Iceland 15: Postscript

links to: introduction and index - previous part

In transcribing this saga, I began to wonder what had happened to the people and places I encountered.

Iceland now seems increasingly geared up to the kind of tourist activities that extract money from punters at every twist and turn, such as sitting in warm pools sipping cocktails. And did I mention the penis museum? Staving off boredom! How I detest myself when I do these things. Wild walkers just don’t generate the same revenue.

Despite several distinctive names, there seems to be very little online about the others on the walk. I came across technical publications that may have been written by the landscape architect, one of the chemists and the medical researcher, although they could have been by others of the same name. The index of marriages on Ancestry suggests that the couple on the walk did not stay together, and that they may have married other spouses. That’s about it.

There is, however, quite a bit about the route and the tour organisers.

The Route

In 1977, the walks offered something of the wilderness experience Dick Phillips must have enjoyed in surveying the routes in the nineteen-sixties. Today, there are many more organised trips with motor support. One would have to go to the isolated interior, or to Greenland, to find places where other walkers are rare, where you might be the first to venture as the snow melts. Even so, satnavs and satellite phones remove much of the isolation. 

Julia Bradbury’s hour-long television programme about her 2010 Icelandic adventure (https://youtu.be/YGgWse3iQLA) illustrates the difference. Caught in bad visibility in the mountains, she calls in a support vehicle to take her to the next hut, almost a stately home, and there takes a shower. Neither would not have been possible in 1977.

Most of the huts we used have now been replaced by buildings we would then have considered outrageously luxurious. They have wardens, bunks, showers, chemical toilets, cooking facilities, cutlery and crockery, and are reachable by ordinary car. There are also more of them, although not at Strutslaug where Dick Phillips’ remote hut was swept away by an avalanche around 1999. 

Pictures of the Skaelingar hut (the one with the rock pillars) belonging to the Útivist Icelandic travel association also show the difference (https://www.utivist.is/english/skaelingar-hut). Below, their new hut is in the background, with one of the two we used in the foreground. The other we used has gone, with the new hut, car park and toilet shed in its place. Things can’t possibly be the same without a shovel outside the door.   

Skaelingar now and then. The hut in the foreground on the left is one of the original two. The hut, car park and toilet shed behind it are new. The picture on the right shows how it was.

The Tour Organisers

Dick Phillips’ tours ran until around 2012, for fifty-two years in total. I would guess that more than ten thousand people went on one kind of tour or another over these years. In the winter Dick lived at Nenthead near Alston in Cumbria, where, known to all as ‘Icelandic Dick’, he was active in the local community. Among his many roles he was a Councillor, newsletter editor and helped with the Nenthead mines group. He was invariably to be seen riding a bicycle in one of his distinctive Icelandic jumpers, and was buried in one in 2019. He was in his mid-eighties. There are several tributes on the internet (e.g. here and here).

Paul Stevens, the walk leader, was invited into partnership soon after our trip, and remained with the business, leading walks until it ended. A search reveals that, around 2005, he talked about his experiences for the BBC Radio Stoke ‘Inside Lives’ project. A brief synopsis is archived but the link to the recording no longer seems to work (http://www.bbc.co.uk/stoke/insidelives/2004/02/paul_stevens.shtml). 

Paul and wife Judi are still involved with the Fljótsdalur hostel, which he talks about in a four-minute facebook video (https://fb.watch/8RA4SOHyWO/ - you may need to switch on the sound using the icon in the bottom right of the picture; the spelling in the subtitles is atrocious). It is good to see him looking well. Is that what a lifetime of walking with a heavy rucksack does for you? What a book he could write! The hostel facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/FljotsdalHostel/. 

I bet they still have our real names in the visitors’ books. I am half-expecting a letter from their solicitor.

Finally, an elderly Dick Phillips appears at the beginning and end of this fifteen-minute video, not in any way the scary perfectionist I perceived in 1977. The scariness was my own inadequacy. 

The main part of the video is about extreme mountain biking in Iceland, and worth watching if you have fifteen minutes. That really is scary. 

Horace and the Rough Stuff Fellowship: click image to play video

(The video URL if the link doesn't work is: https://vimeo.com/98904694?fbclid=IwAR0yW2nRSTfiYKJq7rbYlevwi5j9ISS9SSbCOtrvk4wnXYWEmChrUFA3JRA)

The end.
Some names and personal details have been changed. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who was there.

