Iceland in Winter

In this episode we discuss Malcolm's Winter trip to Iceland.

Hear us get to grips with plate tectonics, geophysics, atmospheric phenomena and avant-garde Icelandic art . Whilst avoiding snow blindness, scolding water and fermented fish based meals, sometimes all at the same time.

We check out the well traveled Golden Circle route from Reykjavik including Thingvellir National Park, Strokkur Geyser and Gullfoss Waterfall.  We talk about hunting for the Northern lights and name check this helpful forecast service: https://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/

If you have a story to share or some feedback to give just contact us at contact.unraveltravel@gmail.com

Our theme music is Traveler's Blues by Jerzy Gorecki from Pixabay (with licence)

https://pixabay.com/users/jerzyg%C3%B3recki-2233926/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Unravel Travel, where every journey has a story.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

A thing I hadn't really anticipated was the sunsets on the snowy mountains. You know, you get that colour. Yeah. And I I wasn't expecting that at all. It's you know very nice. Um so to go and do something like that at an evening point was perfect, really. Really. There was a cafe there, and in fact we did eat out there, but it was incredibly expensive. Petra had a beer and it was about a ten quid, and this is like nearly ten years ago. There's an Aurora Borealis forecast uh website which looks at the solar intensity and climatic situation and cloud cover and tells you when you should be able to see them and when you might not be able to see them. And it had been predicted that the intensity was going to be reasonable. So on the way back we uh kept stopping and getting out of the car and having a look.

unknown 1:22

Shh.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

It's oh so quiet. Shh it's oh so still. Shh shh you're all alone. Shh shh and so peaceful until.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Very good. Did you go to sleep there? Bjork, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

Yes, that's right. It's Bjork. Well, it's not, it's Malcolm here, but uh but that was Bjork. And so does that give you any clues? Well, that and the fact that I'm reading the episode plan.

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Uh could it be Iceland that we're we're covering today?

SPEAKER_03 1:58

It is, yeah. I struggled to think of any other cultural reference apart from perhaps something Viking, but that would have probably been quite difficult to read.

SPEAKER_05 2:06

Well, yes, yeah. And when I was thinking, I think I might have mentioned to you that I was thinking it was probably only going to be Bjork as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

I don't think I can translate runes very well.

SPEAKER_05 2:18

Well, when my brother sees them, he just goes, Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Oh yeah, I could have done that.

SPEAKER_05 2:24

Yeah. Okay. You went to Iceland, didn't you? How long ago was that? I think it was in January.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Well, it doesn't seem like it was particularly long ago, but you know, it was quite a long time ago now, 2017.

SPEAKER_05 2:38

Yeah. You know, when you say 2017, you don't think it seems that long ago, but when you add up the years, yeah, just a few years before COVID, but but that's quite a long time ago now. So exactly.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

So uh what made you choose Iceland? But it seems like quite a strange choice now. If we wanted to go and see the Northern Lights, and uh and Iceland's a sort of interesting place different to anywhere we've been before, and but actually you seem to see the northern lights everywhere nowadays. I mean that these they just seem to be coming more and more visible. I don't know if that's something to do with deterioration of the ozone layer. This isn't a science podcast, so I I can't be certain about that.

SPEAKER_05 3:16

I've I've still not seen them, even though you're supposed to be able to see them here, although I think it's always with a camera here.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

No, I don't think maybe I'm exceptions, but no, I don't I don't think that is the case, but I think you've got to be at the right sort of time. You've got to stay up till midnight, for example, Dave. Which is a bit of a challenge for you. I can wake up at midnight to go for my first pee of the night. You need to switch back on to caffeinet coffee if you want to stay up to midnight. Yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_05 3:41

Can we see them in check? I can stay up to midnight in check.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

No, because then northern, of course, we're much further south. Oh yeah, good point. So I mean the chances I mean they are.

SPEAKER_05 3:49

If we live to 120, maybe we'll see them in check.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

That's right. So, yeah, uh we went in January for a sort of long weekend, four days, I think, something like that. We'd actually, for my old business, we'd just taken on a customer, which was the City of Reykjavik Council. So I knew some people in Reykjavik and they gave us some good hints about what to go and see and do.

