the quiet life

We quite enjoy taking a break from the cycling and decide to take the rest of the week quite easily, so it's quite a shock to then realise that our onward road winds high into the mountains and between the two highest peaks of all the islands.  The views, like the road, are breathtaking.  We can look along the dramatic coast and over to distant islands.  While we pause for lunch the clouds drift in and around the peaks and over the col, obscuring and then revealing the view.  Now you see it.  Now you don't.

   

We hurtle down the other side and along into the fjord and back out again to the village of Elduvik at the end of a quiet road.  There's a clutch of houses, a few farms, a church and cemetery, and a wooden sloped landing curving in a semi-circle around a pebble beach.  Sat around the edge of the landing are a row of boathouses.  A footpath goes around the headland and over to the next village in the next fjord.  We retrace our route to a piece of land below the road that juts out and gives us a lovely view of the fjord and headlands around us.  In the bay boats are tending to fish farms.  It's a great spot to watch the sun go down and the hills to change colour.

from Elduvik village

Eider

a perfect spot

 Clouds and rain the next day and we are thinking about where we can go.  After a lot of dithering we head back towards Torshavn, taking the tunnel through the mountains of Eysturoy and watching bemused as a whole crowd of

honestly, there aren't any cyclists in the Faroes

cyclists pass us going the other way - on a local charity ride.  The weather is alternating windy/rainy/sunny but we plod back along the main road and steel ourselves for the steep but quieter mountain road back to Torshavn.  And then we discover that all the traffic is being diverted this way.  There's a marathon run in the capital and the road up to the tunnel is closed until 6pm.  We check our watches - it's 5.15pm.  Quickly we backtrack and take the empty main road through the tunnel and the easy coastal road back towards Torshavn.  What luck.  The road is deserted.  At the edge of town we find a little wooded nook and stick the tent in between a few stunted fir trees.

bringing the geese home

It rains in the night and continues the next day, which is a Sunday.  Gayle is not feeling too well - a cold? - and neither of us are inclined to go anywhere.  Which is fortunate as there is absolutely nothing to do in the town.  We cycle down the hill to the museum (closed), have lunch in a smoker's shelter behind the local telecoms office building and then eventually pitch the wet tent behind a portacabin.  And that was another exciting day for us.
 

chaos in the porch

Tomorrow we board the same ship as before which will take us to Iceland.  I fall asleep listening to old soul music and mulling over how much more of this lousy weather I can take.  After all, Iceland ain't no beach holiday.......