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.

Iceland 13: A Last Walk

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Monday 5th September 1977

Our last day at the Fljotsdalur hostel is a free one. I suppose the tour needs spare days in case of problems or delays. It wouldn’t do to miss the flight home. 

Debbie, Dennis and Ed decide to stay nearby while the rest of us head north up the mountain towards the small Tindfjallajökull glacier. It is a long way, possibly ten miles there and ten back, but at least today we can walk without rucksacks.

Walking uphill usually makes you too warm, but today the icy wind blows straight though the sleeves of my woolly jumper almost putting my arms out of action. Wool is very effective at keeping you warm under a cagoule, but my cagoule is in Mike’s daysack and he has shot off ahead. I get colder and colder, and it begins to feel quite serious. Just in time, we reach a mountain chalet, which, like all the huts, is unlocked. It provides shelter to eat our sandwiches. I resolve never again to allow anyone else to carry my food or equipment unless I trust them absolutely to stay nearby, and never to get too far away from anyone else whose things I am carrying, a resolution I have kept ever since. It is basic mountaincraft.

Despite being reunited with cagoule, I am not keen to go much further. After a while I turn back along with Neville, James and Tony. The others, the four bridge school G.T. boys and Gavin, who they make an honorary member, do reach the glacier and are late back for tea. Some of them are very fit indeed. They take part in International Mountain Marathons sponsored by the Karrimor outdoor equipment manufacturer. One might have expected such mountain supermen to have the sense not to go off ahead with someone else’s warm clothing.

On the way down, the view over the Markarfljótsaurar and out to sea, with the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) in the distance, is simply breathtaking.

There are around fifteen Vestmannaeyjar, all formed from undersea volcanic eruptions during the past 10,000 to 12,000 years: not at all long in geological terms. The most recent, Surtsey, is only ten years old, having formed during a four-year eruption that began in 1963. The largest, Heimaey, grew by 10% during 1973.

In the evening, Dick Phillips chairs a debriefing session (likes / dislikes / suggestions) and then insists on showing us a slide show of other parts of Iceland followed by a recorder recital played by him and Jenny. Exhausted, we struggle to keep awake.

(next part)

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

Iceland 12: to Fljótsdalur

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Sunday 4th September 1977

Leaving Einhryningur

Our last day of walking, on the move again from Einhryningur to the Fljótsdalur youth hostel. The route drops from the mountains into the Markarfljót valley. Ahead of us, to the south, the ice cap over the Eyjafjallajökull volcano shimmers in the sunlight. The volcano, you may recall, would later erupt in 2010 causing enormous disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe.

As we descend from the mountains, the Markarfljót valley looks like a dry estuary with a stranded island. You expect the tide to come in, but Paul says it has not done so for hundreds of years. The estuary is filled with an outwash ‘sandur‘ plain, the Markarfljótsaurar, consisting of sand, clay and other glaciofluvial deposits from the Mýrdalsjökull and Eyjafjallajökull glaciers.
 

Along the plain is a long flat road to the hostel. I talk to Tony for a while. He is a mature student who used to work in stockbroking. He had to overcome a lot of prejudice on switching to the lower status of trainee design technology teacher. He seems very happy and content. I take encouragement from this, being about to switch from accountant to psychology student. Nearly everyone on the walk has been to university, and all say they would have got more out if it as mature students.

Ed falls further and further behind as the day goes on. He deserves a medal for finishing. As he sits with eyes closed, someone says he looks as if he is trying to escape from reality. “What do you mean?” he replies, opening his eyes. “This is reality.”
 

Fljótsdalur

The youth hostel at Fljótsdalur (meaning: River Valley) is an old farm house converted by Dick Phillips, the tour organiser. It feels as if we have returned to civilisation out of the wilderness. There are tables, chairs, cutlery, crockery, bookshelves with an extensive collection of books about Iceland, hydro-electric power and comfort. Yet it is still isolated. Many years later, interviewed by BBC Radio Stoke, Paul said of Fljótsdalur: “The silence is broken only by the booming call of a Whooper Swan, or the whirring wingbeats of a Red-Necked Phalarope...” 

