Sunday, August 23rd, 2026

Distance driven – 259 Kilometres (1143 total)
Distance hiked – 5 Kilometres

I slept like a dead person and, when I woke up, it was not raining ! I closed my eyes, opened them very slowly and looked again – it still was not raining. Hooray ! It was however, still very early, only just after 05:00 – so I shut my eyes again – and then, like magic, it was 06:45.

I got up, fetched Lucie a coffee and went and sat in the breakfast room to type up my thoughts. The harbour was just across the road and a few yachts bobbed at anchor in the sunshine. The sea was blue and across the bay, tall green mountains rose into an equally blue sky. Picture perfect. The only blot on the whole glorious panorama of landscape, was an extremely muddy silver jeep parked across the road. Hang on, that was ours !

The room included breakfast and, eventually, a lady came to the breakfast room to get it ready. As I was there, we chatted. She was thrilled to hear that I lived in Prague, because she had a trip there, planned for the coming November. She had been there before and was looking forward to returning. I posed her the “Where do Icelanders go shopping ?” question. She told me that most shopping is done locally, at shops in petrol stations, but that there was a supermarket in the town of Isafjordur, about 22 kilometres away. She joked that, particularly in the Winter, it was not wise to forget anything important when you were there.

The breakfast was ample and varied and, as I could get milk, I could have my own tea. The improved weather meant that we did not dawdle over it too long though. Lucie had thoughtfully planned a hike in our end destination, Holmavik, so she was keen to get going.

We set off in bright sunshine. Not having to rush about in order not to get wet felt strange, but we took it in our stride.

As we left, we noticed that new avalanche defences were being constructed above the town. Scary ! 

Actually, scary scarcely sums it up. In 1995, twenty residents of Flateyri were killed in a huge avalanche. In such a tiny town, that must have been doubly horrific. Defences were constructed immediately afterwards that saved the town in several subsequent Winters. However, one avalanche partially bypassed the barriers, luckily without fatal consequences. Extra preventative works were, nonetheless, commissioned against any possible future threat and work on them had now started.

In sunshine, Iceland appeared so very different. It was difficult to believe we were even in the same country as we had been the day before. 

At the junction with Road 60, we went left and headed, initially, towards Isafjordur and the supermarket of fable. Lucie had lost her comb and she needed a new one. We soon came to a second tunnel which, I was amused to note, did NOT prohibit horses… Yi haaaaaa ! Oddly, the greater part of this tunnel was single track and, as a bonus, it was the oncoming traffic that had to pull into little bays, marked with an “M”. We did not have to stop once.

We easily found the supermarket but, although it did exist, it was not open on a Sunday. My still  tousled wife and I drove on, switching to Road 61 as we recrossed the junction we had arrived from.

As she is vaguely considering buying herself a new car, Lucie was keen to drive the little Suzuki. We chose a place where we could pull off of the carriageway to change driver. The spot we chose offered a fine view of the most northerly promontory of the West Fjords. Snow was visible on the cloudy, forbidding peaks. This is the most remote and inhospitable of the main “branches” of the West Fjords and we would not be going there.

By coincidence, there was another tunnel entrance just up ahead and a sign, in the parking area, announced that this was the Arnardalshamar tunnel and it was Iceland’s oldest road tunnel. After initially defeating their efforts in 1936, it was hacked out, by local men, over the period of a year between 1947 and 1948. This was thanks to a new, British, technology, the water-cooled drill. Amusingly, the first hole they made did not line up with the road – so they had to widen it ! With Lucie now at the wheel, we entered the tunnel and, about two seconds later, emerged out of the far end – it is about thirty metres long.

Being a passenger was a new experience for me. High concentration was replaced by a new sensation, fear !
ONLY JOKING !
Lucie is, in fact, an extremely competent driver.

What I was experiencing was wonder. When you are driving, the huge proportion of your attention has to be on the road. This is particularly true in Iceland with its plethora of poorly surfaced roads, serpentine curves and suicidal sheep. As a consequence, although a lot of it had passed in front of my eyes, I had not really seen the grandeur that surrounded me on every side. Now I could see it – and it was glorious. Majestic mountains, blue bays, bird life (there were hundreds of swans) and seals !

Suddenly, there were people beside the road and a sign said there were seals. You just have to, don’t you ? Lucie pulled over and parked. Of course, the promised seals were there, but on small islands offshore. Interesting, I suppose, if you had never seen a wild seal, but we had, so we did not linger. 

The bulk of our route was to be around the coast. That meant driving all the way into a fjord, crossing the vik on a bridge – and then driving all the way out again, around the headland and repeating the process. To imagine our route, picture one of those drawings that a child makes by following the outline of their hand with a felt-tip pen.

Lucie drove and I looked. It was totally uneventful. Road 61 appeared in extremely good repair and there were only a few gravelly stretches – none of the rutted rock with no surface at all that I had needed to cope with in the previous day’s rain. A lesser man might easily have sulked.

