Iceland - March 2016

[Crispin]

Well, today was "fun". The spade came in handy. (read: A life-saver)


The turn to the church is pretty unassuming. A small track with a red sign.

Map




The drive there is quite fun. A pretty muddy track with some sticky snowy bits and greasy uphill sections. Nothing to bad though. A nice drive with the usual scenery around.

Made it to the church was was pretty cool. The house - victor's house - was empty. Everything locked up tight. The church too was closed up. I guess they're fair-weather religious types I find it fascinating as to why you would build a church there. Back in the day it would taken a day by horse to get you there.









Part 3 coming up

 

[Crispin]

Driving back towards the 690 was quick and easy. There is a nice lookout point just as you get back on which has some great views.







Instead of going the quick way over the bridge I decided to go the long way around. This was further justified by the "coffee" sign on the side of the road.



This road was the first time by backside did a twitch.

Just after getting onto the road you're greeted by many many rocks lying on the load. You're driving on pretty much a single lane road with a sheer drop on one side and a very steep cliff on your right.

I assume the rocks were falling due to the snow melting. Seeing as it was raining this was probably not the nest time to do this.



Time and time again I am surprised by where people live. There are 3 farm houses along this road and a couple weeks ago it was labelled as "Impassable"



There was a road which I would have liked to have taken but, well, you'd need a monster truck for it




As I got around to the other side what I had hoped was not the road was turning out to indeed be the road. There were large patches of snow on it which looked like that had slid down the side of the mountain. More and more the road was covered in fallen rocks. They ranged from round smooth boulders to ones which had sharp nasty points on them.






Crossing the second (or third?) patch of snow became interesting. As I got half way the back slipped out slightly. The put the heebie-jeebies up me. There was not much room for me to slip to the left as the edge of the road was there. The edge, as we had already seen, was pretty lose and crumbly. It would not have looked pretty if it had given underneath me. It made me rethink the next few parts...





Having got past that I was hoping to not have to do it again. Sadly, around the next bend, I was proved wrong.


This put an end to my journey this way round. I did not feel like falling into the valley today.


On the way back I chuckled at the HT pylons. They had some stronger concrete ones for where the cable goes over the water. They must have been 12ft tall.



A return back to the main road was done and we called it a day on that.



Iceland has a weirdly high number of horses. I found it interesting that they stay outside in the winter. Our neighbour puts jackets on her horses when the temp reaches 10C. Like the people of Iceland, these horses are well 'ard.

 

[clivehorridge]

Good stuff Cris, must have been frustrating to have got that far and not getting through.

It's easy this end to think "ah, just give it some welly, you'll get through that" but I do a lot of offroad by myself and it's amazing how sensible you become when alone.

I think with a bunch of lads, you'd end up doing things that maybe you shouldn't.

Keep posting Cris, I'm enjoying this.

 

[toolsplus]

wonderful country
i went on a walking tour about 15 years ago,it was in August tho'
going over the glacier the guide said ''dont fall in the holes 'cause they're a 1000 metres deep and we wont see you again!''
only time i ever used sticks

saw a lot of 4wd's having fun that summer

 

[AndyCook]

Thanks for sharing Crispin, good to see the photos. We didn't visit that corner of Iceland last summer so nice to see what it looks like. Looks like you had a fun time


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[iceman]

Looks like you had a great trip Crispin. Thanks for sharing - Iceland is deffo on my list now