The hostel lies on the northern side of the Markarfljót plain between the Tindfjallalajökull and Eyjafjallajökull ice caps. Dick said he imagined Icelandic farmers of times past sitting out the dark days of winter, waiting for the first sight of the spring sun above the lowest point of Eyjafjallajökull.   

Eyjafjallajökull from Fljótsdalur 

Here is the map of the second half of the route on which the last five huts are indicated by blue arrows (click here for a greatly enlarged version):

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

Iceland 11: to Einhrningur

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Saturday 3rd September 1977

At Krókur, it is the first time I have had to get up in the middle of the night for a pee, awoken by the cold. I should have bought a long ‘mummy’ sleeping bag instead of the one I have. The down-filled ones were only £35. Now, three years later, they are nearly £100.

Outside, the night is still and silent, the sky full of stars. No street lighting here. In the morning, those of us in the stable part of the hut are up ages before those in the posh, wood-panelled part. Our breath has condensed and frozen on the underside of the iron roof. When the sun comes up it warms the roof, melts the ice, and it begins to rain inside. There are a couple of warning drips and then all hell is let loose. I have never seen us get out of our sleeping bags so quickly, especially me and the other ‘Rip van Winkles’ who are all in that part of the hut. Neville, however, gets a soaking because he is wearing his down jacket inside his sleeping bag, jammed in so tight he cannot get out. He wriggles helplessly like a butterfly struggling to get out of its chrysalis, only to find it is still a caterpillar. It must have been really cold to be a ‘duck-suit’ night.

Pat, the youngest of us, wears all his clothes all the time, even his two-pointed, tea-cosy hat. He did not bring anything like enough to wear. He never complains about the cold, he just looks it. “Gloves on in the hut?” queries Paul.

Today’s walk is comparatively easy. The countryside above the Markarfljót gorge is astonishing, but the weather deteriorates as the day progresses and after a wintry downpour we are glad to reach the next hut, Einhrningur. Paul coaches our pronunciation. The trick is to stress the ‘h’ and shorten the second syllable, flicking the ‘r’ off your tongue – Ein-Hr-ningur. It means unicorn. Say it right and you sound like one, or at least like a horse.
 

Einhrningur mountain in a wintry downpour

Einhrningur hut

Those who have been walking in shorts have chapped legs. James, the landscape architect, is worst. He borrows Debbie’s Nivea skin cream. “How do you use it?” someone asks. “You have to snort it,” James responds sarcastically as he takes off his shorts and begins to rub the ointment up his thighs and high into his crotch. “I thought snorting went up your nose,” someone else says. “He thinks it’s a suppository,” suggests one of the bridge school G.T. boys. “Suppositories are useless,” James responds, “of no benefit whatsoever. They’re too big to swallow, they taste disgusting, and for all the good they do, you might just as well shove ‘em up your arse.”

With only one more day’s walking to go, the evening has a party atmosphere. The hut is the most enormous and luxurious yet, with proper bunks. James produces a bottle of whisky, no wonder his rucksack was so heavy, and we share out our remaining Mars bars and other treats. Someone sets the challenge of swinging the length of the hut hand-over-hand on the overhead beams, and then swinging back underneath the long table. Only four can do it – the bridge school of course – but Gavin tries and fails about two hundred times. I make a decent attempt but cannot do it either.

The food, already here for us, is plentiful. There is dehydrated chicken supreme, sliced spam, peas, Smash potato, Angel Delight, and apple custard. A kind of yoghurt called Skyr is received with great enthusiasm. In the morning there is Sol Gryn porridge and real eggs, and not only sandwiches to take along during the day but also chocolate bars – Old Jamaica, Three Musketeers (American Milky Way) or just chocolate. I could eat it until I’m sick. It is a big improvement on the Marathon bars we had earlier in the walk, which Paul had carried next to the cooking fuel and tainted with the taste of paraffin. Those, we renamed ‘Parathon’.

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

Iceland 10: to Krókur

links to: introduction and index - previous day - next day

Friday 2nd September 1977

Late yesterday evening at Hvanngil, Dick Phillips arrived bringing further provisions. With him were Paul’s wife Judi and another walk leader called Jenny.

Injured Ed, fearing he is holding everybody up, discreetly offers to return with Dick in the Land Rover. He is told he can but there is no compulsion. He decides in that case to continue. I don’t think he realised what he was letting himself in for on the trek, but what tenacity. Dick does take Gavin’s five tons of obsidian, though.

