It’s day three. I’m back on the Laugavegur trail today after spending yesterday on the road.
I was very surprised to wake up and find it was 7am. François would be in the kitchen, getting the coffee on already. I sorted everything I own into two vague piles – things I need today and things I don’t need today – dithered over actually packing it and opted to go to breakfast. At that time of the morning, only half-dressed and with a lot of packing and striking to do, I wasn’t really hungry. I drank hot chocolate and ate a cereal bar and then drifted back to my tent. I was just staring to get the tent down when Mira came over to help. I didn’t need the help, I can manage a small tent on my own but it did make it marginally quicker. All the same, I was sitting on the deck waiting for everyone to be done and for the car to be packed and even found time to brush and replait my hair.
François had said our first (of three) river crossings was only about 40 metres from the campsite so half the group had set off already in our river crossing shoes. It was a placid stream, although just deep enough that you shouldn’t wade as enthusiastically as I did – I splashed the water quite near my rolled-up trousers. I also struggled a little with footing because it was deeper than I expected but we were over in seconds and sitting in the grass to change back into our boots, some lamenting not having brought towels.
The second crossing was just fifteen minutes further on, up and down a couple of rolling hills. This was a little harder and here I definitely could have done with my poles to help me across, to judge by the fact that François came and grabbed my arm half across. When I put my boots back on on the other side, I also pulled out my poles. American Jake – it has taken this long to realise there are two Jakes in the group – was wearing flip-flops and one of them drifted away in the current and had to be chased down.
For a while it was all quite green – not pastureland but verging on that kind of feeling, with an occasional patch of snow to cross. One turned out to be a snowbridge over a stream so François borrowed one of my poles to test its structural rigidity before sending us carefully over one by one.
A little bit further on we came to the huts at Hvanngil. We’d heard about them back at Álftavatn – there had been a notice up at the wardens’ hut telling us to go there if it was too windy at Álftavatn. It’s nicely set among the mountains, very obviously more sheltered. And it had “Icelandic marshmallows”, big bales of hay and crops wrapped in pink and white plastic. It turns out it’s not grown there, they’re delivered there for horse tours, although the place does look green enough to grow a couple of bales of something.
Not far on from Hvanngil we stopped for first lunch. I didn’t experience this yesterday because I was in the car and stopping in the snow on Monday hadn’t been an option. It was a very picturesque spot, right next to a waterfall and Eiður improved it by appearing it in the car to provide a river-crossing spectacle. When we’d finished eating, we crossed too but we did it by a bridge.
Our third and final river crossing wasn’t much further on. It was wider than the first two and the river was much faster, although it wasn’t much deeper. François waded across first to test it and dump his backpack and then came backwards and forwards to escort groups. We crossed in chains – first three, then four, then everyone else, François upstream, lightest in the middle, all with arms linked, trying to feel our way with a single pole on the downstream side. The water was cold and got colder the further we went. And not just foot-freezing, full body and brain freezing, the sort of cold where all you can do on the other side is stand and make incomprehensible noises until the feeling comes back to your feet – and take photos of the faces of everyone crossing after you. Putting boots back on feet that cold make them tingle and burn.
Now we were onto the black desert stretch. This would last for about two hours and there was nothing, just flat black sand, dust and ash. Kieran thought the whole landscape was just dead and black and depressing but the mountains on each side were covered with lime-green moss, so bright and alive and such a contrast with the flat black landscape. If you want a dead landscape, go north to Ódáðahraun, the Desert of Misdeeds.
And it was flat!
The group split down the middle, with half of them trotting along with François at the front and the other half chatting a quarter of a mile back. I’d been worried about the rest of the walk after Monday but this was easy enough. I knew we still had a long way to go but my feet felt ok.
Second lunch was by a gorge with a very enthusiastic glacial river in the middle. We crossed by a big chunky road bridge and sat down on the south side to eat and take photos. I got out my map to see where we were and it got passed round and appreciated. A few people went off to “have a look at the rocks” a little distance away. And then we were back to the black desert for a while longer.
It started to rain and we put on waterproofs in the hope of scaring the rain away. As usually it didn’t actually work but it never got really heavy. We must have been about halfway across the desert by now.
It began to go uphill, like climbing across slag heaps, as Kieran put it. We crossed through a little range of crumbly black mountains and into another big black plain. It rained a bit harder and we sheltered under a lump green-covered rock long enough to put on/adjust waterproofs and have a snack before we headed on again.
Now we were getting near the end. We saw a 3.5km signpost. Just like Monday. There’s an end but it’s still quite a long way off. We could see Eyjafjallajökull in the distance and we were surrounded by green mountains and black sand and considering that this is a downhill day, there was a lot of uphill going on. François pointed out a radio mast in the distance. Huts are always below big hills, apparently. We reached the ridge. My feet were utterly flat by now. The only thing keeping me trudging onwards was my poles. We enjoyed the view and François mentioned that we might do a night hike tonight, if anyone felt up to it – very clearly to, Markarfljótsgljúfur, the huge canyon to our right, that he had pointedly not mentioned. “Shh, it’s a surprise!” Well, how much of a surprise can it be? It’s written in the itinerary! Did no one else read what we were going to do?
Down to the left we went to Emstrur. This was a bit different to the wide open Álftavatn. It’s nestled among the mountains and camping is anywhere you can find a space big enough and flat enough to pitch your tent. We put all ours together in a row on a ridge above the huts, clustered around our food tent. Nandini, who was supposed to be in the huts, decided it was too busy and she didn’t like the idea of sharing the big beds with a stranger and came out to enjoy all the fun of camping with the rest of us, although she needed a bit of help figuring out how the tent worked. Mira helped with my mine and when it was all up and I’d shown Nandini how the groundsheet worked, I went to help Mira with hers – and to keep repositioning her tent pegs, which she kept moving.
Dinner was parcels of salmon with lemon, garlic and butter. I came in too late to have to go anywhere near the fish but I did gather that they were having some trouble portioning the extras. It was roasted outside the tent over a barbecue but it seemed to take Eiður, François and G Adventures forever to get it lit.
In the end we had 36 parcels of salmon for eleven people + François and Eiður. Actually, we did pretty well at eating most of it. And we had pudding! Eiður had us chopping chocolate and I saw François whisking milk and then it all went into a bowl with, to quote Jake, “it looks like a pear. It tastes like a pear”.
We took over the washing-up. The routine of filling crates with hot water for washing and rinsing had become normal. It took even longer to gather everyone together to go for the walk to the canyon. My feet were too flat to walk another two hours, although François promised it would be “the highlight of the day”. Instead I went to my tent, which is really warm and cosy but isn’t the best surface for writing on, read three pages of Egil’s Saga and went to sleep.
Day Four – Emstrur to Þórsmörk
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