I decided to call this 'Free Day', well actually it was Donna's idea, because we spent nothing today. We didn't use the car, and all our food was homemade; and yes that includes the Leek & Potato soup and Apple Crumble which Donna had made this week. Yes, being on holiday doesn't just mean eating out - especially when it costs a fortune here in Iceland! That said, the food shopping is expensive enough so you will pay unless you decide to sustain yourself on water all week! Which by the way is lovely, fresh from the glaciers.
Anyway, enough of the waffle - ooh,..Waffles, they sound nice So as I have already said, we didn't use the car today but elected to do a couple of coastal walks which eventually added up to around 8 miles of walking according to Mr Google. The weather for most of the day was grey and dull, no rain though, quite mild, and a nice addition at the end of the day with a few breaks in the cloud and a brief sunset.
We left the cottage around 11am and headed east in the direction of Rif; the nearest village to us. There is a well defined gravel path between the villages but we chose to take the unmarked path along the edge of the land. Now the views were great with some lovely rock formations and plenty of birds perched on the cliffs, however the route itself wasn't great. It really was unmarked, so much so that we spent half the time walking across thick boggy grass.
After just over an hour and a half we arrived in Rif, the port was quite impressive for such a small village, but the village itself wasn't much to look at. Form and function over beauty. After small snack-stop next to the harbour we headed back to Hellisandur but taking the main path, and by around 2pm we were back 'home' for a hot lunch.
A couple of hours passed by before we togged up again and this time headed west along the coast. And this walk was really enjoyable, there was so much to see. A nice beach, the old abandoned port of Hellisandur, great lava formations, rusty old bits of 'stuff' and even a small waterfall formed by the tide coming in over a small ledge - not often you see any size of waterfall coming in from the sea.
It was rich pickings for Donna, she had found a few nice pieces of glass on the beach, some remnants of pottery, and even an old coin. Plenty to add to her arts and crafts kit back home. After wandering around this area for a few hours we got back to the cottage just after 7:30pm so we had done around six and a half hours walking during the day.
Shortly after we had eaten we had the added bonus of a small break in the clouds with the sunlight peaking through giving us some nice light over the sea, but it didn't last that long so no hope of Northern Lights tonight Now just time to load up the 429 photos that I had taken during the day...
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