Episode 9to start with my secretary is going to do a bit of a fill in on something she forgot to mention but did load some photos of it last time.There was something called the “arctic henge”. It a stone construction near Raufarhofn very near to the northern most point. This is still under construction and by the look of the equipment standing idle around it nothing has been done for quite some time. There really isn’t any way to compare this modern take on an ancient theme. To begin with the rock being used has not been properly finished. It’s very rough, not been squared off, and you can still see the drill bore marks from when the explosive was planted for blasting. The rocks have then been stacked on top of each other using a metal frame for support, one of these frames was still in place. It just looks so rough and ‘it will do mate!”. When you think about places like stone henge in the UK, or some of the many standing stones we’ve seen around Europe, or some of the ancient cities that mostly lay in rubble now you seriously wonder if they didn’t have better methods of construction than we do now. After 5000 years or so it’s hard to say just how well finished the rocks in stone henge might have been, after all they have been out in the weather for all that time, through a couple of mini ice ages and ice can crack rock apart very easily. There is no way that some archaeologist of the future, say in another 2000 years is going to mistake this ****** bit of rock building for something the ancients have done. at best it will probably be nothing but a pile of rocks and not large ones at that compared to what the ancients seemed to have moved around with effortless ease.The Incas even less than 1000 years ago did superb workmanship on their structures fitting the rocks together so well it's often not possible to slide a sheet of paper between. Things have definitely gone downhill since then.We left Eglisstadir and drove over the mountain topping out at 701m in very thick fog. There is still a vast amount of snow around but with the temp as high as 5C it is melting. It wasn’t until we had Seythisfjordur in sight below that we ran out of the fog and got a photo of the same waterfall as we’d snapped the day we arrived in Iceland. The sun was still being bashful when we queued up for the ferry on our last morning. Shortly after leaving we ran into thick fog that stayed with us until well into the evening. Then in the middle of the night we had to disembark in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands. Only a little fog about at the time. It was about 9am in the morning when the fog came in again, thick and fast and enveloped everything while we were all enjoying a morning coffee with a view over the town.Fortunately as we headed north over some mountains we gradually ran out of the fog and for most of the day had reasonably sunshine and a warm 14c - 15C. People were frolicking about on the beach in swimmers, even taking a quick dip, brrrrrrr! Kids were playing about in small inflatables, in swimmers or shorts, on a small pool in a freezing cold stream. No way could you describe that water as other than dam cold. Everyone was enjoying the summer sunshine.The landscape here is very similar to that of Iceland with the steep escarpments having originally been laid done as one lava flow over a previous one, then the fjords and channels carved out by glaciers. It is very green, probably greener than Iceland with more grasses and less mosses because of the lower latitude, but still sub arctic.It’s also possible that the grasses have been planted by the farmers as they have in most parts of Iceland. We saw where fields of pasture lay right beside tundra mosses. The mosses must make a good base for planting grass. The sheep look the same, the ponies look similar, the houses and farms seems better cared for and neater. Have yet to spot a tree apart from in Torshavn, but there are possibly more waterfalls than in Iceland, though we haven’t seen any big ones yet. We have seen some pretty small villages huddled close to the shore all very neat and trim. Lots of fish farms too.Fish must be a major export for these islands as we saw many containers waiting for the ferry with fish painted of their sides. It must pay well too, because this place makes Iceland look like a bargain basement in prices for food. Just about everything except fuel that is. Here we are paying less that in iceland where diesel cost about $2.13 to $2.40 per litre and even less than we did in Denmark back in May where it was 8.69 DKK while here it is 8.05 DKK (5 Danish Krona = $1 AU). Seems odd to us to have cheaper fuel and more expensive food.We visited a site not far from Torshavn where there is a ruin of a cathedral from the 15th century that is presently propped up with steel cables and the top of the walls are boxed in except where there is scaffolding, that area is enveloped in plastic wrap. It really does nothing for the ascetic of the place but L supposed is it better than having it fall down on visiting tourists. The church next to it is older with some part of it dating from the 13th century, not sure which part but it’s certainly not the roof, that looks very new. An old split log building was part of the priests and farm workers quarters and is now a museum. Mostly it is one large room with narrow slab beds around the walls, one long table and a large wood fired stove. Of course this is only a modern interpretation of what it may have looked like centuries ago.The Faroes were settled by the Vikings around the same time as Iceland, from the early 