Kirkjufell in the Marsh
A pained yelp rang out from somewhere just behind me as I crossed the airport road on our lengthy march towards the hire car office. Parking my bulging suitcase and setting the case of beer I’d just purchased from duty free on the verge, I looked around to see what was causing Lee, still on the opposite side to get excited. I’d wondered why he hadn’t found the plastic handle on his own twelve pack and balanced it in the space behind the towing handle on his suitcase instead, and now he was frantically scooping the four cans that hadn’t spread that far beyond his feet into the empty container. The other eight were rolling randomly over the road between us, most of them towards me. “Finders keepers” I reasoned as I started to pick up the nearest ones.
The thing is, unless you have hands the size of shovels, you really can’t hold eight loose cans of lager in them. The occupants of the approaching car were clearly enjoying the show – I could see enormous grins breaking out from the front seats as they stopped to watch my hapless attempts to gather all of the escapees in one big scoop. And it was only now I realised that three of the cans were no longer intact, as tiny jets of pure Icelandic lager hissed at me from pinhole sized punctures. Ten minutes later, at a little before 9am, I collected the keys to our hire car, my coat stinking of beer in a country that has extremely strict drink driving laws, and which only legalised the amber nectar just over thirty years ago. I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. We can live without alcohol (just), but with fourteen days and nights of adventure ahead of us, a cold and convivial beer after dinner each evening seemed suitably modest, and if you don’t stock up at the airport you’re going to have to visit the state run off licences and very possibly take out a bank loan before you set off too. We did have a beer with our loaded fries one evening in Vik, just so we could say we’d paid nine quid each for what was sligtly less than three quarters of a pint, but that was as far as it went.
And now, with me smelling like a brewery, we set course from Keflavik, passing the outskirts of Reykjavik in the direction of Snaefellsnes and our first base camp. We stopped at the services area at Borganes, the gateway to the peninsula, where we stocked up with provisions and coffee (and not beer). And even here, in an area not feted by togs, we were passing along the banks of fjords, flanked by ruggedly steep green slopes to make the eyes pop. Even our previous visit three years earlier hadn’t prepared me for how raw and untamed the landscape around us was. It was almost as if we were here for the first time ever, staring open mouthed at this other world that seemed impossibly distant from the one we knew at home.
Lee was driving when the family whatsapp buzzed on my phone. My daughter had shared a BBC news link. “Concerns about the health of Her Majesty. Royals rush to Balmoral,” it read. It didn’t sound good. Slightly distracted, we pushed on through the ever more imposing scenery, crossing the still southern side of the peninsula and climbing on to the windblown north. By the time we arrived it was 2pm, nearly thirty hours since I’d last got out of bed. “We’ll be too excited,” said Lee during the last planning meeting as we pondered the evening drive from Cornwall to Luton Airport and the 6am flight. “The adrenalin will keep us going.” Adrenalin and coffee did seem to be doing the trick in fact, and despite having managed no more than an hour of dozing on the plane, I was feeling ok. So after putting a couple of those cans of beer in the hostel’s fridge, we set off for Kirkjufell.
“The Queen has died.” The message from Ali as I stood in front of my very first composition of the adventure in the marshland to the west of Kirkjufell seemed frankly surreal. There’s always that strange sense of detachment from what’s going on at home when you’re boldly adventuring. All at once the news seemed both monumentally sad, yet a curious aside to the view in front of me. It didn’t seem real, nor would it do so until we were home two weeks later. While we were away, history was turning in our own country. I’m still calling the new king Prince Charles. Bet you are too.
Finally, our refusal to pay a thousand krona to use the new car park next to Kirkjufell led me to walk past the lake towards another marsh from a layby near Grundarfjordur, eventually arriving in this spot under a sky full of cigar shaped clouds that looked as if they’d arrived from the twilight zone. By now thirty-six hours had passed since I’d last slept, but the creative juices were still flowing as the light began to fail. The adrenalin and coffee cocktail had won the battle hands down as I congratulated myself on having a big open space alone, while fifty yards to the left of me a ton of togs vied for position at the famous waterfalls. A few focus stacks later it was time to call it a day and head back to the hostel for dinner. And a cold beer to say farewell to Her Majesty of course. I'm sure she'd have approved.
