On The Road to Mordor
I’ve no idea whether Tolkien ever visited the middle of Iceland on his travels, but it really did feel as if we were leaving The Shire that morning as we drove away from the quiet green pastures of Fludir for our one full day of photography at the edge of the Golden Circle. Within a mile or two of arriving at the entrance to Road 32, the smattering of evidence of humanity in the broad valley rapidly dwindled away to almost nothing. Just the odd farmstead or camping ground, lines of fenceposts, and of course those ever present electricity pylons that seem to lead to everywhere and nowhere in this empty raw landscape. To our right lay the Þjórsá River, ever changing in width, studded with low marshy islands, while further to the east the snow capped summit of Hekla occupied the horizon, hiding behind it a mysterious hinterland that remains for now a place of dreaming imagination.
The plan for the day was to spend three or four hours at the majestic Haifoss, from where I’ve already shared three stories – and fear not, because there are still a couple more of those to come from a location that delivered some very pleasing and unexpected results. Following this, I’d also discovered another subject that could be achieved by following a circular route along Road 26 in the form of Þjófafoss, a lesser known waterfall that stood before a mountain called Búrfell at a spot where the rest of the human race might never have existed for all the evidence that an image of the scene I’d found showed. Þjófafoss, or Thjofafoss if that’s at all helpful – although however I say it I suspect it sounds like I’m trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles – would mean a slightly longer route back to our base at Fludir, but then again if we’d gone to Gulfoss or Geysir, we’d have been arm wrestling a troop of tourists from everywhere just to get a view, never mind compose a passable image.
Road 26 was a bit of a ride. Having now driven the entire length of Road 32, we took a sharp turn to the right at the point that the notorious F road into the highlands began, and headed south again towards our target. And for the next ten miles or more, we might as well have been sitting on top of an elderly washing machine operating at full spin cycle speed, bumping and juddering along a road that didn’t carry a mountain classification, yet made us feel as if we were heading for the bowels of Mordor and straight into Mr Tolkien’s mind space. For a seemingly endless time the road seemed to shake both us and our four wheel drive car to the edges of our wits, but eventually we arrived upon smooth tarmac and celebrated by way of a modest increase of pressure to my foot upon the right hand pedal.
After a few more miles we spotted the small bumpy track on the right hand side of the road that took us that final mile or so to a rough and completely empty car parking area in front of the river once more – the same river we’d seen earlier in the day at a place where it splits into two and encircles Búrfell and what passes in these parts for the forest that bears its name and covers the lower slopes. It wasn’t going to be a long visit in truth. “Well, I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I don’t think I’m going to bother taking a photo of it,” decided Lee as we stared at the mud streaked water passing by at the rate of several thousand gallons of water per second. He did in fact take five shots of the scene – I know this because I still have all his RAW files safely stored on my external hard drive, the one device we took with us for extra backup – but I could understand the lack of enthusiasm. It wasn’t the prettiest of locations for the late afternoon hours of what had been a long day on the road, with more than an hour of driving still to come.
But I decided I was going to give it a go. The natural colours in the scene were dark, brown and brooding and I saw the possibility for a black and white panorama, using five merged landscape images to capture the mood of this remote and foreboding location at the outmost edge of civilisation. With low cloud covering the summit of the big lump of ground on the opposite side of the Þjórsá River, the crudely elemental landscape seemed as if it were warning us away from this place where nobody else had bothered to come to. Behind us day Hekla and the deadly interior, while in front of us lay the view you’re looking at in the picture. Sobering.
We resumed our route on Road 26, not seeing a single car go by in either direction for more than twenty miles, despite now being on a smooth, straight tarmac road. I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve experienced that before. I wish all roads could be like this – don’t you? We passed an occasional guest house, and a farm here and there as gradually we returned from Tolkien’s edge of the map towards The Shire and humanity once more. It had been an experience in the world of places with unpronounceable names.
(I'm just back from Fuerteventura with more stories to share - and I'm way behind on your tales. I'll start catching up now!)
