Lakagigar: Thursday
We began with an 8km westward hitch to look at the cliffs and arch formation at Dyrholaey, which is an isolated rocky ‘mesa’, 300 ft high and right at the southernmost point of Iceland’s mainland: 63°45’N 18°10’W - 975 miles NW of Birmingham, to put it in perspective. The arch is big enough, so the guidebook says, to fly a light plane underneath it - though how many crashed in trying, we are not told. There’s a lighthouse and thousands of seabirds nesting on the vertical cliffs which plunge into the sea beneath, including puffins, of which we saw many on the wing, more on the sea, but none on land. We also got a good view along the miles of uninterrupted beach to the west, and could see the silhouettes of the Westman Islands a few miles offshore, stretching away as far as the binoculars could reveal.
Having avoided the perils of the cliff edges, we went back through Vik and started east on route 1. The first roadsign after leaving the hills around Vik behind us was a bit disconcerting: it said “Due to the possibility of eruption from volcano Katla, you are advised not to leave the main road”. A mile further on was another sign saying “these lights flash when there is a sandstorm in progress”. Between the two of them, these signs gave us a certain frisson of anticipation! The first 20km of road was devoid of anything but black sandy wasteland with the odd single lane bridge with sediment laden water rushing under it. Then we came to a more rounded unusual landscape of blobby boulders, as it seemed, all greeny-grey in colour and heaped into mounds 10m high and 50-100m across perhaps. This was the remains of the lava flows from Lakagigar, which run to the coast from 40km away inland and are now covered in a wonderful deep carpet of moss so deep and soft you could use it as a mattress. The moss is also shot through with ground-willow shrubs and some flowering plants and is quite delightful, being soaked most days by the rain which hits this coast exposed to the southerly airflow from the Atlantic. Having had a coffee-stop to investigate and water the mossy boulders, we carried on quite soon, just in case Katla should decide to give a larger-than-usual performance.
Katla is a volcano under the ice of Myrdalsjokull (muddy or mirey valley glacier) which last erupted in 1918, and which averaged an eruption every 47 years in the last millennium. So it seems like its a bit overdue! When a volcano erupts under the icecap, the ice melts and sends a huge inundation down the flood plain in its path. The last time this happened, it has been calculated that the flow was 5000 cu m per second, which is three times the flow from the Amazon river! So one doesn’t want to be caught on the sandy plain below Katla at just the wrong moment - that’s for sure. How to tell the right moment from the wrong moment was not explained.
We carried on driving until we saw the sign for the 206 to Laki, an indicated 45 km to the north. Laki is the name of a volcanic hill near the east of a chain of craters which erupted in sequence around 275 years ago. This eruption, which started at the western end of the crater chain and finished 35km to the east near the beginning of Vatnajokull, was the biggest producer of lava since settlers moved into Iceland 1100 years ago, and so we thought it sounded like somewhere we should go to see. The gravel side-road road soon deteriorated to a bumpy single lane cart-track and we began to catch up with another vehicle - a small Suzuki Jimny jeep. We drove in tandem for a few miles - we were quite happy to have a smaller vehicle in front of us in case of uncharted waters ahead - and he probably had a rope, since he looked a bit like a local. However, on the crest of a ridge, the jeep came to a halt and didn’t start off again. A man got out and began to walk back towards us - roadrage already? Perhaps he didn’t like my headlights in his mirror! But no - his gear selectors had just totally failed and the gearstick was stirring nothing at all in the box. He turned out to be an Italian tourist on his honeymoon, and the jeep was an Avis rental. We were already rather late, and now it looked like we would have to take them back down to the valley to a service station so they could organise a repair - the mobile phones had no signal at all away from the main road, and we had not passed a single house for 5 miles or so. Just as we had given up hope of getting the lid off the gearbox without a socket set, a Freelander came over the brow of the hill on the way back down towards the main road and stopped in the queue. At least they could take the Italians down so that we could carry on. We pushed the jeep off the track and manoevred our car around the Freelander and were soon on our way once again.
The road went on and on, across one quite big river which we forded without problems, up hill, down dale and among increasing amounts of snow-drifts which still hadn’t melted. Soon the road started to go through the snowdrifts - the first ones quite small, but gradually getting higher till they were considerably higher than the vehicle. The track through the drifts was just wide enough for us, with about a foot to spare either side and deep ruts kept us off the walls as we slithered and splashed along in 1st gear. Occasionally there would be a huge brown puddle in the middle of a drift - deep enough to conceal the ruts. Would it be 8” deep or 2 feet? We were glad the Germans in the Freelander had been there first and not told us of any major problems besides bumpy river bottoms in the fords. Pushing mini-icebergs in front of us, we ploughed on and on and eventually came to a big signboard with a map of the Lakagigar area. Somewhat unexpectedly to us, this indicated that a circular drive now began, which took us around the lava-field and then along the line of craters for 20 Km before crossing the lava again and coming back to the board. We decided to go anticlockwise and started off down into the valley 500 ft below. We drove along riverbeds and around huge clumps of tree-trunk-like lava, but mostly keeping at the side of the lavaflows near the valley edge, through some even deeper rutted snowdrifts where I quite expected our axles to bottom out between the ruts and eventually the road started to go north and then west as we got to the crater row. There was a Shell bowser at the side of the track, and Rachael voiced the opinion that it was pretty decent of them to leave a fuel tank for people who ran short, so far from the ring-road. We dissappeared into the next snow tunnel, a downhill slide about 100m long this time, and then around the bend we found a red Toyota pickup and a JCB with a snow blower on the front bucket. The JCB was hard at work on the next blockage while the man in the pickup was drinking coffee and waiting his spell at the helm of the digger. So that was why the tyre tracks in front of us had been getting fewer and fewer - this was as far as we were going! The hill at the side of us was Laki - the biggest hill in the chain, but now by far the nearest one, so we decided to have a walk up to the shoulder at least to get a look at the other volcanoes. It was easy walking on dry mossy gravel and it only took about 20 minutes to get to the western shoulder. The crater row was quite impressive disappearing into the western sunshine and while R started back to the car, J carried on to the top and got some shots to the east as well. The return trip to the main road was quite quick, since we now knew the road ahead. As we came to the Italian’s jeep we saw that it was now attached to a Toyota pickup by a thick rope - the hirer must have spent all afternoon arranging a tow. We wondered how he would get on being towed over the blind summit where the road went over a 1-in-4 knife edge both ways!
We arrived at Skaftafell hotel just after 9pm but still in time to have dinner, which was a cold buffet first course followed by very good freshly roasted lamb, but accompanied by cold cheesy-potatoes. We joined in the conversation in the adjoining lounge over the coffee and chocolates, and learned about the ‘hidden people’ who live in the rocks all around Iceland (and who are believed in my most Icelanders, apparently) and elves, which the pretty, blonde and voluble guide claimed to have seen when young! At 00:30, when we turned in, it was still light enough to photograph the glacier behind the hotel without flash. But we didn’t find any elves or hidden people in the garden.