A series of 15 linked posts with photographs (index below).
It is 1977. We are strong, fit, active and in our twenties. We are about to go walking in the land of ice and fire. We will be flying to Keflavik (near Reykjavik) on Wednesday.
There follows a fourteen-part saga based on this notebook. It was an organised group walk, backpacking through a wild and uninhabited part of Iceland. I will post at intervals over the next few months to allow time to transcribe and edit, and select photographs.
I nearly didn’t go. When Neville and another friend first booked, I thought I couldn’t afford it. I was about to start university as a mature student and been told I would have to self-fund the first term because of a previous term on a course abandoned a few years earlier. I worked twelve-hour nights in a canning factory to save up. The local authority then told me I had been awarded a full grant, which in those days was far more generous than student finance now. So when the other friend had to drop out at the last minute because of work problems, I was in as his substitute. The canning factory money went on the Iceland trip and a high spec. stereo.
4. Stormy Weather - forced to shelter in the hut all day.
5. to Skaelingar - we walk to the rock pillars of Skaelingar.
6. Eldgja and Alftavatn - the extraordinary ‘fire canyon’.
7. to Strutslaug - the geothermal pool.
8. Still at Strutslaug - obsidian and a walk in the high rhyolite, or not.
9. to Hvanngil - up a frozen river in a snowstorm.
10. to Krokur - the Northern Lights.
11. to Einhrningur - the unicorn.
12. to Fljotsdalur - Eyjafjallajokull, the Markarfljot plain and civilisation.
13. A Last Walk - views along the Markarfljot plain to the Westman Islands.
14. Reykjavik and Home.
Can't wait
ReplyDeleteI suspect it's going to be just as exhausting transcribing it as it was doing it.
DeleteSounds like the trip of a lifetime!
ReplyDeleteIt was. I always meant to go again but never got round to it.
DeleteI look forward to hearing about it. My travel notebooks are of a similar style, red Silverline ones, and I still use them. I also went to university as a mature student, for me 1978.
ReplyDeleteI didn't keep a notebook for every holiday, but now wish I had. I find that reading them again 40+ years later is as enjoyable as looking at the photographs.
DeleteAs Weaver says, can't wait.
ReplyDeleteI'll post Wednesday on Wednesday and try to keep to the right days, although some are going to have to be a week or even two weeks apart.
DeleteHow exciting! It sounds like you were meant to go on this trip. I look forward to your next post!
ReplyDeleteA lot of what I did in 1977 felt as if it was meant to be.
DeleteThat is something to look forward to!
ReplyDeleteNarrow Feint? I have never come across this term.
In 1977, I was 9 years old and about to leave elementary school and start at the grammar school a few buildings down the road from there. Exciting times!
Too young to come, I'm sorry. You wouldn't be able to carry a big enough rucksack. Narrow Feint refers to the horizontal line rulings on the pages, probably a stationers' term.
DeleteI should think money well spent. Many decades ago we had free tertiary education, brought in by a Labor(sic) government, then watered down a couple of decades later by another Labor government, then a conservative government massively increased fees and university education now costs thousands.
ReplyDeleteIn taxes paid later and contribution to society then I would say definitely.
DeleteMy daughter will graduate next year with an enormous loan - more than we paid 30 years ago for the house we live in. She's unlikely to pay much of it back, if any. Since UK universities were commercialised and had to compete with each other, there are now as many people in marketing and quality control roles as in teaching and research. It costs taxpayers more than it ever used to, except it counts as loans rather than spending. It was better value under the grant system.
It sounds like an exciting journey. I know the dentist yesterday was moaning about these enormous university fees for his daughters but once they get a job and the deductions start it sort of fits into their life.
ReplyDeleteOne gets pilloried for saying it, but girls are more likely than boys to have lower earnings, work part-time and take career breaks. In the 30 years after graduation over which repayments are deducted from earnings before the debt is written off, there may be few years in which they earn enough to reach the repayment threshold. Degree subject and likely job also come into it. Very different for boys or girls who go into high earning, lifelong full-time jobs.
DeleteWhen I went to university, everyone got the same and no one had to pay anything back.
DeleteLooking forward to this - especially as I visited Iceland myself in 1991 - and I am not talking about the supermarket with that name! It's edifying to recognise that your own Iceland trip happened 44 years ago!
ReplyDeleteWell, yours was almost as long ago. I don't think I've ever been to that other Iceland.
DeleteI think I'm going to be envious.
ReplyDeleteWe can't do everything.
DeleteSo wonderful to read this blog. I, like many others, did the same tour as you many, many years ago. Paul as our leader, a mix of fellow walkers, the worst weather of the century, horrible food, lovely sweets, great landscape, the real outback. I enjoyed every minute of it. Recognized everything you described. It brought back sweet memories. I never returned, maybe because the memories were so fond that reality could destroy them. Thank you for sharing your detailed story and photos.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and commenting and I'm pleased you liked it. I think it would be very different to go back now. Yes, the real wilderness experience.
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