Category: Islands of the North Atlantic
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Blue ice, land bear
(from 21 August) The trip to Liefde Fjord, overnight was lumpy and the boat rolled quite a bit. Good to be rugged up in one’s bunk, asleep. In the fjord was flat, but the weather had come in again: limited visibility, some rain. We had a nice quiet breakfast, and then the crew up-anchored and…
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Blue ice foxes
(from 22nd August) After sailing all night, we made it into Konigsfjord, and past the scientific research station of Ny Alasund just before breakfast. The sky was clearing. Well, quite a bit of it was blue, and that gave everything a sunny aspect. The mountains, glaciers and the fjord itself were beautiful. We motored a…
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Exploring in zodiacs
(from the 23rd) As we came into the last fjord, two polar bears had been spotted near the point. It was too late to get close then, so we left that until the morning zodiac trip. We boarded the zodiacs soon after breakfast, to head back towards the point, but couldn’t see anything of the…
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Leaving Svalbard
(from 24th August) Up early, to pack. Breakfast. Farewells to the crew. Carted the luggage down the dock to be ferried up to the Wildphoto gallery for storage while we went into town in search of real coffee and perhaps a cinamon bun. The flight wasn’t until 13:25, and we had arranged to get the…
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Oslo
Walked into the main part of town through the gardens of the royal palace to find breakfast coffee and baked goods. Sunny day. Very pretty town, with a lovely feel to it. I wanted to get some more SD cards and a second USB hard drive, so we walked a few blocks to an electronics…
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Travelling to Iceland
It’s been a big day, particularly since it was two hours longer than a usual day, thanks to the change of time zone. We had a cunning plan to have breakfast at the nice bakery 100m up the road from the apartment, after packing in the morning. Then back to collect our bags, check out,…
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Circling the Snæfellsnes peninsula
Our second day in Iceland was to be an easy one: drive anti-clockwise around the Snæfellsnes peninsula from Olafsvik, stopping at Djúpalónssandur beach and then lunch somewhere at Arnarstapi, a small fishing village to the south, and then back to the apartment via the same mountain pass we had used the day before, hoping for…
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Stykkishólmur and Kirkjufellsfoss
Today we drove along the northern coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula in an easterly direction until we reached the town of Stykkishólmur, which sits at the mouth of a large fjord. It was a few degrees colder this morning, than yesterday, and raining constantly as we drove. The road took us past Kirkjufellsfoss. The car…
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Barnafoss, Hraunfossar, Hvitserkur horse stables and dirt roads
The Hraunfossar and Barnafoss are waterfalls that share a carpark, but are quite different in character. The Barnafoss are as turbulent and violent a waterfall as I’ve seen: a roiling rapids coursing through craggy rock openings. A little further down stream, the same water source, many tiny springs that flow from underneath the lava field,…
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Shorter drives, longer walks to Siglufjörður
Nice quiet start at the stables this morning. Easy, as we hadn’t done a full unpack: we’re overnighting for several days now, so most of the luggage is staying in the car. (No auroras seen, last night. Significant disappointment.) The first stop was the small town of Blönduós, which is the home of the Hrútey…