Shetland Isles

So who knew that there was a small Island right in between Orkney and Shetland?

It wasn't until I was on the ferry going from Orkney to Shetland that I was looking at the map on my GPS, when I discovered there was a small island that sits pretty much right in the middle of the mainland islands of Orkney and Shetland. I had nothing that told me anything about it, just a little dot on my map with the writing "Fair Isle" next to it. I didn't have any other information and had no means of getting any, but I was able to work out that the Ferry would be sailing passed it about 4am.
So I set my alarm.

 

The sun had not quite risen yet, but you could see a little bit of light coming from the North East horizon. I didn't know if the island would be flat or have cliffs or even if anyone lived there, but when it appeared I was quite impressed with the big sea cliffs. It really set me off in a good mood for the rest of that day.

A few hours later the ferry arrived in Lerwick and I was on my way North to the most Northerly point in the UK, which is close to an area that I sailed passed a short time before while on the way back from Iceland.

I had 2 more ferry crossings before I could get to this most Northerly point. 

My mood for the day was about as laid back as you can get. I arrived at the ferry port at the North end of the mainland of Shetland to take the ferry to and island called Yell. It was about then I discover I had no cash left, so I headed south again in search of a cash point. Back at the ferry port now with some cash, some bacon and some eggs for breakfast. I relaxed in the sun and cooked and replied to a back log of emails with the free WIFI at the ferry port. I probably missed 6 or so ferries in the process.

Waiting For The Ferry To Yell in scotland

It was early afternoon before took the short 15 minute ferry ride over to Yell. I rode to the North end of the island and took another ferry over to another Island, Unst, and rode to the North side of it.

It's times like these that I envy car drivers a bit. When it comes to leaving my bike to go walking, it is never a simple operation. My camera gear always comes with me and the empty space it leaves is taken up by my motorbike clothes. It sounds simple enough to say here, but the whole operation of moving this gear over and getting changed never seems to happen as quickly as I think it should.

I was walking towards the most Northerly Lighthouse in the UK. I had no way to actually get to the lighthouse as it was built on top of a rock which is several hundred metres North of the most Northerly part of Unst. The path I followed took me around the west side of the peninsula. Puffins! Wow, I saw hundreds of Puffins. They also don't seem to be too bothered by human presense as you can get quite close without them getting scared. Of course you should always respect them and give them some room to do their nesting chores.

This place is a haven for sea birds, there are thousands of them! Some large rocks off shore are completely covered in nesting birds. Puffins have got to be the most entertaining of them to watch.

Puffins near Muckle Flugga in scotland

The long way to Shetland

It was only a little over a month ago that I was on my way back from Iceland on the ferry. I had been travelling on my motorbike around Iceland and it was now time to start the slow journey home to Scotland. It takes 2 days for this Ferry to get from Iceland to Denmark! 2 days! Not that the ferry is slow or anything, it is just a long way. I found the most depressing part of the journey, for me was that we sailed right passed Shetland, a group of islands just off the North coast of Scotland. Now... when I say sailed passed, actually the islands are in the way and the ferry has to make a small detour from a direct route to Denmark to avoid crashing into them. I woke up in the morning the day after the ferry left the Faroe Islands only to see that we were sailing right passed Muckle Flugga Lighthouse, at the most Northerly point in the UK. I picked up a mobile phone signal from Shetland and phoned my brother, for free for the first time in months. The whole experience of watching your destination country disappear over the horizon made me a little uneasy, if the ferry could have just let me off I could have been home the next day instead of in 4 days. As the islands finally disappeared and my phone signal dropped out I began to think about Shetland... despite having been born in Scotland and having lived there most of my life... the furthest North I had been was Dunnet Head, which is the most Northerly point of the mainland of the UK.... I've never been to Shetland before!
 
I really wanted to get to Shetland to see what was there, but also find out if there was some way I could, one day, get on a boat there and get myself to the Faroe Islands so that I could get the ship back to Iceland and see some of the places that I missed.

Finally I arrived home 4 days later having ridden 1000km (600 miles) from the Ferry terminal in Denmark to the Ferry port near Amsterdam in Holland and taking the overnight Ferry to Newcastle in the North of England then riding home (another 250 km (150 miles)).

