I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I want to walk the Laugavegur Trail again. I did it in 2018, with mixed results, and I’d like to do it again.
International travel is starting to open up again. Well, I guess it’s been open enough for a while. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m double-jabbed and will be first in the queue for a third or a booster (apparently they’re not the same thing, even though the injection itself literally is) and I’m a very happy mask-wearer and I’m unsociable enough that distancing isn’t going to be a problem. But I have a very overactive gag reflex and throat swab tests just aren’t possible. So I’m holding off on international travel until either a nose test or no test at all is my option. I haven’t really missed international travel. In fact, the idea of packing a bag and carrying it around an airport and sitting on a plane and then faffing around passport control and all that – oh, I can’t be bothered with any of it right now.
But when it’s clear and easy, I will be getting back to trips abroad and specifically to Iceland. I have a to-do list featuring volcanoes, whales and new spas but I also intend to do the Laugavegur Trail again, be it in 2022 or 23.
I’ve been dithering over it because I’d like to do it with a guide and with luggage transfer and the support car and all that, but it’s incredibly expensive. I’m open to the idea of doing it on my own – I like the idea of taking my time and not having a group scrutinising what I eat but I’m not 100% confident in my navigation abilities in such an open landscape, especially if a white-out blizzard comes down like it did on the Monday last time. Honestly, I survived that because François held onto my arm for an hour and walked me step by tiny exhausted miserable step until we reached the safety of the hut. If I’d done that hike solo that day, I would be dead. I can probably navigate it fine in clear weather. It’s marked with yellow posts and there are plenty of other hikers along the way and I have a really good map. Well, no. It’s a piece of steaming rubbish compared with the world-leading highly-detailed constantly-updated 1:25 000 Explorer maps Ordnance Survey produce but it’s better than the 1:100 000 maps by Mál og menning, which are the Icelandic standard ones everyone recommends.
I know a halfway hill option is to find another independent hiker to go with but the only friend I have who’d be capable of such a hike and who I hope I’d trust with some navigation is someone I just wouldn’t be able to go with. So a stranger? I know a stranger is just a friend who you haven’t met yet but it’s four very intensive days to spend one-on-one with a stranger.
But then it occurred to me that yes, it’s hella spendy but it’s not like I’ve been spending much in the last year and a half. For crying out loud, I now have something that you could call a house deposit! If I lived in a different part of the country, I have 10% of a pretty good house sitting in my bank account. Of course, living where I do, I have 10% of a one bedroom flat “in need of modernising” above a shop and either way, I don’t earn enough to get a mortgage on the remaining 90%. So no house, or flat, for me just yet. Might as well splash some of it on a big walk, right?
And to that end, here are a few things I’d do differently.
Concentrate on training, not all the irrelevant stuff
I spent months in 2018 planning irrelevant stuff. I did a lot of shopping as my preparation. A lot more shopping than walking. It means I don’t need to buy anything this time round – my boots are brilliant, my sleeping bag is amazing, my clothes are more than suitable and my first-aid kit is stocked with everything I could want. I used my mum’s hiking poles last time and now have a pair of my very own which are far easier to adjust.
That means I don’t have to think about it anymore and I can concentrate on regular hill-climbing. I said it last time and I didn’t do it once – walk from Lulworth to Durdle Door regularly! Do the Lulworth-White Nothe walk as many times as you can! That’s actually not too dissimilar to day one in terms of distance and ascent, except it’s endless up and down again instead of a relentless climb to most of the way up a mountain. Get to the Lake District and do something hilly! Even Dartmoor – even Dartmoor is good for practicing walking uphill!
One of the group said they trained by doing a lot of running. I think of this often. I’ve tried running. It’s not something I have a talent for. I’m too unfit and too bad at running even for Couch to 5K! I talked to people at work about it and they said you can repeat weeks, you can go back, you don’t have to follow it in order at the speed it wants you to but even that didn’t work. Maybe I’ll try running this winter without a voice in my ear. Maybe I’ll see a doctor about the pain in my legs when I walk uphill. Yeah, that seems like it’s not a terrible idea.