SPEAKER_05 4:12

That that's interesting. Just the four days bit of it. Was that including the travel there and back? That's quite a short time to go. Yeah, I mean, I imagine Iceland's maybe further than it is.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

No, it it was it was sort of four days plus a bit of travel on either end. I think I think we flew out and arrived late the night of that we arrived, if you see what I mean. Then we had four days, and I think we flew out on the last evening. Okay. Is that enough for it, would you say? Most people just do the sort of bits that we did, which is the vicinity around Reykjavik. There is a very interesting drive all the way round the island, which takes you definitely longer than that.

SPEAKER_05 4:50

But to see the sort of main highlights, you'd say four days is probably that's that's good because obviously a long weekend brings it into a lot more people's sort of ability to go and do this trip.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Yeah, at that at that sort of time we were doing quite a lot of long weekends because the kids were at that sort of age where we couldn't really leave them at home for a long period of time, and finding somebody prepared to sit with them for more than you know half an hour was a challenge. So well, I I I did it once, they were a bit older. So often we looked at sort of four-day type trips at that at that point, but we flew from I think Gatwick to the main airport, Keflavik. I have to warn people that are Icelandic and and get triggered by poor pronunciation that they're in for a bad trip. I've tried to pronounce things as I think they are phonetically, but that's probably not how an Icelandic person would pronounce them.

SPEAKER_05 5:44

I certainly won't be correcting you.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Good. And yeah, the flight was probably uh about three hours, I think, something like that. It's not it's not particularly far.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's uh that's interesting. I wouldn't never really thought about it to be honest, but yeah, that definitely brings it into the capability to make it a short trip and therefore not have to take so much time off work for people.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

And this is another one of those countries where chose to drive, so we picked up a car at the airport.

SPEAKER_05 6:12

Presuming since it's January and it's snowy and everything, you've got a great big four by four with snow tires and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

You know me well, Dave. You know what I think of people that drive those sort of vehicles. So what did you get? Unless they're listeners to this podcast. What have you got in check?

SPEAKER_05 6:27

You've got a four by four in check.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Well, it's not really, is it? It's about the most basic. It's uh you know, it's not no, but it's for it you need it for your track to get to your uh uh cabin. That's true, but the the CRV it just kicks in the four-wheel drive when it needs it. It's not one of like a regular.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

So what did you what did you get for the super snowy, super icy roads, presumably?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

The smallest, cheapest car we could get, which was a Fiesta. And how did it perform? Um it did very well. The tires it came with snow tires. So these are like rubber tires but with metal studs embedded in them. Right, right. So when you're driving over tarmac, it sounds really weird. And doesn't do the tarmac a lot good either. No, probably not. I I suspect they've got a special sort of tarmac, you know, the city centre they would probably made of rubber de iced. But when you got out on the yes, into the wilds, you were just on the snow, and it felt remarkably good. I don't I didn't have any problem with traction at all. In fact, I got fed up with the people driving very large SUVs in front of me too slowly. But you know, that's just me.

SPEAKER_05 7:31

Doesn't sound like you at all, Malcolm.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Yeah. So we got this car and we drove down to uh Reykjavik. We'd got an Airbnb book, which worked out pretty well. I mean, I was gonna say in the city centre, but it's not particularly, you know, a big place. Uh and it was just like some sort of flat thing. And we had a look around town. Of course, it's very strange at that time of day because the the daylight hours are not very long.

SPEAKER_05 7:56

Yeah, at that time of year, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Yeah. So, you know, we were sort of prioritising our time for doing things in the daylight. We sort of did uh the sort of normal wandering around and exploring that you might do in the sort of darker hours. But it's very interesting that bit of there's a a particularly impressive cathedral, or I mean it's probably a church, but I suspect it they call it a cathedral, it's not that big. But it if you're Googling it, it looks like something from Game of Thrones, I think.