Once home, I found I didn't really have much to do there... I had a day to be photographer at a friend's wedding, then another few days to finish working on all the photos. I was bored by that time and decided that it is still summer time... I shouldn't waste too much more of it at home. I decided it was time to get back on the bike again and visit that little group of Islands that I had sailed passed just a week or so before.


My home in the South West of Scotland is about as far away from Shetland as you'll get and still be in Scotland. I really didn't want to just ride passed everything in between, so I rode up the West coast of Scotland taking a week before I got on the Ferry to the Orkney Isles.

As always I didn't really have much of a plan. I knew very little about Orkney and Shetland. The whole point of going there was to find out what was there.

About a week after leaving home, I finally reached a little town called Scrabster in the North of the mainland of Scotland. Going by my map there was a ferry link from here to Orkney, then another one from Orkney to Shetland. Visiting the ferry office I found out there was a ferry in a few hours and I managed to get myself and my motorbike booked onto that ferry despite it being one of Orkney's busiest weekends. While on the Ferry I learnt that some of the UK's biggest sea cliffs are here and that the tallest sea stack.. "The old man of Hoy" is here too.... I just had to go and see it!

I spent that night in Stromness in Orkney and made some plans to get to a smaller Island called Hoy. This is Hoy, home to the "Old man of hoy".

At 11am the next day I was on Hoy with my Motorbike looking up towards the hills. Hoy seems to be the only island out of all of islands that make up Orkney that has any sort of hills. I wanted to climb to the top of Ward Hill, which is the highest hill on Orkney, but it was pointless as the cloud was down at about 100 metres and even the old man of Hoy would have been hidden. Today was just not a good day. I made an attempt to kill some time in order to give the weather a chance to improve.

I set off to explore the island, making it to the far west side, then the far east side. I felt like a fly in a jam jar. The island felt too small and I couldn't get in the right frame of mind to want to explore. Later in the day rode over a causeway onto another smaller island (Longhope) and found myself at a lighthouse. By this time I was not feeling great, I had picked up a cold or some sort of bug while at my friends wedding and it was still haunting me. I felt like I had no energy and to avoid falling asleep while riding my bike I decided to park and rest for a while. I woke up several hours later still on the seat but hunched over the petrol tank using my hands with the gloves still on as a pillow between the handle bars and the petrol tank. I was still feeling tired, but just didn't have the energy to put up my tent. I was also worried that if I fell asleep on the bike again, I'd end up falling over and the bike landing on top of me in my sleep. This time instead of staying on the bike, I lay down on the ground and used the front wheel as a pillow and slept for another few hours.

It was now 8pm, still light. I had been sleeping for 4 hours total. I quickly put up my tent and crawled inside.

I woke the next day at 11am having slept for about 21 hours. I felt better but still not 100%. The good news was that the cloud had lifted in the night and the sun was out. After packing up I made my way over to Rackwick, where the walking path starts for the old man of hoy.

One hour later I was sitting at the top of a 100 meter cliff watching some climbers climbing to the top of the old man. I watched them for a few hours and in the meantime I managed to work out the path they had taken down the cliff to get to the base. Once the climbers made it to the top and were on their way back down I made my way down the cliff to set up my camera on the tripod and get a panoramic photo of the scene. By this time the sun had come around to the west a bit more and lowered in the sky. The sun was lighting up the sea cliffs and the sandstone walls of the old man.


The Old Man Of Hoy in scotland

 The Old Man Of Hoy in Scotland

The following morning I made my way back to the mainland of Orkney and explored some more. I learnt about the Churchill Barriers and how the British naval fleet had used Orkney as a base during World War 2. I visited a small chapel which was built by some Italian prisoners of war.


Italian Chapel in scotland

Evening came and it got to that time of day that I felt like I should find a place to sleep for the night. I glanced at the Ferry timetable that I had picked up while waiting for the Ferry to Orkney and discovered that I could get the ferry to Shetland either tonight or I'd have to wait for 2 more days. Not really knowing what the rest of Orkney had in store for me and looking at the calendar and seeing that time was not really on my side, I decided to try to get myself on the Shetland Ferry which was due to arrive in Kirkwall just before midnight.

