Month: July 2018

We are in the northwestern region of Iceland. We are working our way around to the west coast, and tonight we are within 100 miles of Reykjavik. Strange to think that we are that close to accomplishing our goal.

A word about campgrounds here: It is interesting how so many campers arrive so late. I’m sure some of that is due to basically no night here in the summer months — you can wander and explore all night if you don’t get tired! Sometimes we’ll get into a campground at maybe 7pm and it’ll be fairly empty but by 10pm it is jam packed. Most of the campgrounds (for 2 people for one night) have been between 20 and 35 U.S. dollars.

The day began with some sun and clouds, which was lovely. Later it got cloudier and eventually rained, but rather softly. Generally favorable winds. We have really truly lucked out on this trip when it comes to winds. Today was maybe 10° F warmer than yesterday and that made a huge difference for us.

We had a few sections of road with a rideable shoulder again, which was very nice. In the morning the traffic wasn’t bad, but by evening it was much busier. I thought most of the drivers were accommodating, however. We didn’t get driven off the road or even close today.

Terrain was similar to yesterday: hills, green valleys and farms, and rivers, with some last views of the northern ocean fjords. Beautiful. But we did not have any crazy steep long hills today!! Yesssssss. That felt great. Lots of small ones but none that were painfully steep or long.

We are in a “self-check-in hotel” tonight, in an area not really close to any particular town. The accomodations are old and simple yet clean, and include breakfast. It was very cheap compared to other places we’ve stayed indoors so far. We used a tea kettle to boil water for our backpacking food and ate in the big room where we’ll have breakfast tomorrow. The hotel is full or almost so. This country is so busy with tourists and local vacationers.

We are tired, probably mostly from our longer day yesterday. We have showered, eaten, rehydrated, and hung up all our damp clothing. We will probably sleep well, as has happily been our norm this trip!

Pete’s note: Tomorrow we will climb our last major hill and then descend to a campground a little north of Reykjavik where we will stay one night and then try to figure out how to get our bike on a bus to get through the tunnel to Reykjavik. (Bikes aren’t allowed in this tunnel, and even if they were we probably wouldn’t want to be in it with the traffic….) It is weird to think this part of our adventure is almost over. We’ll do a few tourist things in and around Reykjavik, as our flight home isn’t until next week. We gave ourselves extra time in case the weather set us back. For us, successfully circumventing the country was as much a factor of the weather as anything else. And as Natalie said above, we’ve been super lucky with favorable weather. The biggest surprise has been the traffic, and I think most of our traffic challenges probably involve tourists — some from countries (like the U.S.) that aren’t always bike aware. And it is just one out of a hundred that buzz by too close and too fast — but it just takes one to create a tragedy and our experience is jaded by the few close calls. Every once in a while we have the opposite experience — someone slows all the way down to our pace, passes slowly, and then gives us a thumbs up out the window. It makes us happy for hours. This type of thing applies to so much more than biking. Hats off to everyone in this world who goes out of their way, often with small gestures, to make the world better for others.

Goodbye and thank you Akureyri! It was great to spend a few days relaxing and resting. Our Airbnb worked out wonderfully. We were able to cook all of our meals there and let our gear air out, and we felt very at home. We hydrated like crazy: I think we drank 10 liters of juice, oat milk, and chocolate oat milk. That’s not counting the water we constantly drank. We also ate a lot. We spent about $150 at the grocery store and almost ate everything we bought. We enjoy cooking together, and given our restrictive diet, it works so well to be able to cook for ourselves. Plus, it costs less….

Because we were coming off two rest days and had decent weather/winds we pushed and completed 90 miles today with almost 4000 feet of climbing. The climbing came mostly in two sustained hills with grades around 6 percent peaking near 10 percent. We started the day with 3 big climbs left on our entire trip and completed two of them today. That is a good feeling. The last one comes on Wednesday.

We had misty rain on and off throughout day. By the time we rolled into our campsite we were soaked with rain and sweat. The temperature was a bit below 50 and we quickly got chilled. Luckily this site has hot showers, which we made great use of. It was a little late to hit the local pool.

Traffic was not horrible, but still busy. We actually had a rideable shoulder for some of the ride. We’ve rarely had that in Iceland. Our next two days will have difficult traffic with narrow shoulders.

As usual, the scenery was amazing: green river valleys, jagged mountain ranges, farmland — beautiful.

Today, more than usual, we saw several cyclists going the other way. We played leapfrog with one cyclist going our way and ended up sharing fries with him at a stop. He was from the Netherlands and headed to the interior.

We are staying in a campground in Blönduós. After long hot showers we cooked nice hot soup and ate chocolate almonds. Life is good.