SPEAKER_05 8:25

It's a sort of Lord of the Rings.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Or Mordor, yes. It's a very interesting architecturally. The city itself is really strange because I mean there are sort of apartment blocks and things, but the main old part of the town, you'd you'd say it was a village, single-story houses set in gardens with metal roofs. That's the sort of common vibe, you know, it's pretty underdeveloped and and really quite interesting. And what what's the restaurant food situation like uh in Reykjavik? Uh yes, it looked very good, but I didn't want to mortgage my house again, so we didn't eat in any restaurants. Well, okay, fair enough. Well that's not true, we did eat once, and that's probably I mean, sometimes when we go to these places, because you know you're arriving late and you want to eat and you're going to an Airbnb, we might take some food with us sometimes. And that wouldn't be a bad idea here because it's incredibly expensive.

SPEAKER_05 9:19

Do you remember ballpark prices?

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Just that I went pale in a supermarket. Fair enough. I think if you wanted rotted fish-based products or tomatoes, you were probably alright.

SPEAKER_05 9:33

Tomatoes. We'll have tomato pasta and bring the pasta.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Tomatoes because they have these geothermal heated greenhouses. Oh, that's that's pretty cool. So they grow a lot of tomatoes and that sort of veg, but pretty much everything else pretty much has to be brought in from elsewhere in Europe by ship world.

SPEAKER_05 9:54

Yeah, yeah. So I I I know this is not what it I because I'm a keen gardener, I'm quite keen to understand how they get the thermal power into the greenhouse. Is it is it sort of piped in and then slowly released in the greenhouse, do you know? Or are you just not a gardener?

SPEAKER_03 10:09

I don't know. Well, I'm not a geophysicist either. I believe they've drilled down to the warmer layers, they've got water circulating to bring the heat up and right.

SPEAKER_05 10:18

So the the greenhouses are more or less positioned over where the uh geoactive thermal activity is.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Yeah, I mean you're very you're you're very close to the tectonic plate divide between the European and American plates, um, so there's geothermal energy everywhere. So in the morning we uh we got up I uh it felt like we got up very early, but it's because it was dark for quite a long time. And we went off and drove what's called the Golden Circle, which is a route from Reykjavik, a sort of circular route from Reykjavik, and it sort of heads out towards the middle of the island, picking up some sort of interesting things. The first place we went was Thingvalier National Park. Okay. I I'm pretty certain that's how you say it. Which had the original Parliament building, which was like a sort of village hall, I think, some old sort of village hall, and these sort of houses, few of those. It was a sort of historical place.

SPEAKER_05 11:23

And actually, any idea what what sort of century are we talking?

SPEAKER_03 11:26

A few hundred years old, I think. And it was right next to the tectonic rift valley, which is where these two plates meet. And you can sort of go and walk into it and see the bit that's sort of pulling apart.

SPEAKER_05 11:40

Oh, is there a f uh I've seen this on TV, I didn't know it was maybe it was ice and maybe it's somewhere else where you there's literally a gap in the land where the plates are pulling apart.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah, it's got water, it's got water in it, even though everything else is icy and snowy around, and and they are pulling apart, and apparently in the summer, you know, people might dive in it and stuff like that. But this is the place where they're pulling I and again I'm not gonna tell you what rate they're pulling apart at, but it it's something noticeable.

SPEAKER_05 12:06

Yeah. You can see it as you're watching it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

Yeah, that that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. You have to slow down the video to uh otherwise see it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:17

I'm glad you realised I was joking.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

You know, that's quite interesting if you're into geography and all that sort of stuff and history. Um and there's a nice sort of visitor centres and things there. Uh and quite a lot of people stopping off, lots of coaches doing this trip. So not not everybody does drive it. They you can get a coach trip that does this same circular route. Okay. And then you sort of head off up into the higher mountains. But I mean it's all spectacular scenery and hardly any houses or people living. Once you get out of the suburbs, you don't see very much really. The occasional farmstead probably until you get to a some place that's touristically interesting. Um and the next one is was a really quite a famous place, which is the Giza Geothermal Area. I mean, it's called Giza Geothermal Area, and the Giza, I think it might even be an Icelandic term or Scandinavian term originating from there. And there's that makes sense. There's a load of these geothermal areas. We went to two or three of them. But this one has the famous Giza. Your lit is Unravel Travel on the subject of Iceland. Docker, not the super with more K's than you would imagine is appropriate for that spelling.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