9th century and Christianity arrived here around 1000AD as in Iceland. The Faroes remain part of Denmark but Iceland became independent in 1944.Back in Torshavn we topped up the fuel before heading back to the ferry terminal. Then when D goes to start the car again the starter motor didn’t work. For those of you who have followed my blog over the years you would have read back in 2013 that L and I got stranded with the car about 90k’s from Kazan in Russian when the started motor packed up there. D got the offer of a lift into Kazan one evening and returned with the repaired starter mother the following afternoon.Anyway, D managed to get the car going again here and so we caught the ferry back to Denmark.It would have been nice to have seen more of the Faroes if only the fog had stayed away. There are some lovely areas to go walking but one would have to carry good all weather gear and be prepared to be caught in fog for long periods of time. It certainly did get warmer than Iceland, even more than 20C when the sun came out. During our trip back to Denmark the fog stayed down almost until we were within sight of land. It was a fairly smooth trip but these ferries are so well stabilised that it has to be extremely rough before you feel much movement.Once we disembarked in Hirshals we headed straight down the autobahn towards Germany because now a new starter motor is on the menu as well as two new tyres and they will all be cheaper in Germany than in Denmark.We had seen on the TV on the ferry about a heat wave in southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Well it didn’t make Hamburg. L had anticipated warm weather and put on shorts and T shirt and that was fine until we got to Hamburg where the mercury took a tumble again as the storm clouds gathered, the wind blew, the rain tipped down, then the sun would come out, the mercury shoot up 10C instantly and we would all be sweating until the next storm cloud came over 10 minutes later. And it kept that up all the two days we were there. Coats on, coats off, windows open, windows closed, deary me, one didn’t know if one was going to freeze or fry. The temperature fluctuated between 15C and 26C frequently throughout the day.The area we were in was an outer part of Hamburg and it looked to be quite an upmarket district. The houses were mostly separate two storey houses each on it’s own lot with a nice garden, some were older houses and some were very modern. Plenty of trees in gardens and along the streets, and small areas of woods and forest. Several garden centres too. Being summer lots of people were out and about on bicycles. Mum or Dad and the kids, each on their own bike with the little tiny kids in a trailer or child seat on the bike. Cycling with the whole family is a very popular weekend activity and people head a long way out into the countryside in passable weather. Considerably poorer, but with 2 new tyres and a new starter motor we headed off in a north easterly direction having chosen this route towards Poland. The wind blew a gale, the mercury stayed low, a really large solar farm lacked sunshine but the numerous wind mills had plenty to keep them turning. The countryside is fairly flat and some of the barley/wheat crops are ripening. Hundreds of wind turbines were making good use of the wind, not sure how well the many solar farms would have been doing as we saw little sun, though the days were quite bright mostly and L thinks they work quite well in such conditions.We stopped and had a look Greifswald. It is a university city and as we walked past classes must have just finished as there were hundreds of bicycles parked outside and quite suddenly there was an equal number of noisy students clutching great piles of books all around them. Not summer holidays apparently.The old town centre covers several blocks and there is still some restoration of the churches going on, and a few of the houses too. Along the river there are several old sailing ships permanently moored with signs beside them, however, everything was in German only so that us, being uneducated Aussies couldn’t make head or tail of it. There seemed to be quite a number of visiting old ships as well, we think that some sort of festival was in progress with a big carnival set up on the opposite shore. If those sailing ships were to put up their sails that would be quite a sight.At another place where it seemed particularly windy, and it was drizzling with rain we noticed that it looked to be a resort town. This is the Baltic coast and these crowds of people are on holiday at the beach. Not one of them was in the water deeper than their ankles and even then not for long. L being L just had to test that water that looked, I must admit a very uninviting grey. She didn’t linger, saying that the temperature was some what lower than Burnett Heads might have on a July day. The sandy beach was nice enough and there were hundreds of ‘sun seats’ placed out on the sand ready for people to hire and relax in to enjoy the lovely sunshine that was hiding behind thick cloud. Despite the not perfect conditions there was a large number of people on the beach and busily spending their holiday cash at the numerous market stalls, cafes, bars, restaurants and clubs that lined the road to the beach. This resort area is on the narrow spit of land with the Baltic on one side and lakes on the other, short way from the Polish border. When we got near to the border we came to a long line of vehicles waiting for the ferry so turned around and set off to find a different route into Poland.© Lynette Regan 12th July 2015