Iceland - Two Weeks In and Counting

We rolled back around Reykjavik yesterday after a lazy two weeks circumnavigating Iceland. We appear to have been lucky with the weather, no real rain until we got back to the airport (pretty wet now though) to swap our comfy Kia C'eed for a teeny noisy bouncy Suzuki Jimny that might (and might not!) take us off-road.
As expected the scenery has been great, the locals friendly, the hostels superb and the sense of space and light quite magnificent. The tourist traps are normally packed but once you leave them behind it is rare to see another vehicle, the contrast between Iceland and the UK couldn't be more extreme.
We have been bird spotting (lots of new species), beach combing, whale watching, fishing, wandering in the wilderness and just taking it easy - one week to go then back to the crowds - Blighty that is!

Iceland - First Impressions

Easy as that, we had a night in the Manchester Hilton (courtesy of Air-Miles - no way would we shell-out £150+ for a bedroom) then an easy 2:10 flight saw us in Reykjavik at 8:00 in the morning, bleary eyed but a bit excited. With all day to kill we collect the hire car and headed into the hills to visit Thingvellir, an ancient Viking settlement on the central rift and home to the world's 1st parliament.
Evening saw us at the Selfoss Bed and Breakfast - oddly that is the name of the place - they don't actually do breakfasts!
Day two and we did a bit of touristing, visiting a couple of spectacular waterfalls, Seljalandsfoss (pictured) and the even more impressive Skogafoss.
First thoughts; mild weather, 24hr daylight, friendly locals, amazing scenery (and better to come I'm sure) and a bit less expensive than we had anticipated - especially on the booze front, which is nice!

Moving On Up

Three weeks back in the Ariège now - we always find it oddly easy to get settled here, such is the easy-going atmosphere of the place. We have done a little bit of climbing (cheers Colin), quite a bit of walking and even more of taking it easy - which has been great.

Left: Sherri and me with White Cat on guard - catching some evening sunshine

All change now though, Thursday it is a 5+ hour journey to Bilbao to catch the ferry back to the UK. Friday will probably be the usual grimness of battling through the UK's gridlocked motorways to get back "home" (an odd concept). Then we will have two whole days in Sheffield before we have to get over to Manchester for a flight to Iceland very early Tuesday morning - a 90 minutes flight northwards should find us somewhere very different!!