On arriving at the Ferry terminal I discovered that due to the busy weekend of events that were on in Orkney the ferry was fully booked. They said I could go on standby and if there was any space then I could travel.... I agreed to risk it and I waited around, the Ferry arrived about 11pm. It was very dark by this time and I wondered where I could sleep if I didn't get on the ferry. I watched as the ferry was loaded, having no idea if I would be getting on it or not. I had always thought that there was always space for motorbikes, they take up so little room! But these thoughts had been crushed when I was turned away from the "full" ferry to Skye only 1 week before.

I had no idea if I'd be on Shetland the following day and no idea what to do if I had to stay on Orkney...

Iceland Part 2

I was now travelling by myself for the first time in almost 2 months. I had no travel buddy, no deadlines to meet but I only had 9 days left in Iceland before I had to be back at the ferry to head home again.

After I dropped Kiya off at the airport I went back to pick up my off road tyres from the camp ground where I had left them 1 week before. The road tyres on the bike now had done almost 10,000 miles (16,000 km) and were looking quite slick.

I was not dealing with being alone very well, my motivation was low. Normally I’d be excited at the thought of another chapter starting. Thinking back to how excited I was the day I arrived in Iceland my mood today just did not make sense. I thought back to when Mila and I rode up the pass after leaving the ferry and how amazing I thought everything looked through my fresh eyes. Why can’t I feel that way again? Is Iceland getting old this quickly?

Looking at the map and I picked a direction to travel in. I wanted to ride up the west coast from Reykjavik and try to get myself as far west in Iceland as I could.

The following day I rode through Reykjavik. As I rode I wondered if I should stop in and see a little bit of the city. I felt a bit torn between two things and wondered to myself which I would regret more, leave the capital without seeing what is has to offer, or would I regret wasting the time doing that when I could be out in more remote areas while I had the means to do so. After all if I really want to see Reykjavik sometime then I could fly there and walk around the city, but then I’ve never been a big fan of cities.

By this time the city was slowly disappearing in my rear view mirrors. I was riding up main coastal road to the North. The weather was dry but the sky was full of grey clouds which hugged the mountains just to the east. The rock of the mountains was quite black looking but there were bright green moss or grass patches which really give the scene an amazing contrast. The road is quite busy with cars, though they don’t look like tourist cars, more local traffic. I soon get fed up of being in a queue of traffic and I find a place to stop. I was a bit sore as it had been a few hours since I got on the bike… 2 hours seems to be the norm for this, though I often do more when I feel the need, but today there is no need. My sudden lack of deadlines and lack of destination was causing my pace and enthusiasm to slow down. It didn’t seem to matter how long I stopped for or how fast I rode, as nothing or nobody was waiting for me at the other end.

I man handle my bike onto the centre stand to do some checks... Engine oil… ok. The chain is starting to get tight spots, but it’s not getting too noisy yet, so it should be ok for getting home. I fill up my chain oiler with fresh oil and remove the nozzle that drips the oil onto the chain. Sometimes after rain it seems to gunge up when the oil mixes with water causing the oiler to stop working. Its maintenance and I DO need to do it, but it just feels like I’m wasting time, I have no drive and once I complete one thing, I start looking for something else that might need attention. It feels like I’m just making excuses, I feel like I should be somewhere else, but I just don’t know where that place is. Why can’t I make the most of this?

I continue North thinking some distance might help my mood. After looking at the map I discovered that the highest waterfall in Iceland was only a 30 minutes ride away. I turned off the main highway and head east up what would once have been the main highway before they built the road tunnel under the Fjord.

I really feel like I’m off of the tourist route now. All along the south coast of Iceland there were tour busses, big 4x4s, motorhomes, motorbikes, hire cars, but now there was very little traffic. I park in the car park where the walking path starts for the waterfall. It is now lunch time so I eat a few boiled eggs that I had boiled earlier in the day, then a few cookies… The cookies were the same brand as Mila and I had bought when we travelled together, eating them made me think of her and wonder how she was getting on with her new job. It was now raining quite heavily and there is no place to shelter so I made do with the luxury of wearing my motorbike jacket and helmet to keep dry and I sit on the bike. I wish I had an umbrella, I then thought about somehow rigging my tent over the bike to keep dry while I waited for the rain to stop. I noticed that some children were watching me from a car that was parked a few metres away, they must have been left by their parents while they walked to the waterfall. I was jealous they had somewhere dry and comfortable to sit.

