Thor's Outdoors!: Jökull this Jökull that

Jökull this Jökull that - July 28

Sunday means Icelanders sleep in so the supermarket didn´t open until 12 o´clock. No matter though since I like to sleep in also. BUT! This meant I missed the nice weather in the morning and had 5-6 hours of rain during the afternoon while I was riding. It was flat and the wind was in my favour though, so it was nice cruising along the coast, with a beautiful view of the mountains and the glacier outflows to my right. Everything so well coordinated, the names of the mountains corresponding to the names of the glaciers and the rivers and also the farms. I had already gone 40 miles before I stopped for dinner, a miserable affair in the rain, but tasty all the same. I later learned that the area I was passing, Suðursveit is one of the wettest parts of Iceland so I'm at least glad I got to experience a typical Suðursveit day! I got to Jökulsárslón and had to stop to see the icebergs. Explaining the icebergs, the glacier Vatnajökull used to be a lot smaller when settlers first arrived, but grew a lot until the late 19th century and is now slowly receding again. The receding glacier has left behind a lagoon where parts of the glacier breaks off to form icebergs floating around with the tide. The tide was coming in as I was there so I saw massive chunks of ice crashing into each other, some breaking apart and flipping over, really cool to watch! Once I left the lagoon and started heading towards fjallsjökull, I got my first proper tailwind of the whole trip and really started flying. I was going at least 15mph (24km/h), but at times up to 22mph (35km/h) even on the flats with a fully loaded touring bike! Compare that to my previous average of about 11mph (17km/h) and going about 19mph (30km/h) in the ironman. As I turned around Öræfi, where Iceland´s highest mountain is found, the rain also stopped and although wet and cold I finished the last 25km to the national park at Skaftafell. I took down some bread and cheese for a quick dinner, quietly set up my tent and went to bed amongst perhaps 100 other tents with other travellers.

Leaving Höfn - first distance marker back to Reykjavík!

Cold and wet by iceberg lagoon

Arrived to Skaftafell!

Crossing the sands - July 29

The sun was out when I woke so left all my gear behind and headed out for a hike through the national park to see Svartifoss. I remember it as well from 20 years past, but it was more beautiful than I remember! Black basalt columns create a spectacular backdrop to the waterfall, which with little surprise reminded me a lot of Hallgrímskirkjan in Reykjavík. Later on the hike I met some volunteers from Britain the US and the Netherlands who were fixing the trails as part of the Iceland Conservation Volunteers group. Not a bad way to spend a summer, traveling Iceland and working for a while in the national parks! Back at the visitors centre I read about the volcanic eruptions in 1362 and 1996 under Vatnajökull. It was interesting to read about the one in 1362 because basically the whole area I had cycled through the previous day had been covered in ash and pumice and later flooded during the eruption, destroying farms and killing hundreds. In 1996 there was another massive eruption which flooded the plains below the glacier. The floodwaters were equivalent to a river larger than any on earth except the Amazon. It destroyed the highway connecting east and west, washing way the bridges that had only been built in the 70´s finally connecting the Öræfi region to the western part of Iceland. Leaving Skaftafell I stopped only about 2 miles out at a memorial to those floods, with a massive piece of mangled steel from the destroyed bridge on display. But just as I got off my bike, another cyclist pulled up who I recognised from earlier in the trip when climbing Öxnadalsheiði to Akureyri! It was Scott, an American with a bushy white beard who I had also heard about from the British cyclist Dan that I spoke to at Mývatn. Scott was on the last few days of a 5200 mile tour that started in April of Ireland, Scotland, Norway, the Faroes and Iceland! It was terrific talking to him, he said he would do a tour like that every 5 years, while going on long hiking or kayaking trips the other years. We talked for about 45 minutes before he took off to take advantage of the tail wind that had picked up. Unfortunately that meant that I was going into the wind on my way east. It was quite tough, as I was crossing the desolate sands and floodplain of Skeiðarásandur with a long straight road ahead of me and the wind in my face. Fortunately it was sunny, and I had a shorter ride this day so it wash´t long until I had crossed the sands and had about 15 miles before arriving to Kirkjubæjarklaustur. Arriving at the campsite I saw several people that I´d seen on the hike earlier in the day at Skaftafell, and even a Romanian guy I had spoken to briefly in Sauðarkókur about 10 days earlier. It's quite amazing how small the world can be, especially when travelling and having the time to observe and meet people!