it was entirely superfluous to all but the shakiest of hands.
Once again it was a landscape that seemed to beg to be committed to the collection in black and white. On a violently pink evening it might otherwise have been in colour, but we were elsewhere when that happened. More of that later too. And that's both the joy and the overwhelming distraction that Iceland delivers. Almost every single view between here and the big waterfalls on the far side of Vík begs you to stop and gaze, whether they're familiar or obscure. And one of those mysterious side roads will take you further into the magnificence, whether you head towards the stark and windswept coast or into the Tolkienesque interior. The magic will divert you and haunt you as you make your way across the landscape, wherever you go. All you need is a patch of ground to pull the car to one side without causing a pile up, and there's a good chance you'll find something unexpected. You just need to remember to keep your eye on the road as you go - which isn't always the easiest thing to do. After all, this was just an ordinary roadside stop in a very out of the ordinary country. No wonder the speed limit is so cautious, when the scenery is as spectacular as this.