Super restful day today. We slept in, had a nice breakfast, went to church, had a nice lunch, went to a concert at another church, had dinner, and are finishing the day with hot chocolate. The only thing missing was another soak at the pool.

The weather has been nice, with a light rain in the afternoon. Right now it looks like we will have decent weather for at least the next 3 days — possibly to the end of the week. Our fingers are crossed….

We have less than 250 miles left, but 3 significant climbs and at least one full day of difficult traffic. This thing isn’t over yet!

We’ve enjoyed our rest days in Akureyri and are ready to start again tomorrow.

We slept in until almost 9 AM, and then lazed around the house eating the groceries we bought yesterday. The weather is a bit rainy and we are grateful to be in a nice Airbnb. At first we were worried this wasn’t going to work out, as the home is full of nice stuff and our gear kind of explodes out of our bags to dry when we get an opportunity to be inside. However, the owner was gracious and welcoming and assured us that she didn’t mind if we unpacked our things around her house to let them recover. So now her living room floor is covered by sleeping bags, pads, etc…. Plus, she allowed us to use her washing machine. When you only have 2 or 3 changes of clothing, every opportunity to do laundry is precious!

We headed to the public pool at 11:00 (a 5-minute walk) and soaked for about 2 hours. Natalie came with me this time, and was a good sport about everything. She even went down the water slide, even though we didn’t have the excuse of “taking our grandkids” or something like that. It was cool. A really steep dropoff into this vortex thing that can only be described as the type of feature which allows you to experience being flushed down a toilet after circling the bowl a few times, dropping through a hole in the middle and emerging at the end in a nice pool. Who wouldn’t want to do that? She also soaked in the ice bath a few times. There are many reasons not to want to do that. Toward the end I could tell she was wearing down by the “how much longer should we stay” questions. Realizing she had already gone above and beyond the call of duty, we headed home.

(Note from Natalie: Some of that paragraph made me laugh out loud. It really is an amazing community pool and we had a great time. The steam bath felt great too. And that vortex waterslide/ toilet comparison was great! We really do need to bring our grandkids when they get a bit older! It was fun to go with Pete since he loves soaking so much and is really talented at it.)

Natalie wanted to see the botanical gardens, and since she had gone to the pool for two hours, it seemed only fair for me to support that. Plus, the last time she went to botanical gardens in Victoria, B.C., she took Laura while Chris and I took the kids to find a mountain lake to swim in but ended up at a nude beach which was more disturbing than glamorous from which we made a hasty retreat — so having learned that painful lesson I went to the botanical gardens this time (Icelandic nude beaches must only be for the really hardy types — I hope they bundle up because it is a bit nippy here.)

(Second note from Natalie: the gardens were beautiful, and Pete was a good sport. Akureyri’s botanical gardens are the most northern in the whole world!)

As we were walking home we came across a downhill mountain bike race through town — right down the beautiful steps which lead up to the Lutheran church. We watched several racers descend and decided not to try it on our bike.

We’re relaxing at the Airbnb for the rest of the evening. Life is good.

One more note about last night before writing about today. Quite late we decided to go see the waterfalls that were literally across the road from our guesthouse at Godafoss. They are spectacular! They really are like a mini Niagara Falls. Beautiful.

Today we rode into Akureyri today. It was only 32 miles, but two miles in the middle made us pay! We pushed our bike up a 6-8 percent grade for about an hour. It is possible we could have tried to ride up it, but by pushing our bike we were a little more safe. Trying to balance this bike while fully exerting ourselves with zero shoulder (literally no shoulder) inevitably means we swerve. By pushing we were able to maintain a straight line. We were still run off the road once by a car coming towards us passing another car. Our definite least favorite thing about this trip has been the traffic.

The weather was good. Sunny and blue skies! Tailwind for the first half of our ride, headwind for the second half. Seems fair.

We checked into our Airbnb for the next 3 nights and went shopping. Dinner tonight was amazing. Salad, hummus, pasta with marinara sauce, and falafel. When we have the chance to cook in a kitchen we enjoy it.

Currently we are on a whale watching tour. It is about 2 hours by boat to where the whales are. We will likely get back to our Airbnb after midnight. We hope we get to see some! We’ll report next post. Bouncing across the waves makes us think of our fisherman friends in Höfn — Siggi and Hannes. It would be an amazing life to spend big chunks of time at sea.

Tomorrow we will hit the pool and then relax around town and see what else there is to do. We are also going to take Sunday off and attend a local worship service and then in the evening we plan on attending a concert at a local Lutheran Church.

