A Rough Ride in Furthest Iceland

by Ivan Viehoff

Látrabjarg

Barbara climbing over to Breidavík

Any visitor to the Vestfirdir or West-Fjords - that ragged region in the far north-west of Iceland, so indented that even the fjords have fjords should travel the rough road out west to the hostel at Breidavík. Mind their pet raven for its playful pecks. The farmstead is set in fields flecked with yellow flowers and rolling down to golden sands. It is hard to believe that only a hundred miles across the water is Greenland. It is within four miles of Látrabjarg, Iceland's Land's End and Europe's largest seabird colony. Approach within feet of puffins, razorbills and guillemots, and shiver with them if the wind is blowing.

Puffins at Látrabjarg

Back at Breidavík, and away from the strong winds of the headland, six cyclists shared blue-speckled guillemots' eggs for lunch, some more enthusiastically than others. How, we wondered, can such a small bird produce such a large and oddly shaped egg? Thus fortified, we climbed the rough pass back to the still greater shelter of narrow Patreksfjördur. Do visit the small museum at Hnjótur which gives only too vivid an idea of how hard life used to be in these remote communities.

Patreksfjördur

Alongside Patreksfjördur

The rolling coast road takes us through low-lying pastures and past beaches, alternating with cliffs. The vista is idyllic in its sunny loneliness. Remnants of past populations can be found in old stone huts surrounded by the thick grass of their now abandoned home-fields. A beached ship stands rusting at an angle, while a few sheep graze the seaweed. There was nowhere for tea but the roadside, where rare moonwort grew. It was the last of delicious rhubarb cake which had fed us for the last few days. Rhubarb is the only 'fruit' which grows well in this climate.

Across the fjord we could see the small fishing port, variously called Patreksfjördur or Vatneyri, built on a spit of land under dark grey cliffs. From this vantage, the tall cliffs which line the fjord appeared to admit no route north out of town. But invisible until you arrive there is a valley with a narrow entrance, Miklidalur, which runs behind the cliffs up to the plateau above. We climbed Miklidalur on a hot sunny morning, and quickly crossed the pass on a newly tarmacked road.

But Hálfdánarfell, the second pass of the day, was a different matter. The better unsealed roads have a smooth hard-packed clay base that makes for quite good riding. This climb had sections of loose potato-sized stones, hardly rideable even on the flat. There was cloud on the tops and it began to drizzle as I approached the summit. Through the mist could be seen earth-moving machines laying the brown earth that one day soon would become that a smooth, hard-packed surface. But newly spread in the rain it was like chocolate sauce. We had a frightening ride through this, dodging the JCBs, and with little knowledge of what our tyres were meeting in the slurry. The cowardly got muddy wet feet.

Arnafjördur

Bíldudalur, the only village on Arnafjördur

After a long fast descent, I arrived at Bíldudalur, the only village on Arnafjördur. There was a fearful sky behind me but I was back in the hot sun. With time in hand ahead of the pack, I made some investigations and discovered that I could buy an ice-cream without the kind of assistance from the bank most purchases here require. I wished we could stay here longer. The view from the waterfront was stunning, and the buildings had style. A strange sense of humour manifested itself in weird sculptures and water-features in some of the gardens. One would need a sense of humour to live in a community of just 300 people, cut off entirely during the dark winter except by small plane. There was a joke on my lolly-stick, but it was in Danish. I returned to the 'main' road to wait for the others, meanwhile fending off aggressive arctic terns with a bicycle pump.

Arnafjördur branches into six separate fjords, and we were to round them all in the next two days, without seeing any tarmac. Fossfjördur is named for its beautiful waterfall. Glinting in the sun, it was a perfect excuse for photos, a rest and a bite of chocolate. On Rejkjarfjördur is a free, public, open-air swimming pool, complete with changing rooms and beautifully warm from geothermal heat.

