Category Archives: adventure canada

Thursday 25th July 2019 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… having had a good sleep the other night, then last night I was awake again at I dunno – was it 01:00 or 02:00? Well, whatever it was, it was flaming ridiculous.

Back to sleep again, I awoke at about 04:45 or something and lay there quietly vegetating until the alarm went off.

Breakfast was rather quiet as everyone was concentrating on packing and, having been caught out by Adventure Canada’s charter flights in the past,as well as my packed lunch I made myself a couple of bagels with jam and stuffed them in my backpack too. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Back in the cabin, I stuffed all of my winter gear and spare clothes into a bin liner, wrapped it, labelled it and taped it and dumped it in the office. I’ll be back at some time in the future and I don’t want to lug a pile of winter gear around the world with me unnecessarily.

And then I hid in my cabin and kept out of the way of the chaos. I did have to stick my head out of the door to take my luggage down and to receive my passport.

Most of the morning was spent reading a book on the failed Greely expedition to Fort Conger and I was so captivated that I didn’t want to leave the book when I was called to my zodiac. But needs must when the devil drives so I sailed ashore.

But here’s a tragedy. I think that some salt water has got into the contacts of the big lens because it won’t focus any more. If that’s the case, then it’s more than a tragedy. A crisis, I would call it.

The bus that was waiting for us took us to the airport at Kangerlussuac, passing by a friendly arctic fox on the way.

But here’s some more bad news. Our flight is running late. An hour behind time, so they say, But I’ve heard that before. It was about seven hours late last time.

So plenty of time to have a walk round and eat my packed lunch. And to buy a packet of crisps because Ben the Chef’s idea about the size of my appetite is somewhat different from mine.

Waiting around for ages,I was joined by Rosemary who walked down from her hotel, and we had a little chat. But not for long as we were summoned through security. And our flight arrived only 50 minutes late, which is always welcome news.

Once the previous passengers unloaded and the plane was cleaned, we could board and we set off to Iqaluit where we refuelled.

They served a meal on board too and much to my surprise they had something for me. The jammy bagels that I had surreptitiously prepared at breakfast were not required.

No sleep on the plane though. One of the many children on our trip, all of whom had been exceptionally well-behaved throughout the trip, chose this moment to have a temper tantrum and that went on for a couple of hours.

At Toronto, immigration was quite painless but we had to wait ages for our luggage. A 20:50 touch-down, yet we didn’t reach our hotel until about 22;30 and that was depressing.

This evening I’ve washed my undies as they needed it and I hope that they will be dry for tomorrow. And I’m going to take advantage of this super-duper hotel and have a good night’s sleep.

The Sleep Of The Dead if I can.

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Wednesday 24th July 2019 – OUR LAST …

… complete day on board ship – for now anyway – and what an interesting day it has been.

The day started off with, probably for the first time for quite a while, some uninterrupted sleep. And although I awoke at about 05:20 or thereabouts, uninterrupted it was. And for the first time for quite a while, I actually felt almost-human when i awoke.

It was a much better start to the day.

Outside, there were things to see too and that made it so much better. Much better than being totally shrouded in fog and mist

We’re sailing down a fjord, the name of which I forgot to note, somewhere round near the settlement of Qeqqata. And I made a discovery too, and I was lucky enough to photograph it.

It might well be a haphazard pile of stones but from the angle from which I took the image, it looked just like a ruined stone house (and I’ve seen a few of those – even lived in one too – in my time). It was on a spit of land sticking out at the junction of two fjords, in exactly the spot where one might expect an early settler, even of the Norse era, to erect a dwelling.

I showed it to the on-board archaeologists, and they seemed to think that it was something man-made. And who am I to dispute that? After all, we are somewhere in the vicinity of the limits of where the Western Settlement of the Norse might have been.

After breakfast I edited some photos for a while and then later on we had a talk on geology. And shame as it is to admit it, I dozed off in the middle of the discussion. I don’t know why, because up to that point I had been feeling quite good.

Once the talk was over we donned our wet-weather winter gear and clambered aboard our zodiacs for a final cruise. Past various nesting colonies of kittiwakes and guillemots up to the head of the fjord where a glacier was busy calving off into the water.

Strawberry Moose came along too and he went for a short kayak trip with Genevieve. He has more luck with the girls than I do.

But my luck held out today, just for a change.

My camera was in the right place at the right time with the right settings just as a huge pile of ice calved off the glacier. It made the most enormous splash although by the time the tsunami reached us it was pretty miserable.

By now the old Danish guy was feeling the cold so we headed off back to the ship. And that turned out to be lucky too because we caught sight of a young bearded seal sunning itself on an ice-floe. Baldur called up the other zodiacs to come to see it, and so it chose that moment to slide off the iceberg into the water.

But not before I took a photo of it. And what a stunning photo it was too and I’m well-pleased with that one. It’s definitely one for the family album.

Lunch was a barbecue on the rear deck and then we had all of the usual housekeeping stuff and instructions for our disembarkation tomorrow morning. That was followed by a packing session as we need to vacate the premises, and I can’t find the hood for my camera lens. And that’s a disappointment and no mistake.

There was another photography session dinner this evening and we had quite a discussion, which was punctuated by the ship making a severe U-turn as if it had missed the turning into our fjord.

And as Rosemary and I were leaving we were accosted by one of the Québecois women who wanted a chat. An elderly woman who is travelling alone and by the looks of things hasn’t made any friendships. We all had quite a chat in French.

On the deck, the views were spectacular as we entered the fjord and I took quite a few photos before the cold wind from the interior drove me inside. I wrote my notes, has a chat and that was that. I’m off to finish packing and then to bed ready for an early start in the morning.

It looks as if it’s all over for another trip.

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Tuesday 23rd July 2019 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what is happening these days but I had a night that was almost the same as the previous few nights. Awake at about 03:10 or thereabouts, and again at 05:15 and not being able to go off back to sleep. I’m getting rather fed up of this.

With the alarms going off it was still a struggle to haul myself out of bed and I didn’t beat the third alarm by very much.

Up on deck to see what was going on. And the short answer was “nothing”. The whole world was shrouded in a thick mist and I couldn’t see a thing.

Instead, I went back to my cabin and had a nice hot shower to freshen myself up and to wash another load of clothes ready for departure. So, nice and warm and damp, I slipped under the covers for five minutes and the next thing that I remember, it was 07:55 – 5 minutes to breakfast.

After breakfast, I managed to track down John Blyth. he had given us yesterday a talk on the charts of the High Arctic and had said that he had the charts on *.pdf. So I slipped him an USB key.

There was a talk this morning on wild flowers of Greenland, followed by a charity auction. I was present in body but not necessarily in spirit as I attacked the photos. In effect, Jessie has asked to see my top 15 from this trip so I went through and sorted some out while everything was happening. I’ve ended up with about 30 which is rather more than she wanted but that can’t be helped.

By this time we had arrived in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The most northerly capital city in the world.

