Thursday 31st July

After breakfast, we packed up all our stuff and made tracks for our next stop ­ Saudarkrokur, another small coastal town. On the way, we stopped round at the farmhouse of the riding man. As it was after ten we had missed him as he had already departed for work. Nonetheless we stayed and chattered to his wife for an hour or so as she served us with tea and showed us some pictures of the area in the winter. The snow gets up to eight or ten feet deep, although she said that the 'constant darkness' in the north was not as bad as it sounds, as the snow somehow keeps everything quite light through reflection, and there is a lot of moonlight. We talked to her about London and left our number in case they came to visit.

Getting to Saudarkrokur involved driving through Akureyri, where we went on a search for new wheels and tyres. The wheels had taken such a pounding on the poor roads that two tyres needed urgent replacement and two of the wheels were damaged, as well as missing a plastic wheel-trim which had flown off some time earlier. We spent most of the afternoon driving around finding a Toyota dealer and then being escorted to the tyre warehouse by a helpful member of staff. The staff were pleasant and efficient at both places and the cost was all covered on the hire car insurance. The ease with which this damage was acquired on our route may explain, in part, the high cost of hiring a car in Iceland.

In the mid-afternoon we set off for Saudarkrokur, stopping on the way at the airport Hertz office to beg that we could trade the inept Toyota Corolla for something a little more suitable. Sadly, all the rental stock had gone, so we were lumbered with it. The drive was uneventful and at this point the weather was starting to turn to rain. We huddled in the car and listened to Icelandic radio (not bad, actually) and enjoyed the scenery as best we could.

Saudarkrokur is a tired, rundown place with little to recommend it (see picture of sad boat, right). We checked into the hotel (Hotel Aning) and were rather disappointed with the poor standard of the accommodation. The shower area was horribly mouldy and the shower curtain stank, and there was a strange air vent in the bathroom that just kept pumping tobacco-tainted air into the room: quite nauseating. We asked to move to another room, which was done obligingly enough, but the new room was hardly better. There was less mould but the tobacco smell kept coming! The beds were of the prison-issue variety, the room smelt exactly like student halls of residence and the floor was shiny lino, all the better to clean when inmates (sorry, guests) throw up on it, I imagine. This room was entirely free of any home comforts of any kind and we both felt like we had been sent to detention as a punishment for some unstated misdemeanour. We planned our escape, avoiding the headmaster or dormitory matron we were certain would appear at any minute, and took the fire escape down to ground level and fresh air. Not before taking a wrong turn, however, which landed us momentarily in a lounge room full of representatives of the All Germany Heavy Smokers' Travelling Club. This latter party was comprised entirely of middle-aged Germans who seemed to be earnestly engaged in an ongoing pastime, a competition perhaps, to see if they could completely fill an unventilated room with clouds of stale tobacco smoke. Rather than risk compromising their experiment by creating a draft, we left the lounge room hurriedly.

That evening we set out and tried to locate the delights of Saudarkrokur, and contemplated finding somewhere else to stay the night. Hotel Aning was truly depressing ­ but then it seemed to fit in with everything else in the place. Shabby, unremarkable, dull and unloveable, Saudarkrokur is to civilization as anoraks are to apparel.

Despite this we managed to find a rather good pizza restaurant (Pizza Hus) on the main(!) street where we were served the biggest pizza I have ever eaten in my life ­ a full 16 inches in diameter! While this may seem normal for Americans, it is impossible to buy pizzas bigger than 12 inches in the UK. We really enjoyed the pizza which tasted freshly made, was very well seasoned and they very obligingly split the toppings making half of it hot and spicy (for me) and the other half awash with chunks of pineapple (for Sam). This pizza was the highlight of Saudarkorkur and also represented astonishing value for money at around £10. As we had taken the car, I was regrettably unable to drink any beer with it. We searched fruitlessly for an hour or so for some other accommodation, but pretty soon we had established the complete lack of any alternative and so we resigned ourselves to our fate and returned to the hotel.

As there appears to be nothing to do in Saudarkorkur in the evening except get drunk or go to sleep, we meandered back to the hotel and watched strange Icelandic nature programs on the TV, trying to avoid the company of the oppressive tobacco-fixated Germans who seemed to be everywhere continuing their sponsored smoke.

We slept surprisingly well at Hotel Aning given the unappealing nature of the place. The beds were comfortable despite being small and of course they had duvets on them (this is one of Iceland's most wonderful benefits). Or perhaps we had been anaesthetised by the smoke-laden air which poured through the ventilation hole in the bathroom.

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© Richard Harrison

All photographs are © Richard Harrison and Samantha Coe 1997