The early risers disappear for a short walk in the morning sun and we are slow getting away. When we eventually do, it is a beautiful day on winding mountain paths with a black desert and more rivers to cross (the Markafljot and the Hvitmaga), and further views of the high rhyolite. Paul’s wife, Judi, is walking with us. She is chatty and spontaneous, the opposite of quiet, considered Paul.

I will let the photographs do most of the talking.

 

Now Neville is not going so well. He has bruised heels, although not blistered. You learn a lot about yourself through walking. It separates mind from body. You are minded to keep going but your body wants to stop. I articulate this philosophy and get the piss taken out of me for the next couple of hours.

 

 

We don’t go as far as the itinerary indicates. Instead of a cave at Lifrarfjöll, we stop an hour early in a hut at Krókur. Its name appears to mean hook. Like the village of Hook in Yorkshire, it is on a sweeping switchback bend in the river.

Hut quality had generally been improving but Krókur is a step back. It has two parts. I choose the roomier stable section in spite of the smell of horse poo. It is preferable to being crammed into the other part, despite its wooden floor, walls and ceiling.

Approaching Krokur - the hut is in the valley just left of the left hand figure

The Krokur hut

After dark we see the Northern Lights: electrically-charged particles from the sun colliding with the gases of the atmosphere in bands of green across the night sky. They appear at a point on the horizon and expand upwards in glowing fluorescent lines that change shape constantly, and then slowly fade as another point begins to appear low down on the horizon. Incredible! 

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

Iceland 9: to Hvanngil

links to: introduction and index - previous day - next day

Thursday 1st September 1977

Our walking holiday in Iceland continues. 

Leaving Strutslaug - the hut is in the mid distance on the left

On the road again, or rather, up a frozen river in a snowstorm and a slide down a glacier. Today, we skirt the southern edge of the Torfajökull ice cap and move to Hvanngil.

Paul and the ‘bridge school G.T. boys’ in the distance, leaving us behind yet again

Neville boasts of being an expert ice slider on account of his skiing experience. Bridge School Mike is entirely the opposite. At least that’s one thing he can’t do. As I follow Neville by sliding down on one foot keeping perfect control by punching the ground with mittened fists, Mike shoots past head first on his back at about fifty miles an hour. Still, he seems to be enjoying it. 

We shelter from the weather in a snow cave to eat our sandwiches.

Later, we have to cross a stream. Steve and I are too close to each other with one rock common to both our routes. He gets there first. I fall full length but escape with only a wet leg. By then the snow, which had turned to rain, has stopped and the wind soon dries my trousers, but only after Paul takes full advantage of the opportunity to make sardonic comments. 

Today I am carrying the billy cans. They jingle-jangle constantly behind me against my metal mug. Now I know how cats must feel with bells on their collars. Everyone carries their share of  the equipment and everyone does their share of the housekeeping – washing up, making sandwiches, burying rubbish and fetching water. Paul does all the cooking on a primus stove. Perhaps the main selfishness, which I have only just caught on to, is in arriving at huts as early as possible and bagging the best sleeping spots.

The countryside gradually turns greener as we get nearer the enormous Markarfljót river. My day off yesterday at Strútslaug has paid off. In the afternoon I zoom along with Paul and arrive at Hvanngil first, but as it is the most comfortable hut so far, there is no real advantage.

Ed is once more a long way behind. He really should have rested yesterday, too. He struggles along, but his feet are now worse than mine were. He has bad blisters and swollen ankles, and must be in awful pain. Somehow, he keeps going and will not let anyone else carry his share of the equipment.

Someone jokes that his injuries have been imposed by the killjoy Icelandic government. They run a country in which only low alcohol beer is permitted. Despite being the size of Ireland, there are only eight shops allowed to sell spirits. Paul says they do permit the sale of home-brew beer kits, but insert a leaflet warning it is against the law to put any sugar in. Blisters and swollen ankles are decreed by statute. 

The Hvanngil hut

Hvanngil (pronounced “Kwanngil”, possibly meaning water ravine) is massive. It has two floors. Upstairs, accessed by ladder, is equipped with tables, chairs and mattresses. It is also very warm: in fact too warm for super-acclimatised Paul who decides to sleep downstairs in the horse food trough. This leads to speculation about what his house in Newcastle-under-Lyme is like: stable downstairs, corrugated iron roof, Karrimats instead of beds, food cooked on paraffin stoves and eaten with spoons out of mess tins, a shovel outside the back door for digging convenience holes in the neighbours’ gardens, leaky and draughty windows, no heating, mugs and toilet rolls hanging by strings from hooks in the walls. 