Lunch was early today – 11:30 – so we had to be quick. And then we were called down to the bus that was to take us into the town centre. We were actually tied up at the quayside today for once so no need for the zodiacs

A delightful Inuit girl called Evie (which is a shortened form of her real name which, like most Inuit names has about 100 characters) took us on a walk around the cultural centre, the old town and finally to the museum.

And I learnt something that I didn’t know, in that films in the cinema in Nuuk, they are shown in “version originale” with subtitles in Danish. Not in Greenlandic because apparently there wouldn’t be enough room on the screen for the characters and it would take too long to read them.

Which reminds me of the old chestnut about why there are so many babies born in Greenland. The answer is that the Greenlandic word for “no” is so long that by the time the girl has finished saying it, it’s already too late for the guy.

The museum was interesting. Apart from the usual stuff that you would expect to see, there was an exhibition featuring the Norse in Greenland. That was quite exciting for me at least, so I made a beeline thereto. And remind me to find out more about the “farm in the sands” that has recently been discovered at Nipaatsoq.

By now Rosemary had joined me so we wandered off for a coffee where we learnt the dreadful news from the UK. It beats me just how so many people can be so stupid and irresponsible.and so keen to bring down chaos and disorder upon themselves.

We went off shopping and Rosemary bought a few souvenirs for herself and her friends and then we just about had enough time to catch the last bus back to the ship.

Tea was taken in the company of a Francophone Canadian couple and by a German guy from an adjoining table who insisted on joining in our conversation. But at least this Canadian couple was delightfully normal which makes a change.

Now, there’s a chocolate party going on in the back of one of the lounges so I’m comfortably esconced in the library typing my note. But as I see the mountain of uneaten delicacies making their way back to the kitchen, I’m appalled at the waste of food when there are so many starving people all around the world.

And in other news, I saw one of the young waiters, a tall thin guy from the Maldives, dressed in civvies and making his way off the ship. He told me that he was going home. Later on I asked one of the friendly waitresses about it. She confirmed that he was leaving, and when I asked why, she made a very non-committal gesture. Whatever reason there is for his leaving the ship, the staff is not allowed to talk about it.

It’s still early so I’m going to edit a few more photos before I go to bed. Our last complete day tomorrow and hasn’t it gone so quickly?

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Monday 22nd July 2019 – IT WAS SOMETHING …

… of an easier day for me today, although you might not think so.

Being awake at 03:05 this time (just for a change) and then again a short while before the alarms went off, I did finally manage to fall out of bed and totter straight down into breakfast for 06:30.

Once breakfast was over we had to dash back to our rooms to don our winter clothing because we were off for a very long zodiac trip. And we needed our clothing too because it was to be a very long trip in the cold and wind.

We’ve anchored in Arsuk Fjord and almost at the head of it is a really impressive waterfall. It’s not the highest in Greenland (we have already seen that) and not by a long way either, but the volume of water that pours over it is phenomenal.

On the way there we kept a look-out for wildlife, although our first “sighting” was of a cabin on shore. It looked as if it had been abandoned for a considerable period of time and was in a poor state of repair, but it would make a very nice home for someone who craved solitude. Going to the shops would be an issue, though.

A little farther on, someone on our boat spotted an arctic fox. We all craned our necks and one or two people managed to catch a fleeting glimpse. I wasn’t so lucky unfortunately. But then, someone later explained that an arctic fox was only the same size as a domesticated cat so I don’t feel so bad about not seeing it.

Much more luck later on. Someone called from another zodiac that they had seen a musk-ox on shore, so we all headed that way. After a good deal of searching and scanning, I finally saw it. And it put on quite a performance for us too, gambolling about in a clearing amid the rocks.

But it was strange to see a musk-ox on its own. They are herd animals. And so the consensus thinking was that although it didn’t look much like it, it was possibly a male adolescent that had been ejected from the herd by the dominant male and had yet to establish its own harem

The waterfall was impressive. It was really powerful and the amount of water cascading down from it was enormous. It’s all melt-water off the Greenland ice-cap so it gives you some idea of what’s going on in the interior of Greenland and how badly climate change is affecting the place.

Some of the zodiacs went quite close to the fall, but our driver was somewhat nervous by the looks of things and wasn’t too keen to go too close.

On the way back we were waylaid by another zodiac. Our driver is apparently the expedition’s ornithologist and the others had seen some birds that needed to be identified.

Not that this kind of thing would interest me. As I have said before, there may be several interesting species of bird in a Greenland fjord but not a single one of any type that I would be interested in watching.

They had repositioned The Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour while we had been away and so it was a long – and I do mean long – ride back to where we were supposed to go. In fact all the way up to the end of the fjord, past the Danish navy’s naval base at Kangilinnguit and then along another arm, following the only road in Greenland that connects two communities together.

The reason for the naval base is that not too far away (although it seems like miles when you are in a cold and wet zodiac in a freezing fog) was the world’s only cryolite quarry, in the abandoned town of Ivittuut.

While looking for silver (which they found, but not in sufficient quantities to make it worthwhile) at the end of the 18th Century they stumbled across an outcrop of cryolite. At first is was used as an additive to salt (the Pennsylvania Salt Company was the chief purchaser) and pottery but later they discovered that added to bauxite, it reduced considerably the energy needed to smelt aluminium.

The Danes worked it for a while and then the Americans took over, but when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis there was a fear that the mine would fall into their hands. Thus a Canadian and later an American detachment of troops was sent in to protect it. The naval base was built to repel any possibility of a German raider or invasion party.

The mine was exhausted and abandoned in 1984, and cryolite became the first of the earth’s minerals to be commercially exhausted. But by then scientists had succeeded in making it in a laboratory.

The whole place looks as if it’s abandoned now and it’s really sad, with all of the equipment lying around. Even a half-dismantled Bedford lorry, a 6-cylinder diesel of the 1970s is just lying there.

I had a good explore around and found the cemetery, full of graves of workmen who must have died in mining accidents (this must have been a dangerous place to work) as well as the graves of a couple of young children. There were also several plaques relating to people lost in shipwrecks in the vicinity.

We did find several examples of habitation though. Two or three houses looked as if they were still occupied, there was a garden growing potatoes and lettuce and there was an array of solar panels. These seemed to be powering the equipment in a Seismology reading station carved into the side of one of the rocks.

By the way, as a matter of interest, this is not the first time that the town had been abandoned. Although it is very well-known that the Norse had an Eastern Settlement (Brattahlid and its environs) and a Western Settlement (near Nuuk) here in Greenland, there was also a much less well-known Middle Settlement too, of about 20 homesteads. Some excavations on the site of Ivittuut have revealed Norse ruins that would correspond with what is known about part of the site of the Middle Settlement.

Back on board ship it was lunchtime and I was good and ready for it. And much to our surprise there was free time – the first of the trip – afterwards. I went down to my cabin intending to do all sorts of things but ended up under the covers for well over two hours. And I wasn’t sorry either.

Later there was an exhibition of Admiralty charts of the High Arctic and, even better, the guy presenting the exhibition had them in *.pdf format and offered to copy them to anyone who wanted them. Ever since then, I’ve been armed with a memory stick for the next time that I bump into him.