Note after the whale watching: It has been beautiful! Being on a small ship in a fjord in the northern Atlantic is not something we do every day. We did see several humpback whales surface briefly and then dive gracefully. It is especially cool to hear them as they blow, or whatever it’s called. We also saw lots of dolphins skimming along and jumping. They look like they are just having so much fun! It was also beautiful to see the midnight sun not quite setting on the horizon of the sea. Our tour guide did a good job explaining about the sights along the way, as well as about the whales and dolphins. We won’t get back until half past midnight, but it was a great way to spend our evening.

We didn’t sleep that great (see previous post) but we woke to dry conditions. It was also very windy. The wind did help keep the flies away from us and bit. But it’s hard to break camp in the wind of course. We headed out as quickly as we could. The washboard road was better without rain.

We had less climbing today (1800 feet) due to dropping down into valley terrain again, and also because we did fewer miles (57). That was a great choice because winds were not as favorable today and it became more and more rainy. We had 2 pretty tough climbs today, and for both we opted to get off and push the bike. Our legs were tired, it was rainy, traffic has been a little heavier, and it seemed safer in those conditions. Both hills were also pushing the limits of what we can ride with this bike as loaded at it is.

We stopped for some amazing veggie pizza at Dalakofinn Útibú. Just what we needed to give us the energy to make it to Goðafoss in the rain.

We were soaked and it is raining hard so we booked a night in a guesthouse. We were very happy to find one available! So nice to have a shower and be dry. All of our gear is hanging around the room drying, as usual when we are indoors. We are super comfy now! If the rain lets up we’ll go see the mini-Niagara-Falls waterfall very close to our accomodations. Otherwise we’ll hit it on our way out tomorrow (which is forecast to be better weather).

We are tired but excited to know that we’re at about our 2/3 point for miles, and that because of this we’ll be able to enjoy Akureyri this weekend for a couple of days! We do have a steep, long climb ahead of us tomorrow, but we only have 31 miles to do, so that will be good.

Again posting one day late due to very poor wifi….

On Wednesday we rode from Egilsstaðir to Grímsstaðir. But before I talk about that, I need to mention the swimming pool I went to on Tuesday night. The local pools here are my favorite places to go relax. Even small towns have them. There are usually a few hot pools to soak in and sometimes an ice bath to cool off in and make it so you can start the whole soaking process over. I have a body built for soaking. If our bike breaks down, as long as there is a pool nearby, I’ll be fine. I’ll just soak for the remainder of our vacation. If you go to Iceland go to the local pools every chance you get. America has something to learn from this tradition…. Natalie, for the record, doesn’t enjoy them like I do. Maybe she is missing some important gene or something. So she usually stays and does something else while I go soak enough to make up for her absence at the pool. The pool in Egilsstaðir was perfect. I stayed until I looked like a proper raisin. Nothing else mattered after that – it was a perfect day.

Our original schedule had us riding for 50 miles and camping along the road near an outhouse. (There are surprisingly few along the way – especially when you are on bike and 50 miles is measured in many hours….) The outhouse was in a lovely location and it would have been a good campsite (better than the one we actually stayed in) but we wanted to get more miles with the hope of shaving a bike day off our schedule and doing something touristy like whale watching on Saturday, so we pushed on for another 30 miles. Our map showed a campsite 3 miles off road and even though our bike does poorly on washboard, we felt the investment in time would pay off with a nice campsite.

We bounced into the campsite at about 9 pm on light rain, clocking another 12-hour ride. We were exhausted. Unfortunately the campsite was effectively a small plot of ground next to an outhouse. Gratefully the outhouse had running water and flush toilets.

Grímsstaðir is a settlement in north-east Iceland whose main claim to fame is that its weather station holds the low-temperature record for Iceland of -38°C. Luckily we didn’t experience any of those temperatures. Instead we had to deal with a zillion flies. They were everywhere – unlike anything we’ve experienced in Iceland. We couldn’t even eat outside, so dinner was in our tent. We were so tired that we didn’t even change clothes – just rolled into our sleeping bags wearing the clothes we had sweat in all day, and in the morning we woke up and wore those same clothes today. (Natalie has worn the same kit all week….)

In summary, Wednesday was a hard day with not much of a reward at the end of the long push. We were in desolate but beautiful country. We passed only one small village earlier in our ride.

Natalie’s notes:

This day began with idyllic weather: sunshine, blue skies, favorable winds. We ate our guesthouse breakfast, packed up, said goodbye to our traveler friends, and hit the road. Beautiful perfect conditions for most of the day!

Partly because of the great conditions, we banked extra miles (85 miles total this day) and are now a day ahead of schedule.

As we moved higher and more north-central, we went from rolling green valleys, rivers, and farms to a desolate high-mountain landscape. We loved having less traffic because of the remoteness! We did a LOT of climbing — 3600 feet of vertical gain — and our legs could feel it. We saw a huge beautiful rainbow as the weather turned a bit misty and rainy towards the end of our ride.