The rain would just not give up! I waited for as long as my patience would allow before I decided that I needed to find a place to stay for the night. I didn’t want to ride in this rain as it was heavy enough to soak me if I rode too far. I finally decided to put on a brave face and 40 kilometres later I was in Akranes. I had seen clear skies off to the west so I kept going in that direction hoping the distance would cause the rain to stop. By the time I made it to Akranes it was sunny and late enough to not feel too bad about stopping for the day. I found a camp ground, but didn’t find anyone to pay for the privilege of staying there. The camp ground was beside the sea and was full of caravan and motorhomes, it looked more like a grassy place you might have a picnic on a warm summer’s day rather than a place to sleep in a tent for the night. There were toilets and showers but they were in a portacabin. Everything looked quite temporary.



Glymur in iceland

I now had my tent up and I was sitting in it feeling glad that I didn’t have to put it up in that heavy rain. I was still feeling quite blue and isolated. I remembered that I often feel more isolated when I camp by myself in a busy camping area than if I camp alone in the mountains. I never seem to feel lonely when I camp in remote places by myself, but often when I come out of remote areas and camp again near others I end up feeling really lonely and disconnected. It seems so strange to feel alone when there are other people just metres away and not when people are 100’s of kilometres away.

I had not managed to find any sort of attendant or manager for the camp ground, not even a sign to say how I should pay for the privilege of sleeping on their grass. Maybe someone will come around later looking for some money at a more normal stopping time for the night. My mood made me feel something was missing… was it really just the fact that I had gotten unused to travelling by myself? I really didn’t know… but I hated feeling this way because I knew when I thought about it later I wouldn’t understand why I did feel that way and I’d just feel like I’d wasted time for no reason. I phoned home to see if there was any news that would change my mood. I phoned my brother first, then a few friends, one told me a funny story about something that had happened at which cheered me up a bit.

In the morning I rode back to the waterfall car park and started walking up the path towards it. The path was quite flat for a few kilometres but then dropped away and disappeared into a lava tunnel. I crossed the river by walking over a steel cable that someone had kindly put there for that purpose. It was a bit like a tight rope walk, but there was also a normal rope at hand height to help balance with. I trusted myself enough to not fall in but didn’t completely rule it out. Over the past few years I seem to care less and less about things going wrong while travelling and I’ve managed come up with something to say when it does… “It’s all part of the adventure”, today I didn’t need to use the phrase as I managed to get myself and my bag of camera equipment over the river without getting it or myself wet.

As I stood looking over the highest waterfall in the country I tried hard to be impressed. I thought about the first waterfall that I had seen in Iceland when Mila and I were riding up the pass away from the ferry. I didn’t stop for a photo, but I was impressed, everything was impressive that day! Why is nothing impressive today? Its times like these that reminds me why I always take people’s travel advice with a pinch of salt. If someone didn’t recommend I went to a certain place then they’re likely basing that advice on the experience that they had when they went to that place, but what if they were in the same mood I was in when they went there. This scene should have impressed me, I knew it! But it didn’t, was it the weather?

It was a few days later that I started coming out the mood and started seeing things in a different light. I was riding up a pass over a mountain and once I got to the top I saw a red survival shelter. These seem to be quite common in Iceland, though I’ve not seen one like this before, it looks like some sort of life boat perched on top of a mountain, or some sort of survival pod that might see in some science fiction film. I went inside to have a look and found a set of bunk beds and a few tins of food laying around, there was also a log book that a few people had written in.

I was now riding the bike West towards the most Westerly point of Iceland, which really is not very far from Greenland. I passed fairly big boat that was washed up on the beach which had a sign next to it saying it was the oldest steel built ship in all of Iceland. The road turned gravel after this and started following the coast. The track was cut into the side of a hill and as I rode along the right side of it I could look down 50 metres or so down to the sea. I was glad I trusted my abilities on the bike on the gravel but I couldn’t ignore how bald my back tyre had become now and thought that there would always be a chance I could underestimate the grip and drop the 50 metres down to the sea.

