This great wide yonder

I’m back!

It has been a while but I’ve been very busy gaining cash & kilo’s in Ireland.

Those last ones weren’t exactly necessary but it’s one of the side-effects of Guinness. Anyway, they might be of some use keeping me warm… right?

I had the time to put together a little video of my previous time in Iceland.

I flew back for one last bicycle-trip, through the highlands this time.

As the whole area closes for about 10 months a year due to bad weather and snow there’s just this small window of opportunity to explore this crazy part of the country. And even more of the country is closed already as there was a volcano about to blow.

I’ve been watching the news anxiously as I wouldn’t mind getting stuck in Iceland, but I needed to get there first. Lucky there was no problem with the flights and the whole thing only started to go off when I was well and truly on the way.

Just like 7 months ago (when I first arrived) Simon decided to join me. I was very happy to have the company.

The plan was to go ‘lightweight’ as it was gonna be a pretty rough track.

But my definition of lightweight might not be the same as yours…

Clearly I’m not all that experienced at this lightweight-business, and left some items I really shouldn’t have left. Like my tools, bathers & chargers.

My bike was a little annoyed I left her sitting still for two months while I was having a ball in Ireland…

And she made sure to let me know by breaking down at regular intervals.

Nothing too serious, and nothing Simon couldn’t fix 😉

The first day was glorious cycling, blue-ish skies, tailwind, downhill and a bit of sun.

Couldn’t get much better.The only minor issue was the wind. So we struggled to find a camp out of the blaze.But we managed… and how!

All the things you could possibly wish for in a campsite were there, shelter, clean water, whiskey.

Well, that last one I carried in my panniers (lightweight you see)

The huge river crossing that looked slightly daunting to me at first turned out real easy.

With the water coming straight from the glacier I wasn’t overly keen to go through.

Simon got his bike across and just when it was my turn a local farmer came along and agreed to ferry the rest of our gear across in his trailer!

I did feel like a bit of a cheat, but there were still over 30 rivers to cross along the way, so I didn’t really miss out…

It was a real challenge to manoeuvre the bikes over lava rocks in psychedelic shapes.

And sharp stones. Actually, it’s just madness.

But good fun! And the fact we never averaged over 50km a day didn’t bother me one bit.

We checked out some cave’s along the way but they weren’t any good for camping. Too many sharp rocks.

So it was really handy when we noticed a hut conveniently located at the end of our day.

It was a hut for hunters and fisherman, but they didn’t mind us crashing there for the night as well. 

It’s lovely to have a roof at times.

But I was very pleased we didn’t the next night for I would not have wanted to miss this;

I know!

I was not expecting to see the Northern lights in August at all!

And that at another lovely camp spot after a day of barren yonder.

You know you’re travelling with a Viking when you ask for the eggs,and he wonders what you want his Axe for.

Note: Eggs in Panniers on rocky roads are not a good idea…

We had almost given up on finding a good spot at all as most the river crossings were dry, unlike the ones we encountered earlier in the day.

And there had been little in the way of shelter.

With no more water and still a way to go we had to get some out a near dry muddy lake a couple km’s from the road.

We had gotten onto this road by going through a fence that tried telling us the road was closed.

Simon disagreed with the sign so we continued on and never saw the sign on the other side.

So someone probably just forgot to take it down. Or so we told ourselves.

It made for a lovely quiet day. No cars at all 🙂

This area is called Storisandur. That means ‘big sand‘. But the sand that was still to come was much bigger… I didn’t know that yet.

We hit road 35.

Not a major highway but a little dusty at times. Lucky for us rain was on it’s way.

That settled that.

Along this road we also found our only campground (read shower)  on the trip and we met a whole group of cycling-folk!

Stephen & Christy (Australia) had met Nadine & Stevan (Germany) in South America on a year long bike-tour. Since then the couples have met up in Kyrgyzstan and Iceland to keep on riding together. They picked up Wolfram, another German rider along the way and together with Simon and myself we had a lovely group.

Sylvian & Karin (Swiss) are used to bike touring as well,

only this time they weren’t.

We met them in the hot spring. They invited us over for hot chocolate & whiskey and even left us some of their home-grown & dried food! 

It was greatly appreciated!

The plan had been to catch ’em all at the next camp area. There was a storm brewing and gale-force winds expected.

But when we got there we decided to push on a little bit.

Only 23km, we thought.

How long could that possibly take.

HA!

This is where it started to get funny.

At times it didn’t seem much like ‘bicycle-touring’ I’m not sure what to call it, probably a pushing-and-dragging-through-rivers-sand-and-up-mountain-bike-ride. 

It took us five-and-a-half-hours!

Just when we dragged the bikes through the worst of it I got a flat tyre. It was 22.30, this storm brewing, a cold wind and only 4 km to go. The decision was made to throw all my luggage on the back of Simon’s bike and push the last leg.

The hut was bliss! In a raging storm we managed to contact the care takers. The place is owned by the 4x4WD-club in Iceland. It has space for 60 people, but there were just two of us.

With all this luxury and ‘only’ 18km to the next hut we enjoyed a leisurely morning of drinking coffee and drying gear.

In the meantime we got the news that this volcano had started to blow. It wasn’t a problem though. As Simon explained, it’s only lava this time. No ash…

There have been a few times when I though wow! This place looks just like NZ!

And like NZ they put great shelters in remote places so you can find a safe place to sleep in case of strong winds & rain.

Which is often.

The views up here are absolutely spectacular,

If you’re lucky.

But the weather changes quickly, and for a reason I didn’t understand somebody thought it a great idea to put a huge pile of sand in the middle of our track.

It had been pretty wet and fairly cold for a few days now.

But just as we started to come down from the mountains the weather started to clear up.

And we spent a leisurely time at Gulfoss,

It looked pretty different from last time I visited… 

We ended this little tour at a hot spring owned by Simons friends Bjorn.

And back in Hafnarfjordur we met up with three mad fat-bike dudes.

Charlie, Chris & Pat  had also just conquered the central highlands so we were all in dire need to celebrate…

A ridiculous night with far too many beers and ‘Opal’ a lethal Icelandic concoction, followed and  nearly made me miss my flight to Canada.

But it did not.

only just.
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