7 July, 2013

We left Þingeyri Sunday morning ish, to make sure we could have a leisurely drive over to Ísafjörður, or more specifically, Hnífsdalur where we would spend the next two nights. But we left that time to make stops! We saw on our map a "handcrafts" icon way out the end of Ingjaldssandur, and went for a drive. It's a lovely drive, way out past the last house, to a nice long sweeping valley, where Betty lives. She's the only one there, and has been for many years. We had a nice chat to her, and she showed us some of her silver plated coral from the fjord, and she gave us some advice on where to pick fjallagras nearby.

It's lovely, in the way any remote locale is lovely when the weather's good. It had a church, of course, and the wind was blowing wonderful spirals in the grass as it blew around the corner of the church.

Heading back, we stopped at Skrúður, one of the first botanical gardens in Iceland, where we caught the very end of a guided walk connected to the festival in Þingeyri for the weekend. I'd meant to come here ages, if for no other reason than to see the massive blue whale jaw bones that make up the gate way. They'd been at the garden since 1928, and before that at a whaling station nearby since 1891. However in 2009 they were taken down and sent to the natural history museum in Bolungarvík. And... replaced with some freshly caught fin whale jawbones. The ones that really shouldn't be getting hunted, and that we can't buy for love or money anyway (Don't get me started)

Still, big damn bones!

We proceeded on our merry way, taking the slow roads through Flateyri and Suðureyri and finally coming to our cosy little cottage in Hnífsdalur. I learnt a valuable lesson in how to at least survive when you have to deal with the infernal waste that is a coal bbq, and we settled in to relax for the night.