Bjargtangar; well I didn’t know the name of it before I got there, but I saw it written on a sign when I arrived. It said something about being the most westerly point of, not only Iceland, but Europe too. I didn’t really think that it might be the most westerly point of Europe when I planned to go. I walked along the cliff for a while and soon spotted some Puffins. I’d never seen a Puffin before. They’re such weird looking birds. This place really was a haven for them, there were hundred’s! I guess there must be a lot of fish in the sea here. I set up my camera to see if I could take a panoramic photo that included some puffins. With the lens I use for a panorama I really do need to get close to them to see any detail, but I just couldn’t get close enough and I didn’t want to disturb them too much in their territory. I changed the lens back to the longest one I had and took a few photos. I was amazed how laid back they were, yet how worried they looked at the same time. Their beaks were like rainbows! I finally saw some in flight, it really does not look all that natural, their wings look far too small to keep them up in the air. I’m far from an expert on them, but I thought the wings must be small so they can dive into the water more easily. What an amazing bird that can walk, fly and swim!


Puffins at Bjargtangar in iceland

I followed the track back to the main road then began to follow the coast around the North-West corner of the country. Progress is slow, the roads are gravel. I overtake cars as most of them are going too slowly for me to follow them. I try to be careful so I don’t create too much dust or throw any stones up, but become impatient when some drivers don’t let me pass safely. I wonder if they want stones in their windscreen? Eventually the road is strait enough and I can creep passed without too much excess speed. I resist the temptation to open the throttle wide as I pass after the driver had not slowed to allow me to pass for over 20 minutes and it was only out of sheer respect that I didn’t just pass before anyway.

I didn’t really have a plan now, I didn’t have anywhere in particular that I wanted to be, but I was now quite happy and satisfied with everything that appeared over the horizon. The bike eats up the distance of these Western Fjords so quickly. Tonight I decided to just keep riding passed my normal stopping time. There was not much danger of it getting too dark to ride on, for it does not get dark at this time of year this far North. Normally I think 10pm is too late to pull into a paid camping ground as other people might be sleeping by that time, I’d normally want to be stopped somewhere between 8 and 9pm. This was a pretty remote area and I didn’t see any towns for a long time and I didn’t see anywhere I could put my tent up but I didn’t really mind. I stopped to eat about 10pm and continued on until much later before stopping at a big waterfall that pours down the side of a mountain then cascades through a series of other falls down into the fjord. There was a yacht anchored out in the bay and there were some other people camping near the beach. It was late now, but I didn’t worry too much about my bike making too much noise as I rode in as the waterfall would have drowned out the bike easily.

It was not raining, but the sky was grey and the cloud didn’t seem to be too far above the mountains. It was quite cold too, but then I wasn’t surprised as it was after midnight and I was just a dozen miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Iceland Part 1

I arrived in Iceland the day after midsummer. I had been aboard the MS  Norröna for 2 days, all the way from Denmark.  Finally the Ferry arrived in Seyðisfjörður on the East coast of the country. It seemed like a prison sentence was complete and I was now free again!

My introduction to Iceland was clear skies and warm weather and amazing scenery. I was out on deck to get my first look while the Ferry sailed down Seyðisfjörður and into the harbour.

There’s something about getting to a new country that just excites me. It seemed like an eternity as I waited to get my motorbike off of the Ferry. The motorbikes were right at the front of the Ferry and the exit was right at the back and there were about 800 cars and motorhomes in between me and the door. The car deck was packed. I had made my way squeezing in between cars and motorhomes,  down various dead ends as cars were almost touching in some places, only to realise that I had gone to the wrong end of the ship and had to make my way all the way back again with my bag carefully balanced on my head so not to scratch cars on the way passed.