I'm listening to Unravel Travel on the subject of Iceland. I just love it. I know I knew you were about to pronounce it the way you would be able to do it. Unravel travel. You were almost psyching yourself up to pronounce that.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

Rather than listening to Unravel Travel on the subject of Iceland in winter. It's very impressive. It's one of these circulars. This is unravel travel holes on the ground in the winter. And you're behind a fence some distance away. It goes off every, I don't know, five minutes, something like that. Yeah. And the water goes up into the air. Ah, definitely it definitely at least ten.

SPEAKER_05 14:10

It's it's obviously hot when it's in the ground. It is. Is there a risk when it comes out and comes back to ground that it's still scolding or has it cooled by that point?

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yes. I mean you get a big plume of steamy, I wasn't say smoke, but steam. Yeah. Um steamy steam rising like a cloud, and then it splashes back down, so people are behind, you know, a a a fence to keep them from getting too close to it. Yeah, but uh it's I mean it's really impressive natural sort of phenomena. And in the area there's a few other smaller, similar ones and the sort of bubbling mud pools and all those sorts of sorts of things.

SPEAKER_05 14:51

Did it feel primeval? Did it feel like you're at the the start of the world?

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Yeah, it did apart. Probably apart from the visitor centre and the line of coaches. Pretty much say the line of coke. It we uh we went to some others where we were there on our own, and those were much more, you know, primeval feeling because you're just sort of wandering around. But that they weren't geezers, they were like hot bubbling mud pools, those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_05 15:17

That's what I was thinking that went about the sort of start time.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah, um, but very interesting to see. Mr. Pillins would have had a field a field day or a field visit. You know, we we sort of hit that quite early, but it was probably one of the the more memorable things. I really quite liked it. It took quite a lot of pictures and you know different angles, and you can uh it the scale against the people is quite interesting, you know. You don't really realise how big it is until you get a bit further away from just standing next to it. Yeah, and you can see it as you're driving up, you know, the sort of steam clouds disappearing from it.

SPEAKER_05 15:53

It does sound pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Yeah, I think Yellowstone, you know, you you you think of that old Faithful, is it in Yellowstone? Yeah, that's it. It's that but but I I I think that's a bit thinner. I mean I think it goes quite high, but I think it's a bit thinner. This was really big, fat thing. Anyway, that's I haven't seen the other one, so I can't compare exactly, but just the other one.

SPEAKER_05 16:15

I've seen neither, but it it it's you're definitely wetted my appetite for it.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Good. I ad I advise it. We I was gonna say, what did you do next? Well, so the waterfalls, I mean, there are a loads of spectacular waterfalls in Iceland. Um the really high thin ones and all all the the the big raging ones. And we went to Gulfos, which is the one that's on the Golden Circle Tour, which is one of these big raging ones, such that you really can't see the water because there's so much spray coming off it. There's a sort of river winding out of the high mountains, and it must go over some sort of fault line, because it just drops into a gorge, yeah. And and then sort of about what seems like a quarter of a mile later, you can see the water emerging, and there's just a mass of spray in between. It you know, it's like that, you you don't really actually see.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

That's not that's not something I was expecting uh would be in Iceland. Certainly the uh the geothermal stuff I was expecting. Uh I know the volcanoes, all that sort of stuff, but yeah, the dramatic waterfalls hadn't hadn't figured in my uh imagination.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Oh yeah, that there's loads, it's very Instagrammable. We took some selfies and some pictures and things, but that you know, a lot of people go for them for those sort of things, especially there's some you can walk behind and all that sort of stuff, I think. And and that would be a reason to to stay, you know, longer than four days. We didn't really probably have time to fit those in. Right. You'd have to drive a little bit further to find them. It's a very stark landscape. That's definitely the case because it's a fairly new piece of land, you know. There's still a lot of lava all over it, and and it hasn't really had the weathering and softening. So it uh it does have that sort of starkness, and of course lots of snow and melt and and did you uh see the northern lights on that is this all one day trip? Yeah, this is a one day so it's it was a 250 kilometre round circle.