Tea tonight was in the company of several other people. I always enjoy people-watching and there was plenty to see tonight that caught my interest.

But now I might go for an early night. There’s a lie in (of sorts) tomorrow so there’s no urgency but it will still be nice to take advantage of whatever is available to help me catch up with my sleep.

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Sunday 21st July 2019 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER …

… place crossed off my bucket list. And it’s been a long time coming too. But today I finally made it to Brattahlid, the home of Eric the Red and his son “lucky” Lief Ericson

But putting things into the correct order, I didn’t have my decent sleep last night unfortunately.

As seems to be par for the course these days I awoke at 04:05 for a trip down the corridor and again at about 05:55. However it was once more a struggle to leave the bed.

Outside, the weather is cloudy and misty with a lot of dampness in the air, almost raining. But then of course this is the south-west coast of Greenland. What was I expecting?

Breakfast was another early start today and I had once more to do without my medication seeing as we were leaving the ship almost immediately. A quite pleasant ride took us to the landing stage of a small modern settlement called Qassiarsuk which was all sleepy and closed up, seeing as it was some kind of unearthly hour on a Sunday morning.

We walked past a farm – one of the earliest modern sheep farms in Greenland, founded in 1924 – and then out into the countryside to a pleasant bowl in the hillside. The first thing that we encountered, opposite the modern church, was a small turf outline which, having been excavated in the past, was revealed to be a very small church dating back approximately 1000 years.

And that was quite an interesting find.

It is well-known that whilst Eric the Red did not embrace Christianity, his wife Thjodhild did. And there is a record of her insisting on having her own church built – the Þjóðhildarkirkja or Thjodhildarkirkja – at Brattahlid. The dimensions of this church, its timescale and the site of this turf outline as described in the sagas corresponds with what we know about her church.

A little further on are some quite substantial remains of a rather large stone church. Not as complete as the church at Hvalsey but substantial nevertheless. And it’s a big place too, as you might expect from Brattahlid, because this was one of the most important communities in Norse Greenland.

Close by are the remains and sites of several large stone buildings that were presumably storage rooms of some nature and also some smaller stone walls that might have been sheep folds.

There were also the foundations of a substantial stone dwelling house which are such that would appear to relate to a very important personage. As there wouldn’t be more than one such person in any community, this is believed to be the likely site of the homestead of Eric the Red.

All together, there are over 30 Norse sites in the immediate vicinity but many of them have been disturbed by more modern buildings or by agriculture. The ones by the church are the most clearly defined and complete.

Eric the Red took a couple of years to cruise along the Greenland coast to find the best possible place for his settlement and indeed his own home. The richness of the area here and the number of Norse sites are a testament to the wisdom of his choice.

As well as the Norse remains there are the remains of several Inuit beehive houses, and also a more modern reconstruction which looks as if it is about to suffer the fate of its predecessors.

Farther on still are a reconstruction of Thjodhild’s church as well as a modern reconstruction of a Norse longhouse. In the immediate vicinity was another outline in the soil that corresponds with the size and shape of yet another longhouse.

We had a good prowl around the site, finding several good viewpoints from which to take photographs, and I climbed right up to the hill overlooking the fjord where they erected in more modern times a statue of Lief Ericson. From here the view was even more impressive and we could clearly see several layers of raised beaches, showing just how much isostatic rebounding there has been.

Of course, I was not alone on my travels. I was accompanied by Strawberry Moose, complete with Viking helmet, who had several photo opportunities.

Interestingly, in the distance I could two barns or storehouses that belonged to the farm of 1924. These, as well as the base of the house of the farmer, were made of local dressed stone. There is no record of any stonemason being in the area at this time, so it might be that these stones were pillaged from the Norse site in the days when conservation was of little importance.

Back on the ship we had lunch, and then I went down to my room where I crashed out for an hour or so.

This afternoon we were all on the aft deck in the glorious sunshine, watching the world, the scenery, the fjords and the icebergs go by, until about 17:00 when it became too cold.

And that reminds me of something. I’ve learnt a new way of describing distance. In Europe, we would say that someone lived, say, 2 miles away. In North America, you would say, say, 2 hours away. But Tupaarnaq, our Greenlander guide told us that her uncle lived “two fjords away”. I shall have to remember that one.

After tea, our host Dave Newland performed a few songs off his latest album. He’s actually a folk singer and his songs are all about the High Arctic. It made me quite nostalgic.

But now it’s bed time. There’s yet another early start in the morning and I can’t afford to hang about any longer if I want a decent night’s sleep.

It goes without saying that I’m really happy that I made it to Hvalsey yesterday and to Brattahlid today, but just 10 miles across the bay is the Norse settlement of Gardar – the site of the cathedral and centre of Christianity in the Norse settlements in Greenland. And we didn’t have the time to go there.

I shall just have to come back!

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Saturday 20th July 2019 – HVALSEY!!!!

Today was a really exciting day in which a great deal was accomplished. Another one of my lifetime destinations has been reached.

But it wasn’t quite like that at the start. I awoke, just for a change, at 05:00 and couldn’t go back off to sleep. But that’s not to say that I was up and about very lively. I did manage to beat the third alarm but only just, and staggered into an early breakfast looking something like the Death of Nelson. I’m not feeling myself these days which is just as well, because it’s a disgusting habit.

After breakfast I went back to my room and relaxed for a very short while before we were called to the boats, and then we set off for Hvalso.

Hvalso is better-known by its Norse name – Hvalsey – and is internationally famous as having probably the best-preserved Norse ruins in North America. It’s long-been my ambition to come here and this is probably one of the main reasons why I’m here on this voyage.

There are the remains of a magnificent stone house with all of the outbuildings and other offices. No-one can really tell the date of when it was first constructed but it was expanded over a period of several centuries culminating in some work as late as the very early 15th Century, towards the very end of the Norse settlement in Greenland.

Not only that, there are the remains of a magnificent Norse church from maybe the 13th Century and which are quite intact considering that it has been abandoned for 6 centuries or so. Highlight of the church though is an incredible arched window of a type that I have never seen before in Norse architecture. I had no idea that they knew the principle of arches and keystones. And what is more, it is still intact and that is even more of a surprise.

Another claim to fame is that the last written event in Norse Greenland took place here. The Norse here were never very into writing so written records are … errr … scant. But in 1408 here is a record of a wedding that took place in the church between a local girl and an Icelandic man. And after that, there is no written word that ever came out of Greenland until the 18th Century and a new breed of settlers.

The fate of the Norse is unknown and any suggestion is mere speculation. However we can rule out that they returned to Iceland or Norway despite what some people suggest. While it’s certainly true that some did – the husband at the wedding was recorded as being in Iceland a couple of years later – they would not have sent out search parties to Greenland during the next few centuries to look for any Norse survivors had they all returned to Iceland or Norway.

And suggestions that they returned because of land inheritances in the rest of Norse Europe becoming more available after the Black Death is quite clearly absurd when you consider that the Black Death took place 70 years (or three generations) previously.

