Tag Archives: gasir

Tuesday 14th April 2020 – WHAT A REALLY NICE …

… gesture.

One of my neighbours knocked on my door earlier.
“I haven’t seen you about for a good few days. I was wondering if you were Ok. Do you need anything?”

That’s what I call Solidarity. It’s what the world has been missing for the last 50 years. Let’s hope that if we learn anything from this world-wide dêbacle, it’ll be that Solidarity is a very important concept and that there’s always a place for it.

Not like – was it Ron Atkinson? – who said “there’s always a place for the Press. They just haven’t dug it yet”.

Even more surprisingly, I arose from my stinking pit as the first alarm went off at 06:00. I bet that you weren’t expecting that – I know that I wasn’t!

But the secret to that was that I had forgotten to put the ‘phone under my pillow and it was on the chair, making enough noise to awaken the dead. Rather like Peel’s “View Hulloo” I suppose.

Actually, I was already awake. I had awoken bang on the spot of 05:58 and I know that for a fact because I looked at the time on my fitbit.

So what all of that was about this morning, I really have no idea.

After the meds it was the dictaphone. I was with my father at a house and Claude had thrown away an old cooker but the cooking panel was better than the one in my house so I took the cooking panel out of the cooker and put it in the kitchen. It worked for a couple of days and then packed up, so we repaired it and it worked for another couple of days and then it packed up again, right in the middle of doing something, making a cup of tea I think. Of course it was a Saturday afternoon, wasn’t it? No chance of getting to the shops to replace it. And Bank Holiday Monday, so we were stuck. I had to get the old one out to put back in to last until the shops reopened. We were talking about it and I was thinking “yes, God, Claude never gave anything good away so that explains that. At the same time I had to take it out and dump it in my garden along with all of the other rubbish that was in there. It was really looking bad, my place and my father said that I ought to take some stuff down to the tip. I said that I would do as soon as the van’s empty but it’s full right now. He said “why don’t you take my van? Take some stuff in my van?”. I was surprised that he would let me because he was never really one for letting people take his vehicles. He started to remember the time that I’d borrowed his van in 1974 and I had a parking ticket, all that kind of thing. I was thinking “God, that’s 40-odd years ago and he’s still remembering that and still talking about it”.

After breakfast I started on the file digitalising again. And what a miserable session that was this morning. It took me ages to find four albums for which I could find everything that I needed. There were several where there were only two tracks, or three tracks or, in one case, nothing at all available and that was depressing.

Some of the stuff is pretty rare, I know, but I was expecting to do better than this. Like I’ve said before … “many, many times ” – ed … that fire at Universal Studios must have been devastating. I’m going to have my work cut out to deal with all of this stuff that I can’t find anywhere else, and I’ll certainly be doing the music industry a great favour when I’ve digitalised it all.

Despite the good start to the day that I had had, all of this nonsense took me almost up to lunchtime. What was even worse was that because of all of the issues I didn’t manage to do too many photos. I’m still inspecting the old Norse village at Gàsir just up the road from Akureyri. I’ll never be finished at this rate.

Nevertheless I cracked on and by the time I knocked off this evening (a somewhat later 18:15) I’d finished writing all of the notes for all of the radio projects as far as I could. That will be dictated tomorrow and I can crack on with editing it – I hope.

Tea was a falafel with steamed veg in a cheese sauce and it’s difficult to make a vegan cheese sauce when you’ve run out of the correct type of vegan cheese that you need.

No pudding tonight – simply because I made too much veg and I have to be careful what I eat.

sunset ile de chausey granville manche normandy france eric hallWhen I’d finished the washing-up I went out for my evening run.

And with all of the vegetables that I had eaten, it was quite a struggle to run all the way up to the top of the hill and I was exhausted. Mind you, it was well worth it because there was a really beautiful evening sun.

There were quite a few people out there enjoying it. And no surprise either because it was slightly warmer tonight than it was yesterday evening.

sunset ile de chausey granville manche normandy france eric hallThe sun was going down quite nicely over the Ile de Chausey so I took another photo of it.

To try something different, I had a play around with the camera settings but it still didn’t give me the image that I wanted, which was a shame. It’s a bit of a disappointment really.

So on that note I exchanged pleasantries with another sun-watcher (from an appropriate social distance of course) and carried on with my run around the corner and along the cliff top.

chausiais joly france ferry terminal port de granville harbour manche normandy france eric hallStill the same four boats in the chantier navale so I had a look over at the ferry terminal.

Not that the ferry terminal will be doing much, but one of the Joly France boats – the older one, I think – and Chausiais are moored up there. Apparently, in answer to a question that I had posed a few days ago, there’s a freight service twice a week over to the Ile de Chausey.

No-one has said anything about passengers though, so I don’t know how they are moving about, if they are moving about at all, that is.

So I pushed on with my running. And while it was agonising tonight, I managed to complete all of my five runs.

One thing that I have noticed though, is that while I’m not pushing on the distances very much, my recovery time between each run (because I have to pause for breath) is reducing little by little.

And even when I don’t feel up to running, I find that I can still push on regardless and as long as it’s on the flat or downhill I can do it.

trawler english channel granville manche normandy france eric hallJust for a change, I thought that tonight I hadn’t seen a fishing boat out there and that they weren’t being allowed out.

However I did notice something moving right out to sea near the horizon so I took a speculative photo in order to blow it up (the photo, not the object) when I return home.