Think about food
I have an eating disorder. It’s a ludicrous one that veers between not having a name and having too many names and after 30-odd years of thinking I was alone in the world, it turns out I’m not. And it turns out that people like me are some of the most-hated people on the internet so I’ll not be talking about the details. But in short, fuelling myself for a walk like this is difficult and I’ll need to think about how best to do it. Making a pile of flapjack for breakfast every day would be good, I reckon. It’s just baked crunchy porridge, albeit with ten times the sugar and syrup. If I can’t have François as guide again, I hope everyone in the company does that thing where the group dices a load of fruit to put on the porridge because snacking on bite-sized bits of apple all morning was a joy. Substantial pudding with every meal. They do feed you well, if you’re not someone like me.
Meals aside, I need to up my snacks. In 2018, we set off at route march speed after a meagre lunch on the bus. I know that if we’d started more slowly, I wouldn’t have got overheated and taken off all my insulating clothes but I also know that if I’d snacked a lot, I’d have had a lot more energy. I remember being given a cookie and being too tired and weird-blood-sugary to eat it, putting it in my coat pocket and finding it as a pile of wet crumbs later on. Perhaps if I’d had my body weight in sweets and chocolate in my pocket, I’d have been able to eat and the whole day would have gone a lot better. I need a bag of mixed cereal and chocolate buttons to nibble. If I can get hot chocolate for the first day, do that. Even in the height of summer when you’re not facing a white-out blizzard, that’s going to be the hardest and coldest day.
Stay in a decent hotel the night before
Come to that, it’s only just really dawned on me, nearly three and a half years later, that I hadn’t really eaten anything that first day. I was staying in the annexe-down-the-road of the most bare-bones guesthouse, with neither kitchen nor buffet so I hadn’t had breakfast. Lunch was eaten on the coach but it was quite a small lunch “while we’re broken down and not going anywhere, you lot might as well have something to eat”, little more than a snack. So I’ll stay in a hotel where I can have a good breakfast before I depart, that’s definitely worth throwing a little more money at than I did, and if I don’t manage to eat a substantial lunch along the way, at least I’ll graze continuously on the bus and be pretty well-fuelled by the time we set off. Oh, and stay in Reykjavik two nights before I go instead of arriving literally the evening before, to give me time to settle, go food shopping and maybe even a quick dip in the pool.
Don’t take off my insulating layers
The food on Monday was one of my two big problems and the aforementioned layers were the other. I got hot, I took everything off and the layers were distributed among the group because my bag was too full. That’s partly my fault but it’s partly that plans for the first day had changed because of the weather three times in the preceding 24 hours and none of us had any idea what we needed. But I walked through a blizzard for at least two hours in nothing but my thin base layer and my waterproof shell. Next time, we are stopping to cool down, get our breath back and put back our warm layers. Or at the very least, have them close enough to put back one once I start to feel like I need them. I didn’t see any of them again – never even thought of them again – until after we’d eaten and were starting to pick bunks. No wonder I struggled on Monday! I had hypothermia and I was starving! Two things to fix next time!
Take salty snacks
No one realised it at the time but we were clearly lacking in salt because when we stopped at the first rest break on the bus home, we all went into the shop and came out with salty stuff – Pringles, pretzels, olives, salted nuts. I guess some part of our lizard brains realised we’d sweated a lot and hadn’t replaced lost minerals and that something important was missing. Once we got past that first day, everyone seemed fine but maybe we’d have been more fine if we’d had some more salt, which we clearly needed. When I have toast at a hotel or airport, I often quietly sprinkle salt on the butter because it’s always unsalted and it doesn’t taste as good. Maybe I’ll take a little pot and sprinkle a bit in my sandwiches every day and take a tube or two of Pringles. Sodium and calories have to be good on a long cold mountain walk, right?
Take more photos
I have 294 photos from the entire 6 day experience. Of the actual walk, I have about 164. In four days. I can take 1000 photos in a three day weekend and I managed 164, none of which have me in! The only evidence I was there at all is one underexposed Instax photo on day four and a couple of photos from the rest of the group, which have since been removed from the shared Google Drive folder anyway. So I want more photos and more selfies and I’d really like to at least make a half-hearted effort at vlogging it. Making videos is something I’ve been trying and failing to do since at least 2015 and it’s one of my 2022 goals to make at least 12 videos next year. So if I do it in 2022, it’ll be one of those 12 and if I do in 2023, maybe I’ll be experienced and confident enough to make it a three-quarter-hearted vlog.
Sort out my bag
To be fair, in 2018 the first day was muddled because of the weather and our bags were all kinds of a mess. We were going to do a day hike from Landmannalaugar and return there. No, we’re going to go straight to Hrafntinnusker from the rest stop on the main road. No, the bus has broken down and we’re not going to set off at all yet. Etc etc.