Trostansfjördur played an important part in Icelandic history, for in the Viking sagas it was here that the explorer Flóki looked down from a mountain and saw icebergs in the fjord, and so gave Iceland its name. Today it is the only practical wild camping in miles. The best-looking place is by the river, right by a sign which says, probably out of concern for safety, 'No Camping by the River'. Bernard hid the sign, but Dick Phillips, our cheery organiser, had already seen it, and it was put back, though in fact no one passed by while we were there. The problem with land further from the river was that it was by a forest from which emerged swarms of flies, a nuisance of which there was little evidence in most places. They did not bite, but swarmed all over your face and hands. I spent an unhappy hour trying to find some ground which would admit a tent peg and was near neither river nor forest, but I found none. Fortunately the flies would not go into the tent.

I confess I was previously unaware of the existence of Icelandic forests, except for some well advertised plantation schemes. This was native forest, and Dick explained that it had covered much of the coastal lands before human settlers cut it for firewood. He told me of the local saying: "If lost in the forest, try standing up". The dwarf birch and willow is rather like overgrown heather.

Bernard, as befits the first recipient of the Alan Mepham Merit Shield, scavenged some fallen wood and lit a smoky fire to dry his washing. It kept the flies away while we drank our cocoa. He thought the road marker posts would burn better, but surmised that Dick might have counted them and would note any absences. He remembered a long past time when Dick too would have burnt the road marker posts. Bernard and Dick knew each other well, for in 1958 they were the first to cross the centre of Iceland by bicycle. In those days there were no bridges in the interior, and they carried a rubber dinghy and a long rope to assist them cross the bigger rivers.

Dynjandifoss

The following morning we climbed 2000 feet, disturbing ptarmigan on the way, and found the plateau once again in the mist. Though there is often lush grassland by the coast and in the valleys, the plateau is tundra. It can be quite barren, but in many places it is thickly covered with small alpine flowers, mosses and lichens. Golden plovers can be heard piping up here. Back down by the sea, the cloud lifted and again we were bathed in bright sunshine, revealing the largest waterfall I have ever seen, Dynjandifoss. There is something about waterfalls in the sunshine that encourages people to ask Geoff and Sharon to hold up baby Andrew for a photo. So we spent hours climbing the slopes with our cameras.

Looking across Arnafjördur

Rounding the last head of the Arnafjördur, we headed west on the long journey to its mouth. Part way along the main road heads north over the peninsular, but we carried on west on a little used track. The first couple of streams had tumbledown bridges, and then we came to one which had no bridge at all. Establishing that there was no dry crossing, shoes and socks were laboriously removed, the freezing water crossed not fast enough, and back on with dry shoes. After quarter of a mile there was another ford. Some persevering souls went through the same routine a second time. But those of us who saw that at this rate we would spend the entire evening taking off shoes and socks waded in and got wet shoes, as we would many times again.

Across the fjord, the far coastline presented a row of glacial corries lit up in the glow of the evening sun. Two adjacent corries looked like a pair of thrones, and I imagined the god Þór and his consort seated on them with iron crowns. Back on this land, the track was how you always dream a track should be, up and down, sometimes grassy, and nearly all rideable. The quality of the light produced a peace one could not imagine in an equatorial land. We passed by several abandoned farms, until we arrived at what had been Stapadalur, and camped in among the walls of abandoned sheep pens.

Once again Bernard got a little fire going. This time the fuel was drift and dried seaweed, the better to smoke his socks. We sat and looked at the view that refused to fade in the brief twilight that passes for night in the northern summer. Steve, a stereotypical Lancashireman, amused Sharon by describing his philosophy of life. He thought that his wife Barbara should should stay at home during Sunday club-runs and cook his dinner. I think this was so he would have a chance of catching her on the hills.

Clouds came in overnight, and a damp wind blew. Geoff is not one of life's early starters, but today we had an enforced lie-in to wait for the tide. After a short distance, the track passed along a stony beach only uncovered at low tide. Some large boulders and steep angles made this section amusing for the four-wheeled one carrying our luggage. Some way beyond are the only two farms still in occupation in the area. At the tip of the peninsular, the very lips of Arnafjördur, is Helgafell, the Holy Hill. This is not the Helgafell of the Sagas, for that is at Stykkishólmur, which we visited a few days before. This Helgafell is more fun for the cyclist. The track is cut into its steep cliffs and screes, and zig-zags without any guard rails through the midst of a screaming bird colony.