SPEAKER_05 18:19

Yeah, yeah. So quite a bit of driving. Did you see the northern lights on that that day on that part of that trip, or was that another day?

SPEAKER_03 18:26

Yes, we did. We went after the waterfall, which is the place where all the adventure tours go off into the middle of the island. Okay. Um so they've got all these big tracks. Big tracked vehicles and stuff, you know, like you see people exploring Antarctica with and stuff, you know, those like Oh what, like uh like a caterpillar track sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. But you you can go off and do tours into the middle of the island and mountains and glaciers and stuff. That's the jumping off point for a lot of those. Um and I think you can, you know, you can do like a not quite a safari, but you know, a sort of where you you stay in one of these vehicles and then that you know that I mean they're big. Okay, yeah, not what I imagined. So I mean they've got the sort of smaller things as well, like the ex-military vehicles, but they've got some really big things as well. But that that's where all that happens. On the way back, we stopped at a spa, which I was desperately looking on the maps to try and find where it was, and I can't find it, so I can't tell you which one it was. But there's there was a spa where we went for the sort of afternoon evening, which was on a lake, which had a sort of natural hot water source bubbling into one corner of it, and uh, you know, some pools and showers and all those sorts of things that you get at a type spa thing. But uh the cooling off option was to wander out into the lake w which was ice covered.

SPEAKER_05 19:54

Had they not cracked it open to so you could jump in?

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Well well the bit very close to the spa area was just above freezing. So the ice started maybe about ten metres out. Right, right. But it I mean it was a spectacular setting, and uh a thing I hadn't really anticipated was the sunsets on the snowy mountains. You know, you get that colour. Yeah. And I I wasn't expecting that at all. It's you know very nice. Um so to go and do something like that at an evening point was perfect, really. Really, really good. There was a cafe there, and in fact, we did eat out there, but it was incredibly expensive. Uh Petra had a beer and it was about a ten quid, and this is like nearly ten years ago. I mean, I didn't because I was driving, but I mean that doesn't normally stop me. But I think with the snowiness, I thought I and driving in the dark, I wouldn't. Yeah, probably the ten quid put me off as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:51

Although ten quid, you know, for anybody listening to in London now.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Yeah, that's right. They're going, oh, bargain, cheap weekend. I mean, I wouldn't advise going to um to Reykjavik for a stag weekend. Let's put it back. No. Or maybe my stag weekend, yes, so I don't have to get hammered, but but not for somebody else's. No, no, I didn't mean it quite like that. And we stop for the north well on the way back, we so there's this thing, you can get a northern like you get a a weather forecast here, you can get a northern lights forecast. Oh yeah. So there's an Aurora Borealis website um which looks at the solar intensity and and uh climatic situation and cloud cover and tells you when you should be able to see them and when you might not be able to see them. Um and it had been predicted that the intensity was going to be reasonable. So on the way back we kept stopping and getting out of the car and having a look, and we did see them that night. Um th they're supposed to be better, as I say, closer to midnight. But we were back before midnight and and we didn't wanna having said that's what we wanted to go for, we then couldn't be bothered to stay out.

SPEAKER_05 22:09

But you it was cold. What what what was the temperature like daytime and nighttime?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Yeah, I can't remember exactly, but it was gloves. Well did you need your big full-on coats? Yes, big coat, big coat, big gloves, hat. Yeah. For the southerners, stay at home. Um you could see some tourists, I mean obviously we were tourists as well, but um you could see tourists there that probably hadn't quite anticipated how cold it was gonna be. Yeah. There were a few people knocking about in not quite the right gear, um, looking like they weren't enjoying themselves very much. Whereas I quite enjoyed having a wonder in the snow. I mean it wondered it was you know knee deep. And yeah, at the side of the road we stopped one time, you know, and you sort of had a wonder and it's like, oh, hold on a minute. It's really quite deep, isn't it? So, like I say, it's about 250 kilometres, so you need to allow a full day for it. The coaches, when it's a coach trip, they often go you know, really early in the morning, departing about seven o'clock or something, getting back eight o'clock at night, you know, to to maximise these stops that they do. Um and the traffic can be quite slow because once you get out of Reykjavik, it's single-lane roads, you know, very snowy, covered in snow, with markers on the side of the roads, but you're not really overtaking. So all you need is somebody driving slowly or a stream of coaches in front of you, and you're not going anywhere very quickly. So, you know, for good reason. It takes a long time to get round it.

