Booking
The big big thing this month is that I’ve booked my flights and accommodation! Yay!
I put it off for a really long time because flights on Icelandair are getting expensive and they no longer include luggage by default. Quite frankly, I put it off because I didn’t want to hand over my money but eventually you have to. I can’t just apparate to Landmannalaugar on the morning of the trek. And it has to be Icelandair rather than easyJet or WOW air because an emetophobe on a plane copes with a three hour flight via the built-in entertainment system. Four hours to Cyprus without it showed me very clearly how much I need that thing for a longer flight than the hour it takes me to get to Paris or Manchester.
I also booked my accommodation. I’d been putting that off partly because of cost but partly because you can’t book accommodation until you know exactly when you’ll be there. Am I going the day before the trek or the day before that? Am I leaving first thing after getting back or am I spending a day in the Blue Lagoon first? (No, I’m not. It’s now £70 a day in high season and while it’s good and maybe worth spending that much money once, it’s not worth it when you’ve already been half a dozen times over the last five years. I’ll go to one of the local pools.) So I have a guesthouse for the night before and a different guesthouse for two nights after, both at locations reasonably convenient for the transfer bus.
Still to do: airport parking in the UK, airport shuttle bus in Iceland.
Equipment
Having bought some basic First Aid/toiletries/Superdrug bits and pieces, I tried out the Compeed blister plasters this month.
I bought some pink sparkly trainers with stars on them, wore them to work one day and then went to the pub. They rubbed the back of my heels – which was fine until I wore my velvet boots to go & see Public Service Broadcasting the next day and discovered that they rubbed the sore patches (which they don’t do when there aren’t sore patches to rub). So compeeds on! And they worked miracles. Instantly, I couldn’t even feel the rubbing boots so I’m definitely going to add to my little collection because if I’m walking for six days, it’s going to feel good to have these available, even if I end up not using them.
I haven’t done a lot of walking this month because I’m a terrible person who’s also busy and been away or out a lot of the time but I spent a week in my mountain sandals in Cyprus and I’ve taught them not to rub at all. They’re not as comfortable as my old sandals but… the soles are starting to peel off of the old ones and I don’t want, two days into the trek, for my shoes to suddenly disintegrate.
I also bought a couple of new drybags. I have a nice bright green XL (22 litres) and a high-viz orange XS (3 litres), which should fit nicely with my pre-existing collection. I think I might need another giant one for my sleeping bag but we’ll see.
The sleeping bag is still on my list of things to buy and even if I order it, it won’t arrive in time for me to try it out for this blog.
I happened to be in Go Outdoors one day and accidentally bought a long-sleeved baselayer. It’s really comfortable and I’m tempted to get another one with short sleeves. I’m 99.9% sure it’s a North Ridge one and I’m about 90% sure it’s the Resistance one but the pictures look too soft and cottony – this is very much non-natural fibres. It’s very light and very silky (well, in an artificial way) and it has mesh side panels. The real colour is a kind of dark petrol blue/teal with that heathering effect that you usually see on grey things.
I did a tiny bit of other bits-and-pieces preparation shopping. I have liquid disinfectant for spraying on injuries. I have a mini bottle of sun cream, which is very optimistic. And I have two new drybags because everything is going to have to go in a drybag eventually. May as well stockpile.
And that’s it for this month. Next month there will definitely be mention of two days spent on Dartmoor.