Notebook Pages

Late at night as we are going to sleep we are awoken by heavy footsteps outside, with shouting and clanging pans. It turns out to be a group from the tour organisers bringing provisions. They are trying to make us think we are under attack by drunken Icelandic revellers. Some manage to sleep through the commotion. The group consists of Paul’s wife Judi, another walk leader called Jenny, and the elusive Dick Phillips himself. As they come up the ladder, Mike wakes up and asks Jenny if she is the legendary Dick Phillips. Gavin then wakes up and asks Dick whether he is something to do with the Dick Phillips organisation.

The real reason Paul went downstairs to sleep in the horse trough only occurs to us later. From her broad accent, I spot straight away that Judi is from Leeds. 

Dick Phillips is every bit as formidable as his photographs suggest, frighteningly serious and knowledgeable, confidently in command of all around through thick dark beard and equally thick dark spectacles. In the morning, I catch the flash of his piercing gaze observing me critically as I dawdle languidly over a late breakfast. I quickly finish and start tidying and washing up. Bang goes any chance I had of being invited back as a walk leader.

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

Iceland 8: Still at Strútslaug

links to: introduction and index - previous day - next day

Wednesday 31st August 1977

A week since we flew to Iceland. 

The Strútslaug Hut

Strútslaug-14, as someone has renamed it, was built by Dick Phillips for his own tours. It is cold, cramped, and the floor is volcanic gravel. Most of us sleep on the gravel but there is room for three ‘athletes’ on a seven-foot high sleeping platform. Getting on to it involves a stomach-wrenching reverse-somersault technique. Of course, only the Bridge School G.T. boys have strong enough stomach muscles to do it.

Yet, they are the ones most likely to have to go outside in the night. There must be some correlation between the strength of one’s stomach muscles and the need to pee. Perhaps strong stomach muscles exert greater pressure on the bladder. As we continue to drink big mugs of cocoa each night, those on the sleeping platform have to jump down in the dark. It is not a good idea to sleep directly beneath the edge.

In the mornings there is a well established order of getting up. I am told that Ed and Neville are always first. I really don’t know because I am always one of the last. I compete with three others for the Rip van Winkle award.

We are staying at Strútslaug for two nights to allow a day’s walking on the Torfajökull ice cap. It lies on an extensive volcanic cone known the ‘high rhyolite’. However, because of the red-raw state of my heels, it seems fairer to the others if I take the day off, so I stay at the hut. The complaints about the frequent stops to wait for me the previous day have got to me. Ed should really have done the same because his feet are as bad as mine, but he goes off with the others.
 

Geothermal pool at Strútslaug

After they have gone, I go down to the geothermal pools for a long soak. The strong mineral content works wonders on my scabby blisters. Not only does it heal heels, it is also mentally therapeutic. To tell you the truth, I am not very good at spending all day and night, seven days a week, with people I don’t know. It is hard enough with people I do know. I would have been hopeless in the army. Back at the hut I read a book of D. H. Lawrence short stories. I enjoy the day on my own.

Obsidian, a heavy, black, glassy igneous rock, lies all around. I pick up a piece to take home. Gavin has collected about five pounds (2.25 kg) of the stuff. Rather him than me carrying the extra weight. I’m glad I’m not on his Christmas present list.

I still have mine:

Obsidian from Iceland

The others return having had a superb day. Below is Neville’s picture of Paul, the leader, overlooking one of the views I missed. However, I am informed we will be walking part of the same route again tomorrow.  

Even for just a day’s walk, Paul still takes his carrying frame, albeit not as heavily laden as usual. He has a rope and two ice axes for emergencies. I think these must be stored at the Strútslaug hut because I haven’t noticed them before, even though he always carries far more weight than anyone else, including fuel for cooking. The sturdy frame appears to be constructed out of angle irons. I suspect it incorporates scaffolding poles and a couple of rolled steel joists as well. 

