North Iceