Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

We were picked up at 9:20am and were sitting in the airport by 10:30am waiting for our 12:20pm flight.  Flight got away at 13:20, it was late getting in. The crew are Scottish and I am finding them hard to understand, their words run into each other. As we get into the country side that might prove even more interesting. ? We landed at 16:20pm (2 hr flight & clocks forward one hour), bags arrived at 16:55pm and after a 30 min taxi ride were in our hotel by 17:20pm.

We surprised ourselves and got away at 8am and headed towards Sauoarkrokur to see the Icelandic horses.  They are a great looking small horse, we have enjoyed seeing them all over Iceland.  

We were all packed up and ready to go by 8.30am this morning.  Was 8C, the air had a bit of a chill to it.  We headed half an hour away to Godafoss – waterfall of the Gods. It is divided into two horseshoe falls. Was pretty and close to the car park so didn’t involve any long walks. 

We washed our underwear overnight on the coldest night, 7C, since we have been here ?it was still a long way from dry this morning so we brought it along with us. Have it laid out in the car and the heater cranked up ?won’t take long to dry. 

Left at 8am, we have a lot of driving today.  Filled up with diesel, not long after, it started raining quite heavily.  And it got heavier ?

We went through our first tunnel here, 11/2 km long.

We started early today, after cleansing sulphur assisted showers, we figured we were ready for anything! Seriously, the water here at our hotel has a strong sulphur aroma to it. Something to do with the volcanic ground water here at our hotel!

When we opened the curtains this morning we were greeted with a view of clouds rolling down the distant mountains. They looked like an avalanche captured in time, as beautiful as amazing.

We were picked up from our hotel and taken to get our hire car, and were on the road by 9am heading to the iconic Icelandic Golden Circle, featuring the 3 most visited tourist sites near Reykjavik. It drizzled on and off for most of the morning, but nothing too serious, and the afternoon was dry. A good start for our first day driving on the wrong (righthand) side of the road. Our theme for the day seemed to be, “Keep right, Keep right!” and “Not so far right!”, but we made it through our first day with both of us driving.

Happy 61st birthday Greg, how lucky spending it here.  After birthday cards, messages and phone calls we headed out on a two hour city walk tour of Reykjavik.   What we enjoyed most was our guide Sara.  She is a formidable 39 year old, History Masters, teacher.   She embodied everything I have read about Icelandic women, strong, fierce, intelligent and no bullshit. Sara also had a good sense of humour.   They bring their children up to, Think like a Viking.  You can achieve what you want.  There is a lot to like here.  

We were all packed and in a taxi to the airport on time at 10am. Pity our flight wasn’t on time.

Deb got a message saying it was now leaving at 13:30 rather than the 12:55 scheduled time. By the time we got to the airport that had gone out to 14:12.
We were near the end of a long line at check in and got talking to a man who was going fishing on the west coast of Iceland. He said Iceland had been in drought for several months. He was hoping for rain to fill the rivers!

We had a little dilemma today, Manchester is about 90 mins away from Cartmel, we can’t check in at our accommodation until 3pm, so we looked around for things to do in the morning. Cate, our host, suggested we visit Sizergh Castle and Gardens. She said it was very good so we decided to go and have a look.