And even if that were the case, it’s by no means certain that every last man or woman would leave. We’ve seen for ourselves that when the Inuit at Grise Fiord were offered the chance to return to their homeland after just 20 or so years and leave the desperately inhospitable environment of Ellesmere island, a great many of them chose to cling on.

The church here at Hvalsey was built on the site of an earlier, smaller church and one of the walls was built over part of the old graveyard. Consequently as the bodies rotted away and the graves caved in, the wall on that side sagged dangerously but has now been stabilised.

While I was there I took the opportunity to go for a wander around with the geologist. I’d been attracted to the fact that in the walls of the church were several blocks of pink granite, quite unlike the main stone in the area, that has been so well-cut that there was not a single tool mark upon them. The general opinion, from our archaeologist that they had been cut by hand seemed most unlikely to me.

However, we soon found what we had been looking for. Not too far away, a bed of granite had at some time infiltrated the metamorphic rock and at one point there was a twin-fault line that passed right through it. The granite had been cleaved by Nature on both sides to absolute perfection and there was clear evidence that some of this rock had been removed.

So that answered my question far more easily than I had imagined. My opinion of this archaeologist is going downhill quite rapidly, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

We also had a kind-of stone corral for horses, several foundations that looked as if they might have base of medieval tithe-barns and warehouses, and a load of stone walls, clearly man-made but using some of the heaviest stones that you could imagine.

There was also something that looked very much like an Inuit grave or cache but this was disputed, and Nature had provided the site with all kinds of wild herbs that would have been a boon to any Norse chef.

One thing that Yours Truly uncovered that had been missed by the excavators of the site was some writing chiseled into the lintel over the doorway into the church. Anyone who knows anything about European architecture of the middle period of the Second Millennium will know that builders had a habit of carving the date into the lintel. That was what I had been looking for.

But as for what the writing might be, It seemed to be something like …CLL … and the rest was covered in a heavy growth of lichen that was clearly the original growth. Obviously it’s against the Law to scrape away any of the lichen so I shall have to leave that to the experts. But it doesn’t seem to suggest any kind of Roman numeral that I might be able to identify

While all of this was going on, we were overflown by an eagle. And there was a fisherman out there catching the cod that were leaping about all over the place. It was all quite lively. What wasn’t lively though was the farm further down the valley. Greenland has 37 farms, of which 35 are working. However this one is one of the two that isn’t. It ceased operation in 2006 when the owner retired and it was bought by people who use it just as a weekend retreat.

Back on the ship and lunch, by which time we had sailed to the town of Qaqortoq. This is the largest town in south Greenland, with about 3,000 inhabitants and our stop for this afternoon.

A guide took us around the town on a guided tour and showed us the sights. We were walking around for about 90 minutes and saw plenty of things, but nothing that I would call “startling”, except for the only public fountain in Greenland.

Somewhere round by the river we fell in with a couple of little girls aged about 7 or 8 or something. They were proudly displaying a bottle in which were several tiny little fish about an inch or so long. Obviously following in the Inuit traditions There were some young teenage boys leaping off a high cliff into a freezing cold lake. Rather them than me.

We finished up in the modern church, built in 1973, and had a tour around the local supermarket to see the prices in there. Not quite as outrageous as I was expecting compared to Northern Greenland.

The museums were interesting, especially the Norse museum where there were remarks that seem to confirm some of my ideas, and then we went for a coffee at the local hotel.

A little later, I took Strawberry Moose for a walk around the town and for a few photo opportunities, which he enjoyed immensely.

Tea tonight was a vegetable biryani which was probably among the best that I have ever eaten. It was totally delicious although I would have liked it to be more spicy, as you might expect. I can’t be doing with this North American idea of spicy food.

In the evening, while everyone was watching a film, I was typing my notes when Ben the Chef came over for a chat. A huge mountain of a man he was born in Brisbane but came to the UK when he was 3 and lived in Liphook and then in Wiltshire. We chatted about quite a few things for quite some time.

He told me that one day soon we are to have a banquet of local delicacies. He had been ashore today and bought a load of whale meat and things like that for us to try. And when I say “us”, I don’t mean that I will be participating. It all sounds pretty revolting to me and anyway I’m a vegan, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

So I’m now off to bed. No chance of an early night with so much going on, but I’d be happy if I could just sleep through until when the alarm goes off. One of these days I might just manage it, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Friday 19th July 2019 – HAVING SAID …

… last night that I was looking forward to a decent night’s sleep, then once more I found myself being quite disappointed; I was so determined that I didn’t even attempt to watch a film when I went to bed, but even that didn’t help.

In something that is becoming rather too much of a regular occurrence these days, I was awake at 04:00 and needed a trip down the corridor. Back to sleep but I awoke once more at about 05:55. And that’s not the same as saying that I was ready to leave the bed. I did manage to beat the third alarm call – but only just.

After the medication I went up on deck to see what was happening, but I needn’t have bothered. Back in the open sea again and we are shrouded in fog and mist. There are a couple of offshore rocks and islands appearing through the gloom but that’s the best that I can do. I came back downstairs to my cabin in disgust.

Once breakfast was over, it was time to prepare ourselves for our little trip out. We are anchored offshore at the island of Uunartoq Qeqertaq.That’s Greenlandic for “hot place” so as you may expect, there is a hot tub here and many of our fellow passengers wanted a dip.

It’s an exciting place to be too, because it’s one of the world’s most recently discovered islands – dating from September 2005.

And if you are scratching your head wondering about that, let me explain. Until that date, it was “attached” to the mainland by a large ice-sheet and no-one knew for sure what was under the ice. But climate change is so rapid in this part of the world and the effects so devastating that the ice sheet finally receded at that date and we could see that underneath it was nothing but the sea.

What was much more interesting from my point of view was the fact that there was formerly an Inuit village here with many well-defined sod huts and several other features too.

Everyone shot off on the zodiacs to the shore and split up into several parties in order to go our separate ways. Those of us who were interested in archaeology headed off across the island towards the site.

We hadn’t gone far before we came to a grinding halt. There were several clearly-defined rows of pebbles all across the mountainside. These are quite clearly raised beaches and it shows just how depressed the island was under the weight of the ice-cap during the ice age, and how much isostatic rebound there has been.

It was quite noticeable that the Inuit settlement was entirely below the lowest line of raised beach, which shows that the latest major rebound must have been at least more than 600 years ago. It wasn’t until probably well into the 15th Century that the Inuit reached this far south.

There was however quite a cliff – probably about 20 feet – down from the settlements to the beach, and that’s quite possibly an indication that isostatic rebound is still taking place. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in Labrador a couple of years ago we saw evidence of rebound that has taken place within the last 70 years.

As for the site itself, our attention was drawn first of all to a row of single-family sod houses right on the cliff edge. These are unfortunately eroding away as the cliff face crumbles underneath them.

Set farther back was a row of multi-family sod houses, some with a clearly-defined dividing wall and one that even had two entrances. The stone lintels for that one were still present and almost in place.

What was surprising though was that even though we are in the tundra, each site was surrounded by a complete mass of wild flowers that resembled buttercups. All of the sod walls, part of the interiors and areas that were probably refuse pits were covered in them.