All in all, I ended up with far too much stuff in my bag on the first day and half of it of no use, which is why I didn’t have the space or weight for those warm clothes. You don’t need your river crossing shoes on the first day. Send them with the van. Honestly, you won’t use the big scrapbook while you’re out and about. Send it with the van and write in it in the evenings. Maybe take some postcard-sized paper for sketches to stick in later. But probably not on the first day, which is a whole day squeezed into half a day because of the drive out to Landmannalaugar. No time for sketch stops on the first day.
In fact, take half the stuff out of your day bag and send it with the van. You need your lunch and lots of snacks and drinks, the map because you’re a map nerd, your camera, your waterproofs, first aid kit and an extra warm layer. That’s more than enough. You really don’t need any more stuff for this hike than you’d take to Dartmoor. Ok, take the river shoes and a small travel towel for feet-drying on the other days. But you’re hiking all day. Only take stuff you need to hike.
Don’t overpack the overnight bag either
I took my 70l Wet & Dry duffle bag last time and I dimly remember it being full to the gunwales. I don’t think it was too heavy, though. I managed to carry it off the bus and to my hostel on the last afternoon all by myself. But I probably took too much stuff (I usually do) and it was probably a mess. I’ll want comfy shoes for the campsite. Last time I took my glitter fake-converse. I won’t do that this time – the soles are too thin for the rocky campsites and quite frankly, I can’t be bothered with the laces. Ok, that’s one thing I may have to invest in. Off the top of my head, I don’t think I have any shoes that are lightweight, reasonably sturdy and more or less slip straight on. I think I mostly wore my sandals last time, usually with thick warm purple stripy Heat Holders socks because I am stylish but they’re my river crossing shoes and I’m a bit concerned about them being wet from the day’s crossings. On the other hand… three pairs of footwear for a four day hike? Really?
Also, one change of clothes for evenings – something warm and soft and dry that I can throw on after a day of sweating in my hiking clothes. One pen, a small roll of glue dots and a small roll of washi tape for the scrapbook and nothing else. Ok, a green and a white pencil for sketching mountains. Depending on the weather, I might take my tent so I can stay at Thorsmork a little longer, but that’ll mean I also need a groundsheet and sleeping mat so that’ll take up a lot of room. That’ll be a last-minute decision probably made the actual day I fly.
Remember the GPS tracker
I must have accidentally switched on my tracker quite early on day one – I think it recorded the drive and then the first part of the walk but it either ran out of battery, got too cold and switched off or got too wet. It didn’t record the rest of the first day. Didn’t think about it the second day, when I was in the car. I did charge it that evening and it recorded day three but then evidently I forgot about it on day four as well.
So a thing to do second time round is to charge it every night, remember to turn it on every morning and remember to turn it off when we reach the hut every evening. I really do want a GPS record of my walk, although not quite as urgently now I’ve discovered that other people have recorded it and I can look at tracks whenever I want. Still, I want my own.
About the scrapbook…
I already have the scrapbook because I had sort-of plans to do this in 2020. To be honest, that would never have happened, even if it hadn’t been for the plague. In 2018 I took a Paperchase “oversized A5” kraft composition book (chunky exercise book with thick card covers and brown paper pages) and used it as my mountain diary. I kept all the shower tokens and I bought postcards where I could and sketched occasionally and it’s my precious. Strangers would come and watch me scribbling about my day in it. I’m going to do it again and I’m going to make the maps better – I had a map for each day and when I got back, I marked lunch spots and river crossings and anything else of interest but they were traced on tracing paper from my guidebook, which has small and awkward maps anyway.
I will absolutely be doing the scrapbook/mountain journal again. I took my Instax camera last time so I could put pictures in along the way. Will I do that again? Probably. My Instax printer would be smaller and lighter and the pictures would be better if I took them on my camera and transferred them for printing. On the other hand, they’d be less atmospheric and in-the-moment and I’d have to transfer them from my camera to my phone to the printer which would waste precious phone battery. So on the whole, maybe I will take the Instax.
Yes, documenting the trip while you’re actually away is the bit I should be forgetting but I like journalling and scrapbooking and I bet there’s a lot in my 2018 diary that I’d have completely forgotten if not for writing it in there on the day.
So, if you see me walking up to Durdle Door multiple times in the next few months – and given the blizzard we had on the first day, winter’s not such a bad time to practice – you’ll know what I’m planning for the summer.