Episode 8North of Kopasker is the northernmost part of Iceland and as it was just coming up to mid-summer my lot thought that they had timed it well to see the midnight sun. Not that they are usually awake at that time, nor is it actually the middle of the night here. They don’t have daylight saving, not much point when you have 24 hr daylight but they are still slightly ahead of real time. Sunset such as it is, isn’t until after midnight). the lady at the folk museum had shown us some lovely photos of sunsets she had taken recently. One was taken just when she’d finished planting her potatoes. Where else in the world would you meet someone who has been planting potatoes at 0.15am in bright sunlight.We dutifully walked to the northern most tip of the country where there is a cairn and a lighthouse only to read on the sign that due to new measurements it’s not the most northerly point after all. Still it does lie only a few k’s south of the arctic circle. On the walk out to the lighthouse along the foreshore the way was littered with discarded fishing nets, one long one stretched a good deal of the way. Taking a short cut back across the bouncy moss of the tundra D spotted a duck sitting on her nest amongst some rocks, she was almost perfectly camouflage, she may have been ‘a great northern diver’ L thinks from her markings. Despite the camouflage though she is extremely vulnerable to arctic fox and mink. We camped near here in order to see the midnight sun, so did several others. About 7pm a thick sea mist began to roll in and soon everything was a total white out. We didn't see the sun again, at any time, let alone midnight for several days. Often we had heavy fog and mist to travel through or it was just very heavily clouded. Not so much farming in this area just wide open arctic tundra, thick mossy clumps that have vegetated the old glacial moraines so that there are plenty of rocks sticking up and holes to fall into if one doesn’t watch ones footing. Plenty of pools of water too both large and small and if the weather hadn’t been so cold and windy the bugs would have been a dense black fog, a biting one.One lovely walk we all did, me in L’s coat as usual, was around the Rauthanes peninsula, a small protected headland with some lovely off shore rock formations and loads of nesting sea birds and crystal clear shallow water where we could see the rocks and underwater vegetation. Some lovely gray gravelly beaches that there was no easy access to.Just one of these sea stacks was home to Puffins, on others there were Kittiwakes, Fulmars, Gulimotts and some Gannets. My lot sat and watched these birds for a while during which time the fog drifted about us swirly around headlands and suddenly engulfing us completely. We had a clear easy walk back to the car park but someone we met had real problems in the fog trying to follow the poorly marked trail.The long Langanes peninsula, shaped a bit like a goose neck had a dirt track all the way to the lighthouse at the end. The cliffs along here are full of nesting sea birds too, we saw lots of Fulmars and Kittiwakes but no Puffins. The wind was blowing a gale and the fog kept coming and going, it was bitterly cold according to my lot, I don’t notice it, being the stuffed toy that I am. At one point along this road there is a special lookout over a sea stack that is crammed full of nesting Gannets on the flat top, standing room only, with some Guillemots nesting of the sheer sides. Just how those Gullimots manage to keep the egg, then the chick from falling off is a real mystery. They don’t make any sort of nest and often the rock seems to be on at least a 20degree angle to the horizontal or so it appears to us.Finally one day when my lot were sitting in a ‘hot pot’ near the little town of Vopnafjordur a smidgen of blue sky appeared and the sun peeped through, just to remind all of us that is was still there, because it quickly changed it’s mind, ducked back under the clouds and didn’t re-appear until 2 days later when we were in Eglisstadir. To get to that point we had come over a really impressive pass at the end of the Smjorfjoll peninsula, great views on the way up but at the top the fog just engulfed us and D was hard put just keeping the car on the road till we emerged into clear air again when we were almost down at sea level. The next afternoon we could look over at these mountains and see that the fog was still thick from mid way up and over the top. We were bathed in sunshine by then.In Eglisstadir my lot used the internet to catch up with the real world. Then, with my lot safely occupied for a good while the clouds cleared and the sun shone really warm giving everything a spring feel. A big digital sign in town said the temperature was 19C at 3pm but the car thermometre had a much ore conservative opinion, it didn’t budge past 12C.L came out of the internet place just about tearing her hair out after spending time trying to do stuff on the internet. Part of the problem is that she can’t use this Apple lap top very well, but mostly it’s just L who