This is an indication of how much refuse each of these houses had accumulated during its occupancy and how fertile the soil must be at those spots. The thick and high sod walls would also help to contribute to this too.

There were plenty of other signs of occupancy too. We saw a variety of stone food caches in various states of repair, and several tent rings from Inuit summer camps in this location.

A square low wall only one stone high was there too. speculation was that this was the base of a more modern timber building of some description. There were several such wooden cabins on the island.

What must have been the most interesting find was the presence of several Inuit graves – low stone walls covered with slabs. Most had fallen down but one was still intact and we could see that there were human remains inside that one.

Someone else saw what he reckoned was the remains of a Norse longhouse but when we all went off to look, he could not find it again.

By now it was time to return to the ship so we had to abandon our exploration, which meant that I didn’t have time to visit the more modern graveyard. I would be interested to see what that was all about and who might be in it.

After lunch we had a series of lectures. Our Greenland guide gave us a discussion on farming in Greenland, after which there was a lecture on pre-historical archaeology in the High Arctic which was interesting.

There was then a 15-minute break before a concert given by our musicians Charlie and Nive. I went down to my room where I fell asleep, only to wake myself up by snoring too loudly.

The concert was short but very interesting and I had quite a talk with Nive afterwards She actually came from Uummannaq she was able to identify the girl who had posed for me there last year.

Tea was rather catastrophic. There must have been a problem in the kitchen because the food took an age to come to the table. Almost as if half of the kitchen was out of action. And they kept trying to serve me things that I couldn’t eat. Something of a disaster that all was.

And I had an argument with a fellow passenger – all about the Norse. He had been listening to far too much of the lectures given by our historian and to far too much of the newspaper speculation of 70 years ago. But things have changed dramatically with the discovery of new material and the application of new techniques. What was the current way of thinking back then is no longer appropriate.

Bu now the lights in the public rooms are being turned out. Someone is obviously hinting that it’s time for me to go. And while I’ve been loitering around here ,the ship, having gone up a fjord, reversed back down and has now turned round about 45° to starboard. She’s switched the engines onto tick-over and dropped anchor so it looks as if we are here for the night.

So I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow we will be landing at one of the destinations that is at the top of my wish list. That is, if the weather lets us.

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Thursday 18th July 2019 – I REALLY DO WONDER …

… when I’m actually going to have a really good night’s sleep because last night was yet another depressing night as far as I’m concerned. Once more I was awake at some kind of silly time and had to go to the bathroom. Round about 04:00 I suppose.

After that, I managed to go back to sleep again for an hour and a half or so but that was my lot. Mind you, I wasn’t able to pull myself out of bed at any reasonable time, beating the third alarm call by a mere matter of minutes.

We were entering Prins Christians Sund at the foot of Greenland (which means that we won’t be going round Cape Farewell) so I watched the manoeuvres. It’s nature’s answer to the Corinth Canal and it is magnificent. In places no more than 500 metres wide and bordered by cliffs that could be as much as 2200 feet.

After breakfast every one of us was up on deck in the magnificent weather watching the spectacular scenery. And we didn’t know where to look because everywhere was so wonderful. And when you did see something that you would describe as “the most beautiful view that I have ever seen. I won’t ever see anything this beautiful for as long as I live” then 5 minutes later, you would see something even more so.

We had cliffs, rocks, glaciers, icebergs, waterfalls, a seal, a tiny village and a few men in speedboats checking fishing traps. A kayaker and a yacht too made it quite a day. I even picked up a wi-fi signal so I had to put my phone onto aeroplane mode before I started to rack up a large bill.

But just my luck. There were two tutorials that I wanted to attend – a Greenlandic language class and the photography group. And as fate would have it as usual, they were both at the same time. I ended up with the photographers and we all had a really good time.

Our expedition leader eventually found a place for us to go ashore, but not without help from a local. And it was the fifth one that he had tried.

All the others were completely unsuitable for one reason or other, and as Jane in a zodiac was pondering what to do and where to go, a very vocal local yokel in a fishing boat came by to see what was the problem.

He listened to Jane for a couple of minutes and then pointed over to a rocky shelf in the distance. “Why don’t you go over there?”.

Landing on this rocky ledge was something of a challenge and then there was a hell of a climb up to anywhere that had a pretence of being level.

But it was well worth the effort in the end. Strawberry MooseStrawberry Moose came with me and he enjoyed himself, being photographed in several places. And we had wild flowers, tiny trees and a waterfall.

The waterfall was spectacular. Definitely the highlight of the walk as far as I was concerned. It fell all the way down in a gentle gradient from a hanging valley over various steps. At one point it had carved a deep channel into the granite bedrock but a flood had brought along a huge boulder that had dammed the channel so the water was cascading around it.

By the time that I returned to the ship I was exhausted. So a hot shower and a clothes wash, followed by a mug of tea and a good relax soon warmed me up.

At the evening meal they were looking for volunteers for a Francophone table so Rosemary and I joined up. Poor Rosemary – it’s the first time she’s really heard a Québecois accent and did not find it easy to come to terms with the vocabulary and sentence construction.

This evening I was out on deck for a while and I’ve now made it 152 photos for the day – a new record I reckon. But it was well worth the effort.

We have now left the shelter of the fjord and are now in the open sea on the west coast of Greenland, and the ship is swaying about rather more than somewhat in the waves and wind. So I’m off to bed and I hope that I can finally have a decent night’s sleep.

I need it.

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Wednesday 17th July 2019 – THIS EVENING …

… I was standing at the top of the stairs, lost in Space
“Do you need any help?” asked the waitress
“I’m thinking” I replied. “I need all the help that I can get with that!”.

Last night was another depressing night. I’m certain that the ship’s engines stopped at something like 04:00 because the silence awoke me and I didn’t hear the familiar rumble. In fact, I wondered where I was.

A trip down the corridor later, I was back asleep but only for about an hour or so before I was awake again. But absolutely flat-out tired and it was a real effort to beat the third alarm.

After the usual morning procedure I was up on deck. The sun was quite low, trying its best to peek through the clouds and so I took a couple of photos of what should have been the early morning sunrise to start off the day.

Breakfast was rather later this morning and we were there for quite some considerable time having a good chat, before we attended to the business of the day.

It was a very strange morning. There was a very low sea-mist drifting around so one moment we were swathed in a thick mist with some beautiful rainbows, and the next minute we were bathed in a bright warm sunshine.

So warm was it that we actually sunbathed on the rear deck for quite a while in the company of another couple of people.

And then the fun began.

“Thar she blows!” came the cry from the starboard side. And there cruising along at the side of our ship was a bottle-nosed whale. He accompanied us for a while before disappearing down into the deep.

Five minutes later we had another “thar she blows!”, this time from the port side. And there, performing a couple of antics was a sperm whale. He swam along the surface for a while and then with a swish of his tail he plunged downwards too.

By now we were insight of the Greenland coast. Just briefly because the mist closed in again at that moment. So that was that.

We went to a lecture on glaciers which took us up to lunchtime.