Sure enough, it’s one of the big fishing boats right out in the English Channel. So they are still going.

Anyway with a bit of luck I might be in bed before midnight. I’ve had a long day today and I haven’t even crashed out. That must be something of a record.

I wonder if I can keep it up.

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Tuesday 9th July 2019 – HAVING SAID ..

… that I was planning on an early night last night, I wandered back to my cabin and began to watch a film. However, I never even made it past the credits, so tired was I

And it will be the same tonight because I feel totally wasted. It has been a really hectic day.

Something of a struggle to tear myself out of my stinking pit at the sound of the alarm. However I did make it to breakfast at the appropriate time, but it would be wrong to say that I was the life and soul of the party.

During the night we had sailed down the Eyjafjördur fjord and moored at the quayside in the town of Akureyri, the “Capital of the North”, just as Tintin did in the Aurora in The Shooting Star.

First item on the agenda was a trip out to some archaeological ruins but as our bus wasn’t until 09:15, I had time to chill out for a while before leaving. At least, that was the plan, except that my reverie was interrupted by the cleaner bursting in to clean my room.

But I made it onto the quayside in time and much to my surprise the driver was from Wolverhampton. Married to an Icelandic girl whom he had met in London, she wanted to return home so he came too. And just like us, he has no intention of ever returning.

We also learnt a few Icelandic definitions today. A tree is a tree, a wood is two trees standing close together and a forest is three trees ditto.

This morning’s destination was Gasir, an abandoned Norse village about 11 kms away. And when I say “Norse” I don’t really mean it because although it’s from the late Norse period, it’s actually a settlement just occupied seasonally by merchants trading with the area.

We don’t know for sure who these traders were but the discovery of German goods from the pre-Hanseatic days and alse English trade goods is very significant.

There were the remains of a church here and these were quite visible following some excavation, even down to the churchyard wall. Plenty of foundations of booths too, many of which have never been excavated. It was quite a big, busy place during the trading season.

So why was it abandoned? The answer is that you can see from the photo the spread of alluvial silt that has accumulated. Most boats anchored in the river to the side of the settlement but round by the 15th Century the accumulation of silt made this impossible.

It’s very tempting to consider the influence of the mini-Ice Age of this period that put an end to the Medieval Warm period, and look for a change in the weather, the tides and the currents causing the build-up of silt.

But one thing is quite clear. The archaeological investigations of the area so far carried out have turned up absolutely nothing of any size whatever. Trinkets that were easily lost or discarded and broken objects, but nothing of anything that would be classed as a large object. There was no wood discovered of any importance.

This points to what would be described as an “orderly evacuation” of the site where everything possible would be taken away for re-use, rather than a panic-stricken flight such as you might have when invaders arrive and the inhabitants take only what they could carry, or an evacuation following a fire.

Something else I learnt about Iceland this morning too. There are horses everywhere, thousands of them, and we asked their purpose. And the reply can only be given with an Icelandic accent, which is impossible to do in a text format, so you’ll have to do the best you can.

“Ven the horssiss is born they go out into the fields and learn to become ponies. Zen ven they get to four years we go to ride them. And of they bite and kick too much ve make zem into sausages”

So now you know.

On the way back I sat next to our Norse expert, hoping to pick his brains. However he must have had a hard day too because he dozed off and slept all the way back to the ship. So much for that!

After lunch we decided to have a little rest for a few minutes before setting off on our travels. We would meet again at 14:00. I remember seeing 13:50, but the next thing that I remember was that it was 14:10. I needed to put my skates on.

I ended up heading off on my own. Right out of the city to the Air Museum, the Motorcycle Museum and the Museum of Industry. But my admission pass didn’t cover them after all of that, so I headed back to town, stopping off at a few civic museums on the way.

One of them had an exhibition of maps and one of the comments startled me. It went something like “improvement in ships and navigation techniques in the 15th and 16th centuries meant that mariners could visit the New World” or something along those lines, completely forgetting that the Norse had been visiting the New World for 500 years prior to Cabot and Columbus.

Nothing else of any great interest although my admission pass covered them, but we did discover a Toy Museum. Several toys such as pedal cars and kiddies’ tricycles parked outside and Strawberry Moose enjoyed them immensely.

Further along on my route back I came across an ice-cream parlour that sold – would you believe – vegan ice cream, so I stocked up with a large coconut ice cream, that cost me almost €5:00.

Across the road was a signpost pointing up a steep path to the Botanical Gardens, so I staggered my way up there. And “stagger” was the word because it was long and steep.

But well worth the climb because not only was it beautiful, blue poppies and black tulips included, but the smell was delicious. I sat there for a good half-hour to soak it all up, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this isn’t like me at all. As I have said before, and on many occasions too, the only time that I would ever be likely to take a photograph of a flower would be if an old car were parked upon it.

Back down into town where I was nearly squidged by a couple of cars, I discovered that many restaurants are selling vegan options. No danger of me having difficulties about eating out – except the price of course because things are horrendous here.

After tea I had a nice hot shower which helped me to relax after my efforts. I washed my clothes too – I need to keep up-to-date with my washing as I don’t have much stuff. Then I girded up my loins. It’s going to be another very long day so I need to be on really good form. I remember the rush around that we had last year and if anything it’s intensified.

Still, no peace for the wicked.

There was another beautiful sunset so I stayed on deck and watched it as the pilot helped us navigate our way out of port and then came back down to go to bed. I need a good sleep ready for tomorrow.

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