The town of Seyðisfjörður was unnaturally busy. It felt like the area had just been invaded by tourists. After an immigration officer stuck some weird sticker to my front mudguard I was free to explore Iceland at my own pace…

It felt like some sort of rat race, there were cars everywhere, bumper to bumper, as they waited to pull out onto the main road. I stopped at the first place that I could once I got on the main road. This just happened to be right opposite the junction that I just pulled out of. There was somewhere to park my bike and there was a little piece of grass to look at my map on. I jumped off the bike and began talking with some other bikers that had done the same. A minute later Mila pulled up on her Suzuki Bandit. I had briefly met Mila on the ferry while we were searching for where we were meant to sleep. She was from Holland, that’s all I had learned about her at the time. We both talked to the other bikers for a while before they left. Now it was just the two of us looking at my map spread out on the grass talking about our travel plans. By this time Mila’s chain lube was helping to stop the map from being blown away in the wind. We talked about what we had planned to do in Iceland, I learned that she had almost 1 week to travel before she had to start her summer job and had decided to take the ferry here rather than fly so that she had some transport.

 The small town slowly settled back to its sleepy norm as the tourists slowly dispersed and moved in the direction of their onward destinations. It was all quite relaxed at this time. The warm weather was quite welcome. I had been getting bad weather in my last few days in Norway and the day I had spent in Denmark was terrible! We sat talking about places in Iceland, pointing at the map. I started to draw things on my map so as to remind myself of what was there, rather than just draw a circle then forget what’s there a few days later. It was about at that time that I realised that though I’d planned to come to Iceland for several years, I had not managed to actually make plans on what to do or see once I got there. I knew very little about the place. Mila seemed to have quite a few good ideas.

The day just seemed to be filled with random encounters…. 

On the Ferry

First look at Iceland at Seyðisfjörður

The interview



We must have looked quite interesting sitting on the grass looking at the map, complete with a tin of chain lube and WD40 to hold it down. A man walked up to us and asked us if we would mind getting interviewed about our travel plans for Iceland. Mila and I looked at each other and both shrugged and told him, “Why not”. Minutes later there was a camera on a tripod pointing at us and a man with a South African accent was asking us questions about our travel plans. It was only during the interview that they learned from us that we were not travelling together and that we had only just met on the ferry. It was quite difficult to make the interview interesting when I actually had no plans to tell them!

Once the cameras were off and we were left on our own again we decided that we might as well travel together for a while. We decided to go south to the general direction of where Mila was going to work.

There’s nothing quite like the first few hours in a new country, especially while riding a motorbike. Anything remotely interesting gets a double take as I ride passed as everything feels new. I feel like I have the curiosity of a small child while they learn about this new world they’re in. We stop and take photos of the jagged mountains that seem to all have spires like cathedrals. The sheep, some black, some white and some more like collie dogs with black and white together. We saw gorges, waterfalls and some massive 4x4s that looked like monster trucks.

Mila getting attacked by a horse in Vik

A big 4x4

Mountains in South East Iceland

Africa Twin and Bandit

I’d now been away from home for about 5 weeks. I had left home alone but in the whole time I had only travelled alone for a few days. I had mixed feelings about having a travel buddy again. During my 4 weeks in Norway I had travelled with Peter, who I’d met while waiting for the Ferry in Denmark. At the time Peter and I had also talked about travel plans and both realised we didn’t have any, so decided to make some together. It really is a mixed bag. It always feels amazing to share amazing experiences with people, but from a more selfish point of view you have compromise with your ideas. It works with some and it does not work with others. I was lucky enough that it worked for me both times! The only thing I really had to compromise on with Mila was not sleeping in my tent. We stayed in Guest houses or hostels the entire time.

I had 3 weeks to spend in Iceland. The plans I did manage to make before leaving home where that I should see the more easy to access places around the ring road that circles the country, then later in the trip I’d head inland to the more remote interior. This worked out well as Mila’s motorbike wouldn’t have coped well with the gravel roads and deep river crossings of the interior, whereas my Honda Africa Twin was built for that sort of thing.

After several days we arrived in the area of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that made its name in Europe in 2010 during the eruption that grounded 1000’s of flights around Europe. We planned to walk up the Volcano towards the Glacier to see what we could see. The problem was that I had run out of time. My girlfriend was due to arrive in Reykjavik later that day and I couldn’t have possibly fit in walking up the Volcano and the 4 hour ride to the airport in 1 day.