Lunch was interrupted by a “glaciers on the starboard bow!”. The mist had finally lifted, for good too and there up along the Greenland coast were some rather large icebergs waiting to catch the current.

We had a briefing later, and then we all crowded onto the observation deck to watch the scene as we negotiated into a deep fjord. Kangerluluk or something like that, it’s called “The Awful Fjord”, basically because there is nothing here. No landing, no grass, no wildlife, nothing at all.

but I do know that since the installation of AIS systems in ships, only one other ship had ever been in this fjord. And with a name like that, it’s hardly any surprise.

But this afternoon while we were positioning ourselves, we were having some really beautiful sunshine, which is something of a surprise in Eastern Greenland, so it goes without saying that for a half-hour or so I was on the back deck of the ship on a comfortable chair … err … rather relaxed.

Tea tonight was a buffet, and quite early too. And while we were sorting ourselves out, they were putting the zodiacs in the water. We dressed up in our winter woollies and then went for a cruise. There were three-hour cruises and one-hour cruises but we opted for the two-hour cruise, for reasons that every male my age will understand.

This took us to the head of a couple of glaciers where we saw some small icebergs and we were lucky enough to see a calving. No spectacular icebergs, merely a few small blocks of ice, but it was a calving just the same.

We then went across the fjord to inspect a few more icebergs. These were big ones and here was plenty of evidence of frozen rainwater and silt. There was even a glacier with a perfect band of soil. Had I seen that in Iceland I would have immediately thought of a layer of volcanic ash at some time during the formation of the glacier, but I’ve no idea of its significance in Greenland.

The most interesting find however was one that vindicated the President of the American Public Enquiry into the sinking of the Titanic.

He had asked the question “just what is an iceberg made of?” and was ridiculed, and even lampooned, because of what many people considered to be a ridiculous question. But here in the fjord there was a glacier that was studded with large rocks. Just the kind that might split open the side of a large ship.

There was a pit-stop for hot chocolate laced with Bailey’s for those that wanted it, and then back here on the ship we had hot soup and bread for supper.

It’s time for bed now so I hope that I have a decent sleep. But at least I know that my winter gear passed its first test. I was quite comfortable out there until the driver put his foot down to return to the ship.

Quite a pleasant evening all round.

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Tuesday 16th July 2019 – A NICE …

… pleasant surprise awaited us yesterday evening. We would be passing into a different time zone during the night and so we have set our clocks back one hour.

An extra hour in bed is always welcomed, especially these days when I don’t seem to be getting enough. But then that’s the story of my life, isn’t it?

Mind you, that’s not how it worked out, because we had the roughest seas yet. There were doors banging closed all over the place and trying to sleep under those conditions with all that noise going on was not easy. I also had to make a trip to the bathroom on one occasion, after having warned myself yesterday about the folly of drinking tea too late at night.

So all in all it was rather disappointing.

I made it up before the third alarm but don’t ask me how because I wasn’t feeling much like it, and then a stagger up on deck to take a few photos. And there wasn’t much to see except the rear end of the ship swaying about violently in the high seas, which was in itself quite impressive.

Instead, I went back down and started to edit a few more photos. But not as many as I would have liked because firstly the mouse froze and then when I went to restart the laptop it wouldn’t fire up correctly and I was there for hours.

Abandoning the laptop for a while I came up for breakfast. And we were rather few in number because of the weather, although as the morning wore on, the bad weather did subside somewhat. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting watching the chefs try to cook omelettes in the raging storm.

After breakfast the laptop still hadn’t fired up so I went to a talk on the “Vikings” (not the “Norse”, which annoyed me intensely) in North America. And what a dismal performance that was. Our lecturer insisted that the site at L’Anse aux Meadows is “Vinland”, even though not even the Ingstadts who excavated it have committed to that point of view.

Furthermore, he insisted that the Norse only ever came to North America for three years, even though there is written documentary evidence that they were still visiting “Markland” for timber until at least as late as 1347, and quite possibly much later too.

Finally he insisted that the Greenlanders simply “returned home to Iceland and Norway”, even though it is on written record that various Icelanders, Danes and Norwegians visited Greenland on several occasions over the next three centuries looking for them, which they would surely not have done had they known that they had “returned home”.

His lecture was full of falsehoods and incorrect suppositions and all in all, I was as disappointed by this lecturer as I am ever likely to be about anything. I was close to denouncing him as a fraud.

Round about 11:30 the laptop finally staggered into life so I was able to attack the photos and that took me up to lunchtime. And, to be on the safe side, I backed up the data

After lunch, I finally managed to buttonhole the ship’s naturalist (not “naturist”) and showed him my photos of sea mammals. he told me that they were white-beaked dolphins. They hunt in packs, with one acting as the principal fish-scarer, aiming to panic the fish into a big huddle so that the other dolphins could catch them easier.

It was a busy afternoon. Next we had a visit to the bridge where the cadet officer explained the ship’s equipment to us, and then there was a lecture on the basics of the language of Greenland – basically an Inuit-based language with Danish influences.

Finally I was summoned to the cruise director’s office. Being a non-American, the ship can’t take me beyond Greenland unless I am in possession of an Electronic Travel Authority. I actually do have one so they took a photocopy of it.

Dinner this evening was rather different. I ended up at a table hosted by the ship’s photographer. There were about 6 of us and we all had quite a lengthy chat for about two hours and decided to form a little on-board photography club. That’s always good news because anything that gives any sort of help whatsoever is always well worth it.

This evening there is a folk music concert by two Icelandic musicians but I’m not in the mood. I’ll crack on with some more work and seeing that we’ll gain another hour at some point during the night as we move into Greenland time, I’ll have an early night too and hopefully make the most of it.

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Monday 15th July 2019 – YET ANOTHER …

… really depressing night last night. We hit a few strong waves round about 04:00 and that awoke me. I couldn’t go back to sleep and so ended up making a visit down the corridor for the usual reasons. I must stop drinking tea late at night.

But after that, I managed to go back to bed and to sleep, only to wake up 90 minutes later.

Despite the early awakening it was still a struggle to leave my stinking pit and I only just managed to beat the third alarm call.

Upstairs on deck it was cold and windy, and really foggy too. We had somehow managed to negotiate the entrance to the harbour at Heimaey here on Vestmannaeyar without having to turn round at the harbour mouth and reverse in as we did last time. Instead, we turned round inside the harbour.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then took Rosemary to visit the old buildings down by the lava flow. She had missed them last time.

Later on, while Rosemary went for a walk to the museum, I went for a really good stroll around the town and right around the other side of the harbour and the fishing docks. And if you think that I smell bad, you should smell the air when you have a fish-processing plant on one side of you and a colony of seabirds on the other.

One of the things that I did was to make some kind of story of photographs involving a returning trawler, a couple of fork-lift trucks stacking boxes full of fish, another fork-lift truck loading them into a shipping container, a huge lifting truck loading the container onto,the back of a lorry and finally the lorry disappearing into what passes for the sunset around here.

There is a ship repair yard here too and it makes the one in Granville pale into insignificance. They have a kind of internal railway system to move the ships around from the slipway and although it wasn’t being used it was still something interesting.