gets her ‘knickers in a twist’ over minor things. Any way she would like to thank Dawn and Sam for sending her the photos of Heather’s garden that is looking a real picture after all the work D has put into it with Sam as supervisor and no doubt Trevor, the cat, putting in a paw now and again.All that lushness made L realise how lush this area of Iceland seems to be compared to further north at least. There is a lot of pine forest here and some birch forest too, well grown tress as well as more recently planted areas. And this lovely sunshine today has brought out the lupins. Great swathes of them around the district with their bright pink/purple/blue flower heads, they may be an environmental disaster but one can’t blame people for liking them because they do add a really warm spring feel to the place and look great too.Out past the little village to Bakkagerth at the end of the road is a small artificial harbour for the local fishing fleet. It was constructed using two small islands and filling in between with rocks. These small islands are home to more than 1000 pairs of breeding Puffins, 100 pairs of Fulmas, 1000+ pairs of Kittiwakes and many Eiders. The eider unfortunately, don’t seem to have had much luck with their breeding season this year. We saw only a few eider ducklings and many adult females without any chicks, is this partly due to the fact that the nest have been raided for their down L questions? Some Kittiwakes have chicks though it seems not all have hatched yet. Many of these have lost their eggs too, L watched one pair that seemed to be pulling their nest apart looking for the egg or chick while their neighbour kept her chick tucked up close to her and watched them. Poor things, one can’t help but feel sorry for them. The Puffins may have chicks but they stay deep inside burrows and don’t emerge until ready to fledge. The long lake Lagarfljot that runs south west from Eglisstadir has on it’s eastern shore the largest area of forest in the country and the oldest trees. There are numerous picnic spots along this route and it is apparently a very popular area for summer picnics, that’s if summer ever happens. There is both coniferous pines and deciduous birch tress in this forest. On the western side the high escarpment is an old lava field with several waterfalls that have cut small and large ravines into the escarpment edge. The bigger and best of these is Hengifoss. The walk up to these falls is beside the gorge the stream has cut through the lower part of the escarpment and the stream keeps on tumbling down through a series of cascades and another small waterfall that is surrounded by long basalt columns. It’s not possible to get in close to the main falls without wading through the stream, steep scree slopes and a vertical cliff hinder any chance of walking along the side of the gorge. Walking through the stream might be realistic in the heat of summer but not yet. Surprisingly there is still quite a large snow bank that is blocking the view of the bottom of the falls although it is probably a good many metres from the actual bottom of the falls. Being in close proximity to a 747 preparing for takeoff would be in about the same decibel range.The valley narrows beyond the end of the lake with the same type of lava flow mountains then on both sides. Good farming country lies in the bottom of the valley and a gravel road leads a long way up the valley to service these farms,After enquiring at an information centre we found that the road is now open to the big Karahnjukar dam that was constructed in the early 2000’s for a hydro plant that now supplies electricity for the Alcoa allumium smelter on the coast near Reytharfjordur.The trip there began with the steep haul up the escarpment and onto the bleak moors. Once above 500m there is still quite a bit of snow around and most of the streams have a great deal of ice in them still. It is melting and we could see great chunks that are cracking up. There doesn’t seem to be much grass, it mostly mosses but there are still plenty of sheep around that seems to survive quite nicely of such vegetation. The temperature that was a balmy 8-10C in Eglisstadir dropped down to 2C and the wind was howling across the barren landscape. L braved the elements and climbed to the top of a hill where she got a great view all around, D didn’t feel up to it on that occasion. The dam is quite a sight. At present the water is quite low, must have been very low before that start of the thaw. Somehow the water in the dam must remove the layer that holds the dust in place because we hadn’t seen any dust on the moors except when cars travel along the dirt roads then they send up clouds of dust. Here, though, where the water had receded and left the exposed floor of the dam dry the wind was whipping up great clouds of very fine dust, probably volcanic ash. the road crosses the dam wall and then you realise just how spectacular this is, In the middle a narrow gorge emerges from the dam wall and leads off across the moors. The wall at that point is 162m high. It