Skógafoss in Iceland

We packed up our bikes together for the last time, put our helmets on and got ready to go. I looked at Mila and we gave each other a hug. Our helmets banged into each other… It sounds quite clumsy, but it felt quite natural. I was sad to leave as we had a really fun time together.

That day just seemed to go so slowly. I was not quite in the mood to spend time seeing or doing too much. I seem to be such a bad traveller when I have a destination and a deadline to get there. When I’m free to do as I please then I feel like I can make the most of being somewhere. The constraint I had forced me just to ride. I arrived in the area of the airport about 4 hours too early, so I thought I’d use the extra time to find us somewhere nice to stay on that first night together again. The best I managed was a wooden cabin only a few kilometres from the airport. It was small, but it was clean and had everything we needed. 

Of course, me being me, I wanted to sneak up on Kiya at the airport. I had not seen her for about 6 weeks. I just wanted to tap her on the shoulder and give her a chance to smile before she turned around so I’d just see her smiling face looking back at me. When the time came it was the opposite that did happen. She sneaked up on me and I was the one who had to turn around. It was a new relationship. I had met Kiya while travelling in Australia about 9 months before and we only started to see each other in March when we were both back in Scotland. It was now the end of June and I had been away half of the time since March. The only time Kiya had ever been on a motorbike was when I took her for a 30 second ride around a car park a few days after I had finished getting my bike ready for this trip. I had given her careful instructions about what to bring and how to carry it as luggage space was really limited already and it would now be extra limited with two people on the bike. Most importantly Kiya had brought with her the heated grips that the freezing Norway weather forced me to buy. That was a horrible experience, but not horrible enough for me to pay the crazy Norwegian prices for a set of grips while I was there.

The following morning, it took a while to get things organised. I had to leave the off-road tyres that I had been carrying since home at the camp ground with plans to pick them up again when I dropped Kiya off 1 week later. Finally when we managed to work out how to fit our gear and ourselves on the bike we headed back to see Eyjafjallajökull. I really wanted to do the walk now as Mila had told me all about via SMS. 

Kiya was a bit nervous at first on the bike. I could feel her tense up when I leaned the bike into corners. As the day progressed she did ease up a bit and get used to it. It was evening time when we made it to Skógar.

Skógar is a place that’s pretty hard to drive passed. Highway 1, the highway that circles Iceland goes right passed it, but I’m sure most tourists must stop there as there is a huge waterfall that is easily seen from the road. This is the place where Mila and I stayed the night before we said our goodbyes to each other. Kiya and I walked to the waterfall the same as Mila and I had done just days before. It’s hard for me not to feel like a tour guide when I take someone to a place that I’ve been before and they’ve not. I put on a brave face and try to maintain the same excitement that I had about the place when I was there first and try not to reference the fact that I’d been there before so that we’re sharing the same thing. I even took the same panoramic photo too.

The following day we made our way towards the Volcano, it was very relaxed walk. We stopped to take photos quite a lot and we made very slow progress because of that. We didn’t make it as far as the Glacier before we decided to turn back and move west again.

Kiya on our walk up Eyjafjallajökull

We talked about where to go next. I wanted her to see as much as possible in the week she had as I felt bad about leaving her as she spent the 2 months working while I was away enjoying myself. Kiya was quite jealous of my plans to go inland once she was back in Scotland. I told her that I didn’t think I could ride the bike well enough to take it over the rough roads with both of us on it. Despite my arguments and my concern that I wouldn’t be able to handle the bike with the extra weight, she managed to convince me we should go to a place called Laki.

Laki or Lakagígar made itself famous for its 8 month long eruption in 1783 – 84. It’s a major part of Europe’s history. The eruption and the consequences caused by it killed around 25% of Icelanders and around 6 million people around the world. The famine caused is believed to have caused the French revolution. 

The track out to Laki was not as bad as had been described to me. It did slowly get more and more rough the closer we got. The river crossings were the part that I really was not looking forward to. I remember them from when I rode a Motorbike around and through Australia, but I knew that Iceland would not be quite the same. Often in Australia I was quite glad to cool my feet off as I walked through to check the depth and the best route. With Iceland this was certainly something that didn’t have the same appeal. I made the first crossing with Kiya still on the back. It was quite difficult to keep the bike going in the direction I wanted it to because of the river bed being uneven. There was a cheer from the back as the wheels rolled onto the opposite side and accelerated up the track again.

