Iceland 14: Reykjavik and Home

links to: introduction and index - previous day - postscript

Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th September 1977 

Dick Phillips (in Icelandic jumper) oversees loading the Land Rover at Fljotsdalur

We return the eighty miles from Fljótsdalur to Reykjavik by road. Some travel in the Land Rover but most of us go by service bus. I really should have recorded observations of everyday Icelandic life.

We sit about Reykjavik for the rest of the day, and, to avoid the expensive restaurants, go to the Salvation Army for an evening meal. I must have since paid for it several times because I always put money in their collection tins.

We exchange names and addresses. The little community of walkers and hut dwellers, the cliques, the jokes, the nascent friendships, comes to an end. Other than for Neville, I never see any of them again. I wonder what became of them. 

The next day we are up early to get to Keflavik for the 08.10 flight. Everyone disposes of their króna (devalued since we arrived) in the duty-free shop.  

On the plane I have a window seat and spend all the time looking out at the Icelandic coast, the ice caps, the clouds and later the Scottish mountains. Magnificent! This not being my first flight, I allow myself a few photographs. 

Iceland from the air	Scotland north of Glasgow (possibly Loch Eil)

Glasgow Airport

At Glasgow, Neville’s car is damp and won’t start. We eventually get it going and then it really is back to reality. After two weeks without any news from the outside world, the radio tells us of threatened strikes and power cuts, industrial disputes, economic problems, etc., etc., etc. They should send the lot of them on compulsory Icelandic walking holidays to get things in perspective. They should send all present day politicians too, minus technology of course.  

On the trek, I hardly saw Neville at all. When I was fast, he was slow, and when I was slow, he was fast. I did, however, spend a lot of time with Gavin, so much so that some of the others thought I had come with him. I was constantly amused by his endless stream of inoffensive humour. On returning to England, I found that one of my colour slides had inadvertently caught him having a pee. I labelled it “Icelandic Relief” and posted it to him without any indication of who it was from. In due course a couple of pictures of me came back through the letterbox. 

I dearly would have liked to have gone to Iceland again, but people, jobs and circumstances never came together right. Neville did return twenty months later, in the May, on the North-West Fjords tour led by both Dick Phillips and Paul. He sent me a postcard saying that the temperature was minus fifteen degrees (Fahrenheit, I assume, which would be -26^oC, but does it matter?). 

There ends the Iceland journal, but in putting it here I started wondering about things and googling, which means a postscript...

(link to postscript)
Some names and personal details have been changed. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who was there.