July 23, 2020
Day 5 - Some friendly company in the rain
Varmahlíð to Akureyri
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Day 5 - Varmahlíð to Akureyri - 61 miles cycled
The tap water in the campsite taps had that familiar sulphuric 'eggy' smell so it's a good job I had some drinking water left over from yesterday. Neverless, I decided to chance brushing my teeth with it, and wow, the taste was disgusting! Naturally the wind had changed direction again, so I started the day with an incredibly easy 15 miles along the flat base of a glacial valley. Here I passed the site of the Battle of Örlygsstaðir, one of Iceland's bloodiest fights on its own soil. As I pedalled along, it was just so hard to comprehend in my mind the idea of scores of 13th century Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic clansmen fighting to the death on the side of a remote fjord.
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An abrupt eastward turn in the road signalled the start of a long ascent over the hills towards Akureyri, the country's largest town outside of the capital area. A gentle crosswind and reasonable shallow gradient made for some enjoyable climbing, but today was the first time on the trip where the skies threatened heavy rain, so I turned into a rest area to pull on all the waterproofs. This took quite a long time due to all of my wet-weather gear (sealskinz socks, long trousers, overshoes, rear bag rain cover etc) being spread across multiple bags. As I was about to set off again, another cycle tourer pulled up behind me with the same intentions, so after a while talking, I decided to wait for him and do the climb together. He was a really chatty native Icelander from the south-west part of the country, and as we tackled the climb, we shared stories about travelling and tourism. Despite the struggle to make our voices heard over the wind and rain, conversation flowed well and we rode together for another few hours, cresting the summit and powering on down the other side into the headwind. Without having a proper breakfast, I was starving by this point, and we parted ways when I pulled up to a bench to gorge myself full of noodles and biscuits.
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As I've mentioned before, meeting other cyclists always puts me in a temporary great mood, but this was a bit short-lived than some others due to the wind. The descent had been bitingly cold so far, but I'd stayed cycling in just my thin fleece because I was so brave (read: lazy!). Eventually I'd had enough and switched over to my expensive wind/waterproof GoreTex bike jacket and it was like night and day- couldn't feel the wind on my body at all. I pretty much lived in it for the entire rest of the trip. 20 miles later and I rolled slowly into Akureyri, but low cloud and the grey day meant everything looked pretty drab and uninviting. They had a Subway store so I decided to spend a while eating inside, filling up on warm food, hiding from the cold, and making use of the free WiFI. Because I was very pressed for time on this tour, I'd been intending to take the bus past a couple of the less-interesting sections. With a day of rain forecasted, and the route out of Akureyri being a toll tunnel closed to bikes (and a long detour around it), I decided to get the morning bus to take me the 50 miles to Mývatn. Strætó is Iceland's main public bus company serving the whole island, and they have a mobile app where you can check routes and buy tickets online. It's a bit confusing at first, but when you've got the hang of it, it's so much more efficient than having to pay the driver directly. There's also a map which shows every bus's location in the country in realtime... wouldn't it be nice if the UK had something similar? (yes I'm aware that I'm saying that a lot!)
There was a campsite right in the centre of Akureyri so I set up there for the night. It was loud, busy and overpriced, but convenient for getting to the bus stop early tomorrow morning. I was really tempted to splash out on a Dominos' pizza too because the pickup offers actually made it pretty cheap for a takeaway pizza, but after lounging around in the tent on my phone for ages, by the time I decided to order it was somehow already 10pm and they'd shut. My mood started to get a bit down and I had a little grumble to myself about how annoying it was to have this crazy amount of daylight hours, but not being able to make the most of them because there's so few wildcamp spots, so I pretty much have to go from campsite to campsite.
Today's ride: 61 miles (98 km)
Total: 291 miles (468 km)
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