SPEAKER_05 23:39

But and um is January peak time for the winter, you know? Did why did you choose January?

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Because we like to get away for a January break sometimes. Yeah, so so do I.

SPEAKER_05 23:51

That's usually my reason for going. You go somewhere warm. Yeah. I used to go skiing, I've I've always been hopefully.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Yeah. The the Aurora Borealis is normally better in the winter, so that was one of the reasons. But I don't know which particular December month, you know, winter months are the best.

SPEAKER_05 24:09

Would you say January was busy? Did it feel busy when you were there? Obviously, when you go to a particular tourist area that it that's gonna be where people are congregating, and I'm guessing if it's a circular trip, you're all doing the same ones at roughly the same time.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

And I think most people were going in the same direction as well.

SPEAKER_05 24:24

Exactly. Yeah. So uh but what did it feel busy?

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Yeah, it did. Like I say, you went to some of these places and there were there was a lot of coaches there, and the you know, the restaurant at the visitor centre was pretty full, yeah, that sort of thing. So um, so yeah, it did. Um not so many people in the spa that we went to, but I think that's probably not you know, that's not on the coach tours because you got to drive there.

SPEAKER_05 24:46

And did you have to book any of this in advance or was this just a turn up on the day sort of thing? So I'm just thinking about planning it.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

Yeah, I think we booked the spa in advance, but I don't think we booked anything else. We just rock up. I mean, if you wanted to go on a coach tour, you would definitely need to book it in advance, I think.

SPEAKER_05 25:01

Yeah. And I mean I mean you obviously chose the car. Uh were you comfortable with that decision, or would you uh advise people to take the coach? I suppose it depends upon how comfortable you are driving in those conditions.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Exactly. I think i if you're an experienced driver and you're used to driving in snowy conditions. I mean, grew up driving uh my our villages get cut off in the snow. So I was I'm fairly used to driving in snow and in check. Yeah. Although I wasn't particularly at that time, and that's that's since then.

SPEAKER_05 25:32

If you're not confident you should be in a coach or but it's nice to know that there's that option because not everybody is confident, and not everybody enjoys the driving, especially at night. And you know, it sounds like a lot of it would have been driving in the dark. A lot of it was in the dark, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's useful for people to know. So what did you do uh that that evening when you got back, or the next day, or what's the what's the next uh highlight?

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Uh well the next day we went we had a a day around mooching around Reykjavik a little bit. The port is I always like a port. The port is very interesting. Some big Arctic trawlers and service boats for offshore industries and stuff like that. Very interesting. And looking around the city as well a bit. Some art. There's this longboat statue, the Sun Voyager, which is quite a sort of iconic thing. So we went to see that. A good sculpture park, the National Gallery was actually quite good. I've always been surprised by national galleries in smaller countries, they're always quite interesting.

SPEAKER_05 26:31

I I would imagine it would be uh quite a lot influenced by um is it a nomadic life or was it a nomadic life? The Vikings and stuff, you mean? Yeah, maybe more than a hundred years then, but yeah, I'm kind of like thinking the art might be influenced heavily by that.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Yes, I think the museums are full of all that sort of stuff. I don't remember the art being particularly like that. I remember it being surprisingly modern and avant-garde. Going back to Bjork. Yes, well, and then perhaps I shouldn't have been particularly surprised should I actually. Exactly. And then after that we had another day out in the car, which we didn't really plan, we just sort of went off down the peninsula that that Reykjavik is located on. Towards we we thought we'd gone off go off and see that big volcano that caused all the air traffic chaos a few years before.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

Yeah, yeah. I've I've forgotten about that. Yeah, I do remember.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

And and for for a laugh, I'll have a go at pronouncing it.