is concrete on the dam side, with the other side is paved with rocks and it’s rock filled. One of the highest in the world using this type of construction.Then there is all the tunnels and the underground turbines that produce the hydro electricity. There are 73k;s of tunnel most with a diameter of 6 to 7m. Fifty k’s of these were dug using tunnelling machines, the other 23 were blasted through. One of those tunnels has vertical drop of several hundred metres that drops the water down and through the turbines. We had lunched one day beside where the tunnel emerges from under the mountain into an open canal before tipping into Lagarfljot. There are a couple of other quite small dams in the area too, and we drove up to them. The roads were open just to the dams, beyond them deep snow still blocked the way.Another day we headed west along the ring road towards Myvatn, then took another detour across a quite rough gravel road sending up great clouds of dust. This is a very barren area virtually no vegetation at all, just grey gravel left by glaciers of the past and crunchy volcanic ash. In a couple of place it looked as if we were passing through old volcanic calderas with jagged peaks all around and patches of deep red scoria here and there.These roads take their toll on tyres. D has had a few punctures mended and he was hoping that we would get through these last few days in Iceland and the 3 days we are to have in the Faroes without having any more flats. But, the Gods didn’t love us and we got another flat. We limped back to Eglisstadir stopping now and again to pump it up. D didn’t want to have to pull everything out and change it in such bitterly cold weather if he would avoid it, and also he wasn’t sure if the tyre we now had as a spare was really much better than this one. At Kopaskar the fellow had mended it as best he could but was none too sure about its enduring qualities.D settled for getting one 2nd hand tyre back in Eglisstadir, the Michelin tyres the same as we have on the car are twice the price here that they are in much of western Europe. While I sat in the car my lot enjoyed some nice soaks in the hot tub at the local swimming pool. This is a very popular pastime in Iceland with even the smallest of towns having a pool and at least one hot tub. The pool temperature is usually around 31C, according to L who swims a lot. Then the hot tubs are 38 to 41C and D says they are great to slip down into after braving the elements between the shower room and the tub. It’s a rule that you must have a shower and wash yourself properly before you enter any of the pools. So you come out of a heated room into 2C completely wet, hair and all, so you can see why that hot water is so lovely to slip into. Well, I can’t, being a stuffed toy I’m not allowed anywhere near the water.The cloudy weather finally gave way to steady rain. We had returned to Reytharfjordur where D got the mechanic who had done the car repairs just after we arrived in Iceland to check that all was OK. It is, thank goodness, lets hope it stays that way.We headed out along the fjord past the Alcoa smelter and through another town, Eskifjordur and came to an old quarry. This is where they used to mine Calcite or what is sometimes called Icelandic Spar. It is an inorganic limestone formed by heat and pressure and was very valuable for its specific qualities. It was used in optics for scientific instruments from the 1600’s onwards until the 20th century when man made products become available. There are heaps of small pieces lying around the old workings. Some pieces show the purple and green prisms of light for which it was so highly prized.Going over the mountain to Neskaupstathur took us well up into the snow again, even though we are quite close to the coast on a peninsula. A tunnel at 630m takes us under the highest part and we descended through a snow filled bowl before coming down to sea level again and this surprisingly large town. Just why there is so much industry here is a mystery as road access is not the best. There is a large fish processing plant here and big fishing boats bring their catches in here, there are also some silos, goodness knows what’s in them and big oil tanks too. Several big ships were here, perhaps they are big fish factory ships but they didn’t look right for that.The light fine rain gave way to much heavier stuff and the fog got lower and thicker so any ideas of going for some nice walks dissolved into the puddles. We had been going to look for more puffins. After checking at a tourist office it seems that the weather is unlikely to improve this side of our departure so l had decided she will sit in the cafeteria of the camp site while the much needed washing does its thing in the laundry. I need a wash too but apparently L doesn’t trust me being dried in a drier, I may not come out resembling how I went it, L likes to sit me in the warm sun at Burnett Heads to dry.She will now post this on the blog being the last opportunity before we get back to Denmark probably.© Lynette Regan 30th June 2015