So it was that, smoothly and easily, we crossed the final part of very picturesque high fjell and began our descent to Holmavik. Just short of the town, Lucie swapped back to being a passenger or, rather, a navigator. First she guided me to Road 67. This took us into the tiny port and, more importantly as far as Lucie was concerned, right to the front door of a real supermarket, Krambudin. She went in and bought a comb, I stayed out and bought some petrol. I was soon using the petrol and that is all I am saying.

We were hungry and Iceland, on a Sunday, is not the place for that. Because we had, as planned, arrived well before check-in, we headed to an open restaurant, Café Riis (Hafnarbraut 39, Hólmavík). What a wonderful little place it was. The hostess, who it was revealed had a Scottish partner, spoke wonderful, almost colloquial, English despite that fact. The food was great. We both had smoked salmon, followed by a tasty fish soup – and the hussy tempted me into drinking a great, locally produced, dark lager with the persuasive phrase “Would you like a great, locally produced, dark lager ?”. The young boy and girl waiting tables and helping out in the kitchen were, you guessed it, Czech.

Lucie had planned a hike so, leaving our little jeep in the restaurant parking lot, we tightened our boots and set off. We climbed out of the harbour and, after passing perilously close to the supermarket, took a beautifully marked path towards a nearby summit, Not Everest, you understand, but it was quite some way up. The entire path had been edged with small rocks to delineate it. This represented, cumulatively, a simply gigantic amount of effort. I am always amazed by the, largely unremarked, civic work that some people just do for others.

As I said, it was not Everest, but it was quite a climb. It was sunny, but windy, which meant we did not overheat. We were rewarded by spectacular views in about 270 degrees showing stark, green, rock strewn fjells and the tiny white harbour buildings flanked by the spectacular blue waters of the bay. Holmavik is a place where you can go whale watching, but we were too high up for any “Thar’ she blows!” moments.

Out came “little tripy” and we recorded the moment for posterity.

There are, as not just the mathematicians know, a total of 360 degrees. We had not, on our way up, spotted that the “summit” we were heading for was a false one and that, up ahead, lay a second climb to the real one. Helvellyn, anyone ?

We set off again, still climbing. We came to a large cairn. These are everywhere in Iceland, no matter how remote the location. It seems to be a national (or, maybe, international) obsession, we built one on our honeymoon there in 2004. We think there are probably more cairns than there are Icelanders. Short of time, we added two small rocks to the considerable pile.

We kept climbing and without too much effort came to the “real” summit – where there was a second and even larger cairn to which we also contributed.

Then, as in life, it was downhill all the way. Oddly, the entire area was swarmed with lupins. These were ready to seed and, in the silence, you could actually hear the pods clicking as they prepared to split.

We do tend to walk quietly. I can hear my rasping breath, but apart from the wind and birdsong, that is about it. We came upon a female Black Grouse (Tetrao Tetrix), that fluttered low over Lucie’s head and sat on a rock beside the path. These are normally the shyest and most secretive of birds (as things tend to be, when they are regularly shot at) and it is hard to get within sight of one. But, this one basically ignored us. At one point, we were only about two metres away. Even the beep of the camera did not spook it. It sat on the rock and watched us walk away.

Lucie is such a planner ! We descended the final slope and directly into the car-park where we had abandoned our little Suzuki a couple of hours before. Lucie jumped in and I somehow squeezed my aching legs beneath the wheel. Holmavik is a small town and it only took us about a minute to locate our lodgings. It was not exactly the Ritz-Carlton but, as we always say “We have stayed in the Wigimooltha Roadhouse”. Our room was tiny, if we had bought a cat with us it would have remained unswung, but it had two beds and WiFi. What else do you really need when you are only passing through ? The owner gave us some milk and there was a PROPER teapot. Heaven can come in many guises.

We rested for a while and then walked back to Riis for our evening meal. Walking there took almost five minutes ! Ever inquisitive, Lucie asked the hostess what “Riis” meant in Icelandic. Short answer, nothing. Riis was the family name of the Dane who built the house in the early 1900s – and there were photos to prove it.

At lunchtime, we had noticed a rather intriguing fish dish containing cod “chins”. Who, other than the most ardent pescophile (not to be confused with the somewhat distasteful pescophiliac), even knew that a cod had a chin ? It turns out that they do. The cut is often heart-shaped and it is a very traditional, Icelandic, speciality. We ordered it. It was pretty nice but, fried in butter, it was exceedingly rich. It probably would not be top of my list for a repeat helping. Luckily, Salome had successfully tempted me, yet again, with the words “Would you like to try a great, locally produced, amber lager ?” and that cleared my palate. We rounded everything off and who would not ? with chocolate ice-cream.

We ambled back to our lodging. In the pinkish twilight, the waters of the bay were like a sheet of glass. Various gulls and terns were diving in and gobbling down small fish. Idyllic scarcely summed it up.

We found our small room and, unable to do any cat related exercises, I wriggled under my quilt and that was that !