SPEAKER_05 27:32

That didn't sound too bad, actually.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Not that I know how it should sound, but that sounded natural. I missed out several J's and an F, I think. But we didn't get all the way there, but we explored about down that coastline a bit. Black sand beaches, that's a thing. So we went to see a couple of those.

SPEAKER_05 27:48

And there's lots of So presumably the black sand is basalt being ground down to the sand or or well, some some sort of volcanic rock. That's what we use it.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

It's the lava, yeah, it's the lava being ground down into sand. So there's quite a lot of black black sand beaches which are very striking, of course, as against the snow. Um yes, yeah. In the exact opposite to the way you do these tours, we went to see lots of churches and strange strange things. There were lots of these little things dotted around. And so every time we saw a sign saying, you know, like the cultural symbol, we'd go off and see what that was. So we went to a few of those sorts of things and a geosystem.

SPEAKER_05 28:28

That's a quite quite a nice way of doing it, though, isn't it? Not having too much of a set plan. You but this is and this is the advantage of having the car, absolutely having the coach, is that if you see something that looks like it might be interesting, then you can just pop off. If it if it isn't, you get back in the car. If it is, you spend a bit of time. It's kind of a nice way to do things.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

And and all these sorts of things we went to, we were the only people there, you know, so because everyone else is yeah, I think that kind of answers my question earlier about was it busy?

SPEAKER_05 28:56

The answer is yes if you stay on the tourist path, no if you can find your own route.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yeah. Uh and so we went to another geothermal area which had a like a green lake and it's all sort of sulfurous yellow and bubbling mud and sounds lovely. All that yeah, no, it's great. I mean, just to have a quick quick look at, I didn't dip my toes in or anything. You wouldn't have any left. Exactly. And I guess a a sort of other thing I noticed driving around were that there are ponies everywhere, you know, fields fenced off. I mean, there's lots of it isn't grass at all because it's just lava fields and it's rough and random few plants coming through. But where there are fields, they're fenced and and they've got loads of ponies in them. And I remember saying to Petra at the time, I wonder if it dawned on me after a while because there's no cattle or anything. Maybe people are eating them.

SPEAKER_05 29:44

Maybe that's what did you get to the bottom of what the ponies were there for?

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Uh yes, I googled it. And and uh they do eat uh ponies occasionally. Oh really? But most of the farmed animals like cows, pigs, etc., are indoors because of the weather, they're not achieved properly. They don't have like highland cattle in the fields like you would see in Scotland. Um the ponies are there for cultural reasons because they come from the sort of Viking ancestry. They're sort of kept as and reminders of the Viking past rather than food stuff. Right, okay. So I just thought it was worth picking up a few sort of general points about Iceland and travel there. As you say, we went for only a few days, and that's enough to get a feel for it, but it's not really enough to explore it properly. Reykjavik is very much an outlier in that it's quite well populated densely. The rest of the country is very sparsely populated, and most of the other towns outside Reykjavik have got less than five thousand people in them. Pretty modest. But it's a very interesting drive. I I do know somebody that's driven around Iceland and they said it was fantastically, you know, interesting. Probably something for the summer though. You know, you say you know people that have been there in the summer, and I'd quite like to go back in the summer. I think you'd do different things.

SPEAKER_05 31:06

Um you'd take Suntan Lotion because the guy I knew came back bright red, absolutely sunburnt, underestimating how strong the sun was.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

That's often the case, isn't it? Uh it's like skiers, isn't it, with the with the panda eyes. I mean the temperature of Iceland that you asked about, it's not particularly cold as you might expect it to be, because it gets the Gulf Stream like we do in the UK. So in terms of latitude, it's uh similar to northern Alaska, but it it's not as wintry, dare I say, uh as that. So it is cold and snowy, etc., but it's nowhere near at the same sort of level as as you would get up there. So uh it doesn't seem to be surrounded by ice flows, for example, in the way that Greenland is. Always ironic, isn't it, that Iceland is warmer than Greenland, but I think that's what time of year they visited when they named it, probably. And the other thing would be, you know, that it's not a particularly cheap trip, not if you're going to be eating out or even eating in. I mean we went to the supermarkets and bought stuff, but it wasn't particularly cheap. We took, you know, made our own sandwiches and things. So you have to manage your expectations about that.