This Icelandic saga is turning out to be even longer than anticipated. We are now half way along the route, east to west, north-east of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, with four more days walking to go:

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

Walking In Iceland 7: to Strútslaug

links to: introduction and index - previous day - next day

Tuesday 30th August 1977

Yesterday, on our walking tour in southern Iceland, we reached the Álftavötn (Alftavatn) hut. It is another step up in the world, the biggest hut so far, with an upper storey where we can sleep on the wooden floor.

The Álftavötn hut

It must be a strange life for Paul, the leader. He spends his summers in Iceland, and, since finishing his degree at Keele, his winters working in the Staffordshire potteries. This is his fifth season with Dick Phillips and he hopes to be offered a partnership. His deadpan manner continues.

“Would someone please dig a rubbish hole?” he asks.
“Where shall I dig it?” responds Neville.
 “Preferably in the ground.”
“Where in the ground?”
“Preferably outside.”
“Where abouts?” asks Neville. “In front of the door?”

With that, Neville gets a serious answer. In 1977, most packaging would have been bio-degradable paper, so burying it would have been acceptable.

Paul then describes the next hut in the itinerary, Strútslaug, delivered as always in his inimitable, sentence-pause-sentence style.

“There are hot springs there – And pools in which you can bathe – Unfortunately, one has to cross a glacial river to get to the hot pools – There is, however, a bridge over this river – Unfortunately, it has been swept away – We are going to replace the bridge – Unfortunately, someone has to wade across the river to anchor the bridge at the far side…” 

And so on. He still “can’t guarantee” anything. 

Surprisingly, he does not have mountain leader qualifications. He got the job after visiting Iceland before university when he helped Dick Phillips build the Strútslaug hut. Dick then invited him back the following year as a walk leader.

We set off from Álftavötn to Strútslaug : from Swan Lake to Ostrich Pool as they implausibly translate. We begin by crossing the natural bridge again – the one that those who shot off in front yesterday did not know about, so had to wade the river. I’m glad I doubled back and didn’t need to. They were lucky to get away with it.

I am at the back from the start, abject and pathetic because of rubbed raw heels. The maddening thing is that it’s my own fault. If I hadn’t gone out in new boots before coming here I would have been all right. The others have to wait for me several times. It must be a change for Dennis, Debbie and Ed not to be back markers for once. I am told later that some of the bridge school “G.T. boys” are complaining about the frequent stops and implying that some of us are not fit to be there. 

There is persistent drizzle and it is boiling inside waterproofs, but I do feel better when I take off my overtrousers. Fortunately, the Strútslaug hut appears unexpectedly quickly, the walk today not being particularly arduous.  Even the river Sydri-Ófæra – the southern impassable – fails to live up to its name. In spring and early summer, the only way to cross would be all together, sideways, with linked arms, bare feet in boots to keep socks dry, and preferably wearing gaiters for protection against the sharp, painful, leg-abrading debris carried by the fast-flowing water.  

As soon as we arrive, everyone rushes off down the mountain to the hot pools, undresses and gets in. The friction between the fast and slow walkers is beginning to find expression in banter which has a rather nasty sounding edge to it. Debbie and Dennis are reluctant to get in. Dennis says he has not brought a towel. Tony says he can borrow his. Later, when Dennis gets out, he begins to dry his lower parts. A couple of the “G.T. boys” start up: 

“Hey, Tony, he’s drying his cock on your towel. When you said he could borrow your towel, you didn’t say he could dry his cock on it. And he’s got skid marks in his underpants. Does Debbie know he’s got skid marks in his underpants? I bet she wouldn’t let him unzip their sleeping bags at night if she knew he had skid marks in his underpants.”

Whether or not they do, I wouldn’t care to know, but Debbie did take off her clothes and get in the pools with everyone else.  

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

Walking In Iceland 6: Eldgjá and Álftavötn

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Monday 29th August 1977

Another journal extract. Neville and I are now well into our guided walk, trekking in the south of Iceland with ten others. Today we move hut again, but by a roundabout route. Our walk goes from Skaelingar to the top of Gjátindur mountain (3,068 feet, 935m), then down through the Eldgjá canyon to Álftavötn (or Alftavatn). The canyon contains the 130 foot (40m) Ófærufoss waterfall. These features can be seen on the map. The huts are marked kofi (shelter).