On The Road to Mordor
I’ve no idea whether Tolkien ever visited the middle of Iceland on his travels, but it really did feel as if we were leaving The Shire that morning as we drove away from the quiet green pastures of Fludir for our one full day of photography at the edge of the Golden Circle. Within a mile or two of arriving at the entrance to Road 32, the smattering of evidence of humanity in the broad valley rapidly dwindled away to almost nothing. Just the odd farmstead or camping ground, lines of fenceposts, and of course those ever present electricity pylons that seem to lead to everywhere and nowhere in this empty raw landscape. To our right lay the Þjórsá River, ever changing in width, studded with low marshy islands, while further to the east the snow capped summit of Hekla occupied the horizon, hiding behind it a mysterious hinterland that remains for now a place of dreaming imagination.
The plan for the day was to spend three or four hours at the majestic Haifoss, from where I’ve already shared three stories – and fear not, because there are still a couple more of those to come from a location that delivered some very pleasing and unexpected results. Following this, I’d also discovered another subject that could be achieved by following a circular route along Road 26 in the form of Þjófafoss, a lesser known waterfall that stood before a mountain called Búrfell at a spot where the rest of the human race might never have existed for all the evidence that an image of the scene I’d found showed. Þjófafoss, or Thjofafoss if that’s at all helpful – although however I say it I suspect it sounds like I’m trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles – would mean a slightly longer route back to our base at Fludir, but then again if we’d gone to Gulfoss or Geysir, we’d have been arm wrestling a troop of tourists from everywhere just to get a view, never mind compose a passable image.
Road 26 was a bit of a ride. Having now driven the entire length of Road 32, we took a sharp turn to the right at the point that the notorious F road into the highlands began, and headed south again towards our target. And for the next ten miles or more, we might as well have been sitting on top of an elderly washing machine operating at full spin cycle speed, bumping and juddering along a road that didn’t carry a mountain classification, yet made us feel as if we were heading for the bowels of Mordor and straight into Mr Tolkien’s mind space. For a seemingly endless time the road seemed to shake both us and our four wheel drive car to the edges of our wits, but eventually we arrived upon smooth tarmac and celebrated by way of a modest increase of pressure to my foot upon the right hand pedal.
After a few more miles we spotted the small bumpy track on the right hand side of the road that took us that final mile or so to a rough and completely empty car parking area in front of the river once more – the same river we’d seen earlier in the day at a place where it splits into two and encircles Búrfell and what passes in these parts for the forest that bears its name and covers the lower slopes. It wasn’t going to be a long visit in truth. “Well, I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I don’t think I’m going to bother taking a photo of it,” decided Lee as we stared at the mud streaked water passing by at the rate of several thousand gallons of water per second. He did in fact take five shots of the scene – I know this because I still have all his RAW files safely stored on my external hard drive, the one device we took with us for extra backup – but I could understand the lack of enthusiasm. It wasn’t the prettiest of locations for the late afternoon hours of what had been a long day on the road, with more than an hour of driving still to come.
But I decided I was going to give it a go. The natural colours in the scene were dark, brown and brooding and I saw the possibility for a black and white panorama, using five merged landscape images to capture the mood of this remote and foreboding location at the outmost edge of civilisation. With low cloud covering the summit of the big lump of ground on the opposite side of the Þjórsá River, the crudely elemental landscape seemed as if it were warning us away from this place where nobody else had bothered to come to. Behind us day Hekla and the deadly interior, while in front of us lay the view you’re looking at in the picture. Sobering.
We resumed our route on Road 26, not seeing a single car go by in either direction for more than twenty miles, despite now being on a smooth, straight tarmac road. I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve experienced that before. I wish all roads could be like this – don’t you? We passed an occasional guest house, and a farm here and there as gradually we returned from Tolkien’s edge of the map towards The Shire and humanity once more. It had been an experience in the world of places with unpronounceable names.
(I'm just back from Fuerteventura with more stories to share - and I'm way behind on your tales. I'll start catching up now!)