The plan for today and Monday was to take our time on the 450km interesting roads journey from our guesthouse in Skagastrnd via a midway stop at Hlmavk at the entrance to the Westfjords, an area that most tourists to Iceland pass on by, mostly because it is remote, to our destination Isafjordur.
Our chosen route - sorry, scratch that, Pauls chosen route - was to be our first extensive use of Icelands unpaved /dirt roads. The expectation is that these will be rough/smooth/uneven. But they are not the F roads which are VERY rough/bouldered/river crossings.
Just on the way we detoured back a little for a which we missed on our way in on Saturday. An enormous sheep separation pen.
We have seen something about these. Somewhat like Dartmoor the sheep in some of the wilder areas are allowed to roam, and then herded up before winter. They mix and so herded sheep from many farmers are all gathered together. They are collected into the central pen and then individually separated out into each farmers pen, from where they can be
Paul found the dirt stretches pretty much as expected, Pip found them extremely And a lot of the road was at - very close to the sea - level with big waves crashing over the low boulder barrier onto the dirt. Very unnerving.
All of this was not helped by soon into our traverse a tyre warning light glowing up on the dashboard with a inflate tires and reset TPW message too. After a short while, and in a safeish position, Paul stopped and took a walk - or rather a blown - around the car. All the tyres seemed to be fine.
Throughout the journey the temperature stubbornly failed to get above 4° all day, but how little did we know.
It is amazing to find farmsteads in the middle of nowhere. You wonder how they earn a living, and as for being snowed in and isolated in winter.... Somewhere today also we saw some web report that confirmed our snow of a few days ago was the first of the season, and its very early.
Life here is centred around the natural harbour, home to around a dozen fishing boats and a shrimp processing plant.
It also has a Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft. We were handed an English language guide booklet which was quite detailed. Turns out that 15th to 17th C witchcraft in Iceland was mostly focused around the Westfjords. Im sure those involved at the time believed in it but some of the spells described did seem somewhat away with the fairies.
Many strange exhibits, mainly dating back to the 17C. The Strandir region, always one of Icelands most remote, seems to have hung onto Viking superstition longer than elsewhere. Even today it is reputed as the home of cunning and sorcery.
Unlike the English tales, here it was seen as mostly a male province. During the late 1600s 20 men and 1 woman were burned at the stake in the Westfjords.
One display shows (a replica we think.... or was it? ?) of necropants, the skin of a male body from the waist down worn to gain the wearer wealth.
As we settled in our guesthouse for the evening a weather and roads check for Monday was looking horrible for a journey north. Heavy snow, blizzards, low temperatures. We weighed up the options and decided..... to cancel all our remaining bookings up here in the NW, and as a result beyond that too, rebook the remaining 6 nights of our holiday , refocusing into the area east of Reykjavk.
We also took the opportunity to call our car hire emergency number about the tyre warning light. We were taken through the reset steps and all has been fine since then
Woke up this morning and guess what? 6 inches of snow on the car and ground, and still snowing. A check of the various weather and road websites showed it worse the further north - Isafjordur direction - you went.
Frankly it didnt look that great for the first 70km going south to get out. We hung around until check out time in the hope that any slight rise in temperatures plus, the albeit very sparse, traffic would help carve a path through the conditions.