The first thing we have to do is cross a river. Now this and one crossed yesterday are easy, but soon we come to a larger river which necessitates the rolled-up-trousers, bare-feet-in-boots technique to keep your socks dry. This causes me concern because my soft, canning factory, Wellington-boot steamed heels now carry sticking plaster which soon rubs unstuck when wet. I should have done more walking before coming, but there wasn’t time. My one practice day was not helpful because I wore new boots, so my heels had blisters before I came. I brought my older boots to Iceland, but the damage is done.

Ascending Gjátindur, we leave the rock pillars and green of Skaelingar behind, and crunch up through gravel to gain height. We see another group in the distance, the first we have encountered so far. Paul, whose job it is to know who else is in the area, says it is a party of Germans. Whilst we, hardened rucksack-carrying explorers, have trekked overland on our own legs to get here, it amuses us to hear they have travelled to within a few miles by bus. Mockingly xenophobic remarks from nineteen-fifties war stories are heard, including the term “schnitzel-eaters”. Paul then admits that Dick Phillips runs a similar trip called the Walkers’ Motor Tour in which participants are able to bring luxuries such as spare socks. This too is scoffed at, the ‘L’ becoming an ‘N’.

From Gjátindur we see distant views of ice caps and volcanic cones, and below, the extraordinary ‘fire canyon’ of Eldgjá, the largest volcanic canyon in the world. Apparently, it just opened up several hundred years ago. It is nearly 900 feet deep (270m), between a quarter and half a mile wide (600m) and 25 miles long (40km). Its first recorded eruption in A.D. 939 is thought to have caused temperature drops of 2^oC as far away as Central Asia. The ash cloud made the summer of A.D. 940 the coolest in Europe for 1,500 years. 

Eldgjá from Gjátindur

“Eld” translates as “fire” and “gjá” as “canyon” – hence “fire canyon”. “Tindur” is “peaks, thus  “Gjátindur” is “canyon peaks”. “Skaelingar” might mean “skeletons” which seems to make sense with the rock pillars. Google translates today’s destination, “Álftavötn” or “Alftavatn”, as “Swan Lakes”, which surely can’t be right, but “vötn” or “vatn” does mean water. We seem to be getting somewhere, except with “Sveinstindur”.

Four of us, oddly the four that went on our own road trip on Thursday, are having camera problems, evidenced by the blue lines on the pictures. When I try to rewind the film, it breaks inside the camera. Later, after dark, I open the case inside my sleeping bag, rewind the film by hand and manage to slot it back into the cartridge, but much of it is ruined. For pictures from the floor of the canyon, I again have to turn to the internet.

Gjátindur from Eldgjá

We descend the thousand-foot scree slope to the valley floor and begin to walk its length. It is flat-bottomed with near-vertical sides, just like a geomorphological diagram. After some time we reach the Ófærufoss waterfall which flows in from the side in two steps. Above the lower step the water has eroded a natural bridge around ten feet in diameter and twenty feet long. We climb up to walk across [it collapsed in 1993]. 

Later we stop beside a round mound around thirty feet high. Bridge School Mike climbs up to look and discovers it is hollow. We all climb up to look.

Suddenly we turn down a dark, steep-sided passageway between five and fifteen feet wide and thirty feet deep, perhaps the course of an old river. It is a very strange volcanic landscape.

Because of the indirect route taken, with its ascents and descents, today is the longest walk so far. By now we are stringing out. Paul decides to wait near the top of a hill in a bitterly cold wind for everyone to catch up. He tells us the Álftavötn hut is visible from just over the top and that the front runners have gone on ahead. I am walking quite slowly with blistered heels, but come across Neville waiting about a hundred yards ahead of Paul.

“Watch it, he’s ruthless. He doesn’t care if you go wrong,” Neville reminds me, but I decide to risk it and limp slowly on. About half an hour later I see Paul and the others overtaking me high on a ridge to the right. What he has not told us is that there is a river hidden in a gorge between where he had been waiting and the hut, and that there is a natural bridge about a mile upstream. I double back and eventually catch up with Debbie, Dennis and Ed the translator at the back just before the hut. They are even slower than I am. 

Meanwhile the bridge school “G.T. boys”, as Debbie and Dennis call them (do I detect slight hostility?), have had to wade the river. It is wide, deep, and fast-flowing, and they get wet. Moral – don’t go off in front. That’s the second time I’ve said that.

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