It had started to rain by this time and my feet were getting cold from walking through the river. On the rougher sections of the road the bike’s suspension would bottom out and sometimes I’d hit the engine’s sump guard off of rocks. It was not a fun ride, but I still enjoyed it for the challenge. We arrived at the base of Mount Laki, where you can get a good view of all 130 craters that opened up during the eruption, though we couldn’t get motivated to climb it as the top was covered in cloud and we’d likely have seen nothing if we went to the top. Instead we found a lookout that was not in cloud but not as high as Mount Laki, that we could ride the motorbike up. A friendly German couple that had arrived in a 4x4 took one look at us and offered us hot tea and asked how we made it over the rivers. I told them about me walking first before riding them… then before we knew it our cups were full again with fresh tea. I had wished that I had spent the morning putting on the heated grips that Kiya brought from Scotland, but I just didn’t want to waste the time while she was there. The elevation made the weather far colder than it had been in the morning. My feet felt numb with the cold as they were soaking wet from the river crossings. After taking a photo from the lookout we continued on around the track which circles the area. I was glad to be on the bike again as I could wedge my feet in between the petrol tank and the engine. It took a while, but they started to feel a little warmer.


Lakagígar. Iceland in iceland

My vision felt like something was broken. Everything felt so black and white. The clouds were grey and the ground was black from the volcanic ash. The surface of the track was just ash from the volcano eruption. Sometimes it was hard and sometimes it was a bit soft. A small stream crossing that I didn’t bother to walk across almost made us fall. There was a sharp right hand corner after the crossing that almost swallowed my front wheel. We managed to stay on the bike, but only just. The final river crossing before we headed back was the worst. I stood on the side looking down on the river trying to guess the depth.  Kiya was scouting around looking for a shallow place that she could cross so she didn’t have to stay on the bike. A little way upstream the river was faster and had small islands that she thought she could get over without getting her feet too wet. By this time I was pretty cold and just starting to wish my feet were dry again, I really didn’t like the thought of having to wade through again to check the depth and route, but I knew I had to as the river looked to be about border line with what I was willing to risk riding over. Kiya told me about her plan to cross up steam. I said that I could take her over at the crossing as I had to walk over anyway. She insisted that I didn’t have to as she could make it over herself. 

Kiya on the Africa Twin at Laki

I cast my mind back to when I was talking to Kiya’s family about motorbikes, which they forwardly told me that they hated and thought they were one of the most dangerous things ever invented. The day had stressed me out enough already. My mind kept flashing back to Kiya’s family and what they would say if we had fallen of the bike and injured ourselves. I felt totally responsible for everything that was happening that day. I told Kiya that she had to come down and cross the river with me. I didn’t see the sense in both of us having wet feet. She took a bit of convincing, but only because she felt bad that I had to take her, whereas I looked at it from a more logical point of view. The water was right enough, up to my knees as I crossed with Kiya on my back. I double checked my route on the way back to the bike before I started the bike and slowly let go of the clutch to drive it into the river. The water came well over my feet as they stood on the foot rests and I started to feel the drag on the panniers as they entered the water too. The crossing was not very wide, but it seemed to take a long time to get to the other side. I had read so much about how to restart a drowned motorbike… Things like standing the bike up on its back to drain the exhaust and taking the spark plugs out to get the water out of the cylinders. I just couldn’t face doing something like that while I was this cold. So much went through my head in that short space of time… The front wheel started making its way onto the high and dry and I was out! I just hoped that there were no more deeper crossings before we were back on the main track again.

Our week together really flew in. We managed to make our way up another inland road and see the sunset over a glacier. We saw “Geysir”, the original Geysir which Geysir’s got their name from and saw huge waterfalls.

A Geysir at Geysir

I dropped Kiya off at the airport safe and sound and I was back on my own again. I was glad I managed not to make it into the bad books of her family and proud that I’d managed to take her into the highlands of Iceland on the bike. There was so much still to see, but not that much time to see it in now.

Navigation on road F35 in iceland

 I only had 9 days before I had to leave head for home...