Not so nice of a campground that night…. I’d give it half a star maybe. We had to ride out 3 miles on a washboard road (in the rain), and the ground was very lumpy. If we hadn’t been so tired after our long high-mile day, and if we hadn’t been kind of in the middle of nowhere, we probably would not have stayed. There was one other campground for miles and we just had to get off the bike. So we stayed. We were the only tent. (There were a handful of car campers.) There were SO many little annoying black flies, it was outrageous. We ate dinner in the tent to avoid them. But the little metal bathroom did have running hot water and flush toilets, which is always nice. (No shower though.) We were so tired and annoyed by the flies we decided to sleep in our bike clothes, which turned out to be a bad idea.

It rained at night (but we still slept great) and we woke to the most beautiful sunny blue skies! Our tent even dried out before we had to pack it! That rarely happens in Iceland, at least in our 8 days of experience. We biked along the Atlantic up and down hills, stopping once for the biggest order of fries we’ve ever had (to go with our canned peaches).

We left behind the zig-zag fjord roads and began to head inland and a little northwest.

The sun gave way to rain and the terrain changed as we approached and entered the mountains. Literally. We drove through a 4-mile tunnel. Bikes are allowed! But not horses or pedestrians. Or semi-trucks (although a few must have missed that memo today…). It was kinda nerve-wracking but also pretty awesome. Also a way to avoid the rain for a while!

Next we rode up up up for 5 to 10 miles (in the rain) over a beautiful steep mountain pass. (Why no tunnel there?) Coming down was less effort but much much colder. Much. We were soooo chilled and wet by the time we reached the bottom, even with our excellent rain gear.

We are in a town called Egilsstaðir. We quickly bought a few groceries, then found our guesthouse. (Pete was able to find a last minute opening.) Soooo nice to take a long hot shower and dry out. Pete opted for the community center pool and hot tub. We cooked our simple dinner in the cozy guesthouse kitchen and got to visit with fellow travelers from Dallas, France, and Korea! I honestly can’t believe how much French I have been able to speak here! And Pete got to speak Korean.

It was a good day with a few tough parts. The traffic was a little busier again today, but still not as bad as along the southern coast. It still is stressful at times. But we gratefully have had some very courteous drivers. The winds weren’t a huge factor today, but the rain definitely was. The sunshine during the first part was delightful. Having a roof over our heads tonight after getting so wet and cold cold cold is delightful.

A little under 60 miles today, with a little under 3000 feet vertical gain. This is a great adventure!

I’m posting this two days late, because two nights ago neither of us had energy to do anything beyond set up our tent and eat a quick dinner of canned soup, and last night, when I tried to publish it, I was too out of it to realize I have to successfully hit the publish button…

We left Höfn on Monday around 8:30. It was good to get moving early. Our routing software showed a crazy 45 precent grade climb right at the beginning, but we knew that was impossible so were anxious to find out what our first climb looked like. Mercifully it was a short climb to a tunnel which was about a mile long. We were so thankful!

We had several stopping points in mind, but because we were rerouting around the long gravel hike-a-bike due to Natalie’s broken foot (for the record, this is just a convenient excuse) we hoped to ride far. The reroute was adding a day to our already tight itinerary and Saturday is forecast for bad weather, so we wanted to bank miles. Our route didn’t have any stops along the way (without a detour), which made it easy to keep riding without breaks.

The weather was good and the wind was often at our backs as we rode into and out of beautiful fjords. By the time we rolled into a campground 12 hours later we had covered a little over 100 miles with about 4000 feet of vertical gain.

We set up our tent, ate dinner, and collapsed. We’re sleeping great, btw.

Today we took a much needed day of rest in Höfn. We moved from our hotel to a campground at noon and then attended a small local church with about 10 others. Siggi had contacted the pastor yesterday to find out the time they hold their service. In a town this small, everyone knows everyone. It is delightful.

I’ve been thinking about the drivers who pass us too fast and too close. I think an appropriate punishment for a crime like that would be to be sentenced to ride with me for an hour. They’d certainly gain a first-hand appreciation of the perils of biking with these narrow shoulders and I’d probably get a chance to know them better and understand why they are in such a hurry. We’d both win. Although Natalie might argue that being on a bike with me violates some human rights fundamental – it could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

I’ll include a photo of one of the horses here with their cool manes. It’s like they share a barber with Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Our campground was sparse at noon, but now at 8 pm it looks like what you would expect in Yellowstone. Natalie and I both like getting away from crowds, but we are happy to see so many people enjoying the beauty of this country.

Tomorrow should be a moderate day as far as miles and climbing go. The big unknown is the weather. Right now it appears we will be riding in light rain – if the weather matches the forecast. We’re told that the forecast is always right but sometimes the weather is wrong.