When I saw the fog moving above the river Skellefteälven this morning I had to interrupt my drive to work to take some pictures. It was the coldest morning that I experienced here since last winter. Air temperatures were still above zero but the first ground frost was visible.
When it comes to seasons I like winter the most, but autumn is so beautiful, too.
It’s still quite warm in Skelleftehamn, hardly below 10 °C the last nights, but today it rained and some of the birch trees start casting off their leaves. Summer 2018 is history, autumn is coming.
After two weeks in Iceland Annika and I arrived in Skellefteå today. The first thing I saw after leaving the airport building was this front loader.
The banner fixed to the shovel says “Visst är det kul att skotta snö!”. In English this means: “Sure it’s fun to shovel snow (manually)!”
That’s an interesting welcome in the middle of September.
This article is part of the series “2018-08: Iceland”.
Icelandic tourists come from all over the world. They are young or old, rich or not so rich (best not to be poor, because Iceland is expensive), hip or square, but most of them have one thing in common: their hired car.
As long as you do not choose the three-day ferry crossing from Hirtshals in Denmark or go on a cruise you will arrive in Iceland by plane. Since Iceland has limited public transport, it’s best to hire a car. Many tourists do. Some models are quite popular as for example the tiny Hyundai i10 or the ever-present Dacia Duster with 4WD.
There are however roads in Iceland, that you may not (and cannot) drive with such cars, the so called F-roads. F stands for Fjall, the Icelandic word for mountain. The challenge of these F-roads is however less the roadway itself but the river crossings. So you may not manage most F-roads with your average “pick-up-the-kids-from-school”-SUV.
That’s were the real off-road vehicles come into play. I saw a lot of of them, some with Icelandic registration but many coming from Germany, Switzerland or other countries. Some are classical off-roaders as the Land Rover Defender, while others look more like armoured military vehicles. Some of them have foldable roof top tents, some are buses used for touristic day trips.
I have to admit, that I like such cars but I definitely have no use for them. My Subaru Outback probably never will ford rivers, but I’m sure that it consumes less than half the gasoline than even the smallest of the off-road vehicles shown above.
This article is part of the series “2018-08: Iceland”.
While I showed a lot of photos of the varied Icelandic landscapes the last two weeks I didn’t write anything about the main town Reykjavík yet. More than a third of the Islanders lives there and almost two-thirds of the Icelanders in the Greater Reykjavík region.
I’ve never been in Iceland before and was curious about Reykjavík, too. Anyway I have to admit, that I prefer the smaller towns, the rural areas and the uninhabited landscapes, but I want to show at least some photos I took.
This article is part of the series “2018-08: Iceland”.
After two weeks in Iceland Annika and I fly back to Sweden today. The first flight from Keflavík to København (Copenhagen) led first over the Føroyar (Faroe Islands), then over Shetland. Luckily there were some holes in the clouds to peek through.
This article is part of the series “2018-08: Iceland”.
Thursday, 6 September
From our overnight stay Sæberg it’s only 177 km to Reykjavík, where we had to return our hired car. That’s not much for one and a half days by car. Therefore we decided to take some more detours.
First we followed the road 68 to Hólmavík, a city on Iceland’s West Fjords. We continued along the coast until we came to a junction, where the gravel road 608 crosses the peninsula. It would be possible to go round the inhabited part of the peninsula, but that’s a detour of 390 km.
Quite near the fjord Þorskafjörður, there’s a small city called Reykhólar. We considered staying there over night but since it was still quite early, we continued instead to the peninsula Snæfellsnes.
The weather had been warm, sunny, calm and friendly for the whole week. But now it worsened, low clouds appeared, it started to drizzle and got very windy. In Ólafsvík – yes, I have my own bay ;-) – we found not only a nice hostel to stay but also a nice restaurant that served us a delicious goat cheese pizza.
Sorry to say, I didn’t make a single photo from Ólafsvík that day. First we were too busy with our dinner, than with re-packing our belongings, because the next day we would have to return our car. Than it was too dark to take photos without tripod and too stormy to take photos with tripod.
The only photo I made is a snapshot I took from the bathroom the next morning. Still stormy, still rainy.
This article is part of the series “2018-08: Iceland”.
Wednesday, 5 September
Relaxing in a hot pool.
Relaxing in a hot outdoor pool in Sæberg, Iceland. In the beginning of September. With an air temperature of round 8 °C.
How is that possible? Iceland has so many geothermal areas, where the ground is hot, that hot water is freely available in many places. Our hot pool today had round 38 °C. If you wanted to cool down, you just had to go to the beach of the fjord Hrútafjörður and take a bath there. There the water was at least 30 °C colder. We started with the cold bath, but stayed much longer in the comfort of the hot pool.