SPEAKER_05 32:15

So you didn't try any of the uh the local delicacies?

SPEAKER_03 32:18

We well, we bought a tub of the rotted shark buried in the ground for a year stuff.

SPEAKER_05 32:24

Did you re-bury it?

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Yes. It went end with a landfill, I think. We brought it home and it was sat in the fridge for a while thinking we'll open it on a special occasion, but you just didn't come to visit David, so we didn't.

SPEAKER_05 32:34

I must have known.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

I think they also do the same with seabirds, don't they? I think there's a thing of burying puffins, whole nothing or anything. Because I suppose it ferments and I mean I I describe it as rotted, but I think it's preserved in some way, fermented, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:52

Yeah, doesn't sound very appetizing. No. Apologies to anybody out there that it's your favourite delicacy, but uh not for me. No, well I've not tried it, so can't really knock it when you've not tried it, but there you go.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

You know, if you're interested in very rustic, very blee landscapes, um gnomes and pixies and all that sort of stuff, they've got a you know sounding more and more like Mordor the more you talk. That's uh that's a thing, you'd enjoy it. Uh and I I enjoyed it, and I think we might go back in the summer sometime. It was you know really quite interesting. Uh and it's my only experience of the sort of far north, I would say. I've not been to Scandinavia other than that. Uh have you been anywhere along those lines?

SPEAKER_05 33:35

I went to a wedding in the Arctic Circle in Norway.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Oh, haven't you been to the Ice Hotel?

SPEAKER_05 33:41

Yeah, we stayed at the the wedding was at the Ice Hotel. Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

Uh so the wedding was in an ice chapel. There was a bar made out well, the hotel was made out of ice, and there was a bar in the uh in the hotel where you drank absolute vodka from glasses made out of ice. Yeah, uh, we didn't see the northern lights, we didn't get woken up, so we missed those, unfortunately. But you talked about the the spa bit. We went into um a sauna uh and you know it's nice and cozy, and the guy's sort of saying, Okay, uh, is everybody ready to go out now? And we're all no. And he lobs a load of extra water on the steamer. 30 seconds later, everybody's yeah, yep, we're ready, we're ready. And what you did was you came out of the sauna, which is on a frozen lake, walk out of the sauna, there's a a plunge pool which they've cut the ice out on the lake. You dive into the plunge pool, swim across to the other side, climb out, clamber out, and climb into a hot tub on the ice. It was just the most amazing experience until the guy that was running the sauna climbed in with everybody and he was still he was butt naked. You didn't like that then? I wasn't overly bothered, but the women protested. I I presume they really meant it, but who knows?

SPEAKER_03 34:49

I think they need to understand the social norms. I think that's perfectly normal.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

Yes, so do I. So I think we're running out of time actually. So is there anything else that you you'd like to add before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Yeah, just very quickly, I suppose we actually had a very good experience with our Airbnb host. I mean, my cock up, but as we were leaving for the airport, we picked up all the bags and put them in the car, and I'd left my camera bag inside. They didn't have a key safe. The arrangement was you put the key back through the letterbox. So we put the key back through the letterbox and got in the car and went, Where's my camera bag?

SPEAKER_05 35:26

With all those lovely pictures you'd taken of all the whole holiday.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Yeah, it was a very unhelpful time of the day. We phoned the guy and he came out within ten or fifteen minutes and let us back in to get the bag, which was much appreciated because the cost of having it sent from Iceland would have been quite a lot, I think.

SPEAKER_05 35:43

Three or four beers at least.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

At least. So that's a good shout out. Much appreciated, and I haven't done it again since.

SPEAKER_05 35:50

Well that that sounded really interesting. I mean, I've heard of people going to Iceland in the summer, and it sounds lovely in the summer, but that you're actually the first person I've spoken to that has been to Iceland in the winter, and it sounds like it's worth going at both times.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

Yeah, I think so. Right, well, goodbye, everybody. Have a great day. Bye.