Kirkjufell in the Marsh
A pained yelp rang out from somewhere just behind me as I crossed the airport road on our lengthy march towards the hire car office. Parking my bulging suitcase and setting the case of beer I’d just purchased from duty free on the verge, I looked around to see what was causing Lee, still on the opposite side to get excited. I’d wondered why he hadn’t found the plastic handle on his own twelve pack and balanced it in the space behind the towing handle on his suitcase instead, and now he was frantically scooping the four cans that hadn’t spread that far beyond his feet into the empty container. The other eight were rolling randomly over the road between us, most of them towards me. “Finders keepers” I reasoned as I started to pick up the nearest ones.
The thing is, unless you have hands the size of shovels, you really can’t hold eight loose cans of lager in them. The occupants of the approaching car were clearly enjoying the show – I could see enormous grins breaking out from the front seats as they stopped to watch my hapless attempts to gather all of the escapees in one big scoop. And it was only now I realised that three of the cans were no longer intact, as tiny jets of pure Icelandic lager hissed at me from pinhole sized punctures. Ten minutes later, at a little before 9am, I collected the keys to our hire car, my coat stinking of beer in a country that has extremely strict drink driving laws, and which only legalised the amber nectar just over thirty years ago. I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. We can live without alcohol (just), but with fourteen days and nights of adventure ahead of us, a cold and convivial beer after dinner each evening seemed suitably modest, and if you don’t stock up at the airport you’re going to have to visit the state run off licences and very possibly take out a bank loan before you set off too. We did have a beer with our loaded fries one evening in Vik, just so we could say we’d paid nine quid each for what was sligtly less than three quarters of a pint, but that was as far as it went.
And now, with me smelling like a brewery, we set course from Keflavik, passing the outskirts of Reykjavik in the direction of Snaefellsnes and our first base camp. We stopped at the services area at Borganes, the gateway to the peninsula, where we stocked up with provisions and coffee (and not beer). And even here, in an area not feted by togs, we were passing along the banks of fjords, flanked by ruggedly steep green slopes to make the eyes pop. Even our previous visit three years earlier hadn’t prepared me for how raw and untamed the landscape around us was. It was almost as if we were here for the first time ever, staring open mouthed at this other world that seemed impossibly distant from the one we knew at home.
Lee was driving when the family whatsapp buzzed on my phone. My daughter had shared a BBC news link. “Concerns about the health of Her Majesty. Royals rush to Balmoral,” it read. It didn’t sound good. Slightly distracted, we pushed on through the ever more imposing scenery, crossing the still southern side of the peninsula and climbing on to the windblown north. By the time we arrived it was 2pm, nearly thirty hours since I’d last got out of bed. “We’ll be too excited,” said Lee during the last planning meeting as we pondered the evening drive from Cornwall to Luton Airport and the 6am flight. “The adrenalin will keep us going.” Adrenalin and coffee did seem to be doing the trick in fact, and despite having managed no more than an hour of dozing on the plane, I was feeling ok. So after putting a couple of those cans of beer in the hostel’s fridge, we set off for Kirkjufell.
“The Queen has died.” The message from Ali as I stood in front of my very first composition of the adventure in the marshland to the west of Kirkjufell seemed frankly surreal. There’s always that strange sense of detachment from what’s going on at home when you’re boldly adventuring. All at once the news seemed both monumentally sad, yet a curious aside to the view in front of me. It didn’t seem real, nor would it do so until we were home two weeks later. While we were away, history was turning in our own country. I’m still calling the new king Prince Charles. Bet you are too.
Finally, our refusal to pay a thousand krona to use the new car park next to Kirkjufell led me to walk past the lake towards another marsh from a layby near Grundarfjordur, eventually arriving in this spot under a sky full of cigar shaped clouds that looked as if they’d arrived from the twilight zone. By now thirty-six hours had passed since I’d last slept, but the creative juices were still flowing as the light began to fail. The adrenalin and coffee cocktail had won the battle hands down as I congratulated myself on having a big open space alone, while fifty yards to the left of me a ton of togs vied for position at the famous waterfalls. A few focus stacks later it was time to call it a day and head back to the hostel for dinner. And a cold beer to say farewell to Her Majesty of course. I'm sure she'd have approved.