But I was surprised to learn that one of the largest customers for Icelandic fish is Nigeria. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Back on board ship I started to edit the outstanding pile of photographs but didn’t get very far because it was time for lunch. And time for an argument too (it didn’t take long, did it?) when someone asked me if I would be reaping the benefits of Brexit.

This afternoon I had another good crack at the photos and managed to edit quite a few dozen, although I was interrupted by going to crash out for a good 90 minutes during the afternoon. I’ve not been having such a good day.

But I’m impressed with some of the photos that I have taken. editing them, cropping and enlarging them has produced a good few that are quite spectacular. Investing in this camera was a very good decision.

Bad news though in that we aren’t going to go near to Surtsey to have a close look at the island. The sea is too rough and the weather is too bad for us to approach it with anything like the proximity that we need to have a good look.

After tea we had a singles party but there were only a few of us there. The weather has really got up now and the waves are not to everyone’s liking. But there was one person too many – a young guy who had been everywhere and done everything, a German who blamed the French for all of Germany’s problems.

I really don’t know where they dig up these people.

The evening soon came to a close as people disappeared quite quickly. I stayed up to do a little work and to organise myself better. We gain an hour tomorrow so we aren’t in too much of a rush to go to bed.

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Sunday 14th July 2019 – THIS MORNING …

… we walked all the way from the harbour at Reykjavik right the way through the city and out the other side, and up the hill to the big new modern church that towers above the place.

When we eventually arrived there we were greeted by a burly man standing cross-armed blocking the doorway, with the air of “none shall pass” as in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
“Why not?” asked Our Hero
“Because there’s a Mass going on. And you won’t understand it either because it’s in Icelandic so come back in an hour!”

Yes, it’s Sunday of course and I had completely forgotten.

Last night I had had a terrible night’s (lack of) sleep, probably one of the worst that I have had for quite a while. In fact so much so that I found myself on one occasion dictating the same dream twice. I’m clearly losing my marbles – not that I had too many in the first place.

Despite all of my exertions I did actually make it up (just) before the first alarm and staggered once more out on deck to take a couple of photos of Reykjavik in the rain. because the weather has now broken.

We had an early breakfast and then because we aren’t amongst the hordes saying goodbye to the ship today we had an hour or so free time. I spent my hour or so in the horizontal position on the bed and enjoyed every minute of what I remembered about it. Which wasn’t much.

At 09:00 we went out across the road to the café in the Flea Market where we were assured of a good wi-fi connection. And a good wi-fi connection it was too and we spent quite some time checking up on things, including the latest chaos in the UK.

Later, Rosemary wanted to go shopping for some presents for her friends so we headed off into town, looking at a few shops on the way, in one of which she bought a few winter woollies. After all, Iceland is the place to come for those.

There was the church of course, as I mentioned earlier, and then a walk down to the waterfront and back along the shore to the ship for lunch.

Grabbing Strawberry Moose we made our way back into town after lunch. We had had to wait for a while to give the rainstorm time to die down, so we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked.

The flea market was now open so we had a look around, and Rosemary tried some dried cod. A few more shops and a few more presents, and a couple of photo opportunities for His Nibs.

By now the rain was coming down in torrents so we fled back to the ship. All of our new co-voyagers were waiting to board but we didn’t hang about. We just charged through them and up the gangway onto The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour.

First thing that I did was to dive into the shower, taking a handful of clothes in with me. I needed a good scrub up and I have to keep on top of the laundry for I have a long way to go.

And then we had all of the briefings that I have sat through on innumerable occasions followed by the mandatory lifeboat drill. And in the time that it took to organise the drill we would have all disappeared beneath the waves a good while ago had we really been in trouble.

For tea we made the acquaintance of a couple from Edinburgh in Scotland on their first voyage. The husband had visited Greenland many years ago so he’s in for a bit of a shock when he gets back there.

After tea we had a tea and a chat, but it’s an early start tomorrow so we decided to retire early.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry. The pace is now going to heat up considerably.

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Saturday 13th July 2019 – HAVING HAD …

… yet another reasonable sleep with only a moderate amount of disturbance, I was ready for the alarm when it went off. And ready for the second one too. I did however manage to beat the third alarm.

For a change just recently, I remembered my medication too, so properly provided, I staggered up on deck to see what I could see. And the answer to that conundrum was “nothing at all” because there was more of this thick, clammy fog everywhere.

After breakfast, things changed slightly. We had a briefing or two but I drifted away after a while because I could see in the distance the mast of a boat. This was the pilot boat pulling up alongside and that told me that we must be close to land.

Accordingly, I went up on deck. And I’m glad that I did (and consequently missed the group photograph) because the manoeuvre to get into the harbour here at Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyar Islands is quite interesting. There was a volcanic eruption here in 1973 and a flow of lava spread down from the Eldfell mountain, engulfing half of the houses and flooded into the harbour entrance, almost closing it off.

As a result, the harbour mouth that used to be about 800 metres wide is now about 150 metres. The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour had to perform a series of spectacular manoeuvres, including turning around and reversing in. And when you have a 137-metre ship trying to turn round in a 150-metre opening, it’s certainly exciting.

Eventually we found our way in, pursued by a ferry from the mainland, and tied up.

I’d missed the start of lunch, which meant that I had to dash to be ready for our coach trip around the island. Our driver took us to the museum where we could see the history of the eruption as well as a house that had been excavated from the ash, and then off on a sight-seeing expedition.

He took us to a bay where Algerian pirates had landed and carried off half of the population into slavery, and also to the site of what is considered to be the first settlement on the island, dating from the late 9th Century and may even precede the official date of 874 AD that is given for the first Norse colonialisation of Iceland.

But it was very interesting listening to the guide and the driver talking about “Iceland” as if it were somewhere else and a completely different country to their own out here on Vestmannaeyar.

And had I known – but the local football club IBV Vestmannaeyar plays in the Icelandic Premier Division and they were playing “at home” this afternoon about half a mile away from here. I could have made the game had I put my skates on.

Back at the ship, the others wandered off for a zodiac ride. Strawberry Moose and I went for a walk down to the old fort, the old church and the old house to see what was going on. And I’m glad that I did as I only just managed to beat the caretaker locking up the church.

There were kids playing around, and a wedding party there too. All of the passing ships and boats were saluting them.

My trip took me to the local supermarket to compare prices. Seeing as this is an island in the Far North, I found that the prices were not as ridiculously high as I was expecting. In fact, some of the goods were priced quite reasonably when compared to the mainland of Iceland. I still couldn’t afford to live here though.

Back on the ship we had tea, interrupted by passing the island of Surtsey, the new one that sprang up out of the Atlantic 50-odd years ago and which we saw on our way into Iceland.

We all said our goodbyes too because tomorrow will be quite hectic as people leave. And then we had the “talent show”, from which I steered well clear. I’ve seen at first hand the embarrassment that this kind of event may cause.

So now it’s bed-time. And an early start yet again tomorrow. There’s a lot to be done so I hope that I have a good night’s sleep.

