21-Aug-2001 -- On our one month lasting bike-trip in Iceland we had the possibility
to visit this confluence. After tasting tea & cakes in Reykjavik for
three rainy days we loaded our bikes on the bus on 21st August, 2001 and
stopped in Varmahlid on the Northern Coast. As many locals had told us,
the weather was really much nicer in the north and despite the higher latitude
it was some degrees warmer than in Reykjavik.
On Wednesday, 22nd August we biked to Skagafjördur and set up our
tent on a farm uphill of the fishing village Saudarkrokur - having a good
sea view from there. In the evening sun was shining, socks were drying
and we filled our stomaches by collecting sweet blue berries on the slopes
of the Tindastöll Mountain. Mixing them with the Icelandic speciality
called Skyr was a delicious substitute for
our Birchermüesli.
We set the alarm clock at seven for the next morning and started riding
our bikes on the route 745 northwards (Picture 4), which is one of the
tough Icelandic gravel tracks and usually frequented by 4x4 off road vehicles.
Well, to be honest, we saw no other bikers during this confluence trip.
Taking our time on our "1x1 driven steel horses" we passed through wilderness,
along abondoned farms and saw paranoid sheep. Yes, the sheep were so afraid
of harmless bikers and took off in a rush immediately after we were getting
close to any of them. On our trip we followed the Laxa river to the East
Coast of the Penninsula Skagaheidi. We passed the Hvalnes farm and after
a steep slope we left our bikes and hiked around one km westwards to the
confluence. The hike was not that challenging exept for the lava rocks
lying all over the place. Getting closer to the actual confluence point
we saw this very nice lake which didn't appear anywhere on our map. We
need to mention here that our only map was in the 1:500'000 scale and one
can have quite some surprises when doing confluence hunting with such a
coarse-scale piece of paper. Eva was staring at the GPS (Picture 5) and
got more and more nervous when she circled the lake almost entirely and
noticed that the point was positioned exactly in the middle of the freezing
deep blue water. Since the weather was worsening with winds and rain coming
up and our fingers were already cold, we looked for the closest spot to
the confluence along the lake border (Picture 3) - 25.7 m distance (Picture
2). To get closer one would need a boat or probably a neoprene suit when
swimming. The panoramic photograph (Picture 1) we took from the site shows
the hilly surroundings as well as the nice lake. Some sheep and wild Icelandic
horses were grazing in the area (Picture 6).
We headed back to our bikes quickly - perhaps too quickly since we lost
the trails quite a bit too often and had a hard time to find the bikes
again. Being so focused on the confluence itself there was no time to mark
the position of our bikes before we started hiking. We then had a quick
lunch swallowing farmersticks and dried stinky bananas. After the three
hour ride back to our tent we were so happy to enjoy our self made meal
consisting of smashed potatoes with 12 fried eggs (kindly provided by the
farmer's wife) and topped with Swiss
Gruyère cheese (Picture 7). That day was quite an experience
and our Iceland trip was waiting for a next confluence...