Ísafjardardjúp

The following morning, by a memorial arch made of a whale's jaw-bone, my rear tyre gave up the ghost. I had only a thin folding tyre to replace it. My passage over the two high passes to Ísafjördur was much slowed by further blow-outs before I got the hang of fitting the tyre properly.

Descending to Ísafjördur

Ísafjördur is set near the mouth of the region's biggest fjord, Ísafjardardjúp. From here we planned to take a ferry a short distance down the fjord, which would cutting out several long side-fjords that would have taken us a whole day to ride round. Dick drove off to meet us the following morning at Ögur. After he had left, we learnt that the ferry does not go to Ögur any more, but it would take us across to the other side of the fjord, a remote hamlet called Bæir. Fortunately this was about the same distance from our planned destination that evening, and would provide greater variety of scenery. Through our binoculars, we could see Dick standing forlornly at Ögur quay watching the boat go past. The Icelandic bush telegraph soon had him apprised of the situation and he drove about a hundred miles to meet us for lunch.

On the north shore of Ísafjardardjúp

We were now on the northmost peninsular of Iceland, with patches of snow still standing right by the sea in late July. Up a side-fjord, we gained a brief view of the Drangajökull glacier, covered as ever in mist. There were beautiful sunny views across the fjord and out to sea. But the wind now became cold, strong and the wrong way. The road surface was loose, and we were forced to ride very slowly, even on a level road. My bicycle had been hard to control for some for the last couple of days, but now I was finding it impossible to ride on the poor surface. Trying to find a reason, I discovered that I had cracked the rear dropout, and snapped the axle. It was into the van for me before I did any more damage.

The following afternoon we crossed over the plateau back onto the south coast of the region. The route was Kollafjardarheidi, a little used road which had only just, in late July, become passable. It took some discussion with the local farmer to find the right turning. As often happened when we climbed up to the plateau, the clouds came in, and on this occasion the drizzle was quite heavy, the wind strong, and the track punctuated by cold fords fed by melt-water. Those with intact bicycles had a character-forming experience, as they say. They were rewarded with a dry evening, and sunshine in the morning for the ferry crossing back to more inhabited parts.

Fljótsdalur

The hostel at Fljótsdalur

For some of our companions, this was nearing the end of the road. But Geoff, Sharon and I had time to spare, and visited Dick's tiny turf-roofed hostel at Fljótsdalur in southern Iceland. We were looked after in fine fashion by Judy, whose rhubarb cake had kept us sustained on the road. My bicycle visited the agricultural engineer in Hvolsvöllur who made an unusual repair to the frame, which has lasted me nearly a year. Geoff, Sharon and the little one took off for a couple of days in the wild interior, while I contented myself with visiting the main tourist spots, bathed in near endless sunshine. I did not meet a single cyclist in the north-west, but here within a hundred miles of Reykjavík were many Germans on overladen mountain bikes. They all had Ortlieb waterproof panniers, though in much of Iceland the rainfall is lower than the Peak District. The narrow spare tyre gave me many more punctures on the unsealed roads, and the broken axle was still going after 250 miles. But I wished I was back in the North West, where the sound on the rough roads was more frequently of whimbrel and snipe than dust-raising tourist coaches.

Maps

Icelandic Survey 1:250,000 Sheet 1 (with Sheet 2 on the back).

Tour arrangements

Dick Phillips with Raven

The tour was professionally arranged by Dick Phillips (01434 381440), who, with his companion Nan, drove a Russian-built support vehicle, fed us, found hostels and camp-sites, and always had a cheery word. He claims it was their holiday too. We also used some long-distance coaches, which can carry up to three bikes.

Prize

This article won the Alwyn Taylor Jubilee Trophy for Best Article in the Rough-Stuff Journal in 1996

First published the RSF Journal in 1996