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Friday 12th July 2019 – LAST NIGHT …

… I mentioned the overwhelmingly thick fog that we had encountered coming out of Seydisfjordur. This morning when we awoke, the situation hadn’t improved and we were swathed in a rather thick blanket of nebulous nonsense.

I heard the alarm go off at 06:00 and then again at 06:07. However I did manage to beat the 06:20 alarm, although there wasn’t all that much in it.

The weather wasn’t all that good for photography but I took a couple just to be on the safe side, and then went in to breakfast;

After breakfast we put on our winter clothing and headed out to the zodiacs. The sea was calm but visibility was pretty poor and it was trying to rain. We made it ashore at the small town of Djupivogur without any major mishap, but we aren’t staying here. There are a couple of buses waiting for us to take us onward. One of them was an elderly MAN-engined Bova Futura, tri-axle and 15 metres long. Quite naturally I leapt aboard.

After about an hour’s drive we stopped at the Foss Hotel for a toilet break as we were not so equipped on our bus. It gave me an opportunity to have a little wander around and take a couple of photos of the Icelandic scenery. Here on the east coast, the coastal alluvial plain is very good farming country, although it’s compressed up against the mountains in the same way that the land is on the western coast of Newfoundland.

Back on our bus we headed off to the glacial lagoon. Here at the foot of the VatnaJokull ice field, a glacier discharges its icebergs into a lagoon and we had come here to witness it. After all, ice fields, glaciers and icebergs won’t be around for much longer at the current rate of global warming.

We were really lucky too. A huge part of the glacier had calved off a few days ago and the lagoon was littered with icebergs waiting to melt down so that they would be small enough to drift out to see on the meltwater current. There’s a submerged terminal moraine that stops them floating straight out.

First item on the agenda was a good walk down to the lagoon and around its edges looking at the ice. It really was so spectacular down there; A little further around I found a ruined, collapsed bridge. It would be nice to think that it had been brought down by an iceberg or an ice field, but that is extremely unlikely.

Lunch was arranged for us too, and they did me proud with a vegan carrot soup followed by ratatouille. No complaints at all there, except that a second helping would have been delicious.

Once lunch was over we donned more wet-weather gear and headed off to one of their zodiacs. A young Czech student took us out for a ride around the lagoon to see the icebergs, the ice face and to tell us all about the place and the history. And it started to rain while we were out there.

Our zodiac was almost the last back so our bus was last to leave. And on the way back we were waylaid for 15 minutes by a pack of harbour seals on a gravel bank just offshore. One of them was having a whale of a time floundering and flouncing about in the water, giving all of us quite a performance.

With a pit stop too back at the Foss Hotel, we were definitely the last back at the quayside and the zodiac crews had gone to sleep. There wasn’t time to put on our wet-weather gear because we needed to leave our anchorage pretty smartly, so we all ended up rather damp, as by now it was raining quite heavily.

Back on board, I headed for a shower. Not because I needed one but because it’s the quickest way of warming me up. And I washed my clothes too. They were quite wet anyway with the rain so they would benefit.

After tea I lounged around for a while but there’s a late breakfast on offer tomorrow so now is the time for an early night, I reckon and I can catch up on my beauty sleep.

If only …

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Thursday 11th July 2019 – WE’VE HAD …

… a really busy day today. And I do mean busy.

Last night I had a very mixed night – I went to bed early, fell asleep watching a film, managed to awaken in time to switch everything off and go back to sleep.

Nevertheless i was awake enough at about 04:00 and again at 05:50 but hardly in any mood to leave the bed except for the usual reasons that any man of my age will know.

Once the alarms all went off (I found my phone last night under a couple of pieces of paper as I was tidying up) I had a struggle to leave my stinking pit, but once on deck I found that we were pulling in to the port of Seydisfjordur.

And we weren’t alone either, for there was a big car ferry, the MS Norrona, moored alongside. This is the ferry that goes to the Faroe Islands and Denmark and how I would have liked to have gone for a ride on that in order to come across the North Sea.

Mind you, I would have had a few logistics problems as it’s a once-a-week only sailing. And then I would have to get to Reykjavik. But there were hordes of cars of all kinds of European countries lined up ready to board, and streams of ditto disembarking all over the place. There were even several British vehicles.

After Breakfast I came back to my room where I … errr … had a little rest and almost missed my call at 08:40.

Jessie led us on a photography hike to the waterfall where we climbed up to the top of the path and took a pile of photos. The day had started off cold but by the time that I was on top I had divested myself of almost everything.

Back into town afterwards, where on the way I stumbled across an ancient Scandinavian vehicle. No idea what it is so I shall have to do some research. But while I was doing that, the ferry loaded up and sailed out. “Gone and never called me mother” as they might have said in “East Lynne”.

We photographed the Rainbow Walk and a few other places in the town centre and then off to the church.

On the way back to the ship I came across the local scrapyard where I spent a very pleasant half hour poking around the ruins and relics. Nothing all that exciting or old unfortunately. But while I was continuing on to the ship, another cruise ship pulled in and tied up to where the ferry had been.

One mug of tea later we were back on shore. Rosemary had missed the church so I took her there, only to find that it had closed for lunch. So we went for a walk and a visit to a couple of arty places. But by now the wind had increased and it was going bitterly cold. A hanging cloud was rolling up the fjord making things worse.

Back yet again at the ship and I fetched my packed lunch as we were off on the bus.

First stop was at an archaeological site at Thorunnarstadir where an old Norse church had been discovered. We had a good look around it. They had come across and excavated a graveyard there, of which half of the bodies had been interred in the foetal position indicating a pagan burial, but others in the more usual Christian style. Iceland was Christianised at 1000AD so the church and the Christian burials would date from some time round about then.

But it’s interesting to speculate about what might have been on the site prior to the church that led to it being chosen as a site for pagan burials. There was a Norse village here that has yet to be properly investigated, and interestingly, a modern village had sprung up in the immediate vicinity but had been abandoned comparatively recently, in the last 50 or so years.

While they were excavating the church they unearthed some relics and these are now in the museum at Rejkjavik.

On we went to the Skalanes nature reserve at the edge of the fjord. We were given a discussion on lupins, how they were planted to anchor and fertilise the soil but how they have gone on the rampage and found to be most pervasive – the country is covered in them. There were plenty of rhubarb and angelica growing here in the neighbourhood.

Dodging the terns, we went to a cliff site to see the nesting birds but I was more interested in the geological formations. And a gyrfalcon put in an appearance but unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough with the camera.

There was a pile of feathers lying around and it was explained to us that a short while ago a Skua had caught a fulmar, drowned it to kill it, and then dragged the carcass onshore for a feast. This had all taken place in front of a crowd of onlookers.

The road out there was narrow and treacherous and involved driving through several rough, rocky fords where there were several impressive waterfalls. It was a good job that we had a 4 wheel drive bus.

Tea was a barbecue and I almost missed it, having a shower and a clothes wash, followed by yet another relax.

We had a chat afterwards, including a young American boy, and now I’m off for an early night. I need it too. There won’t be any photography tonight because we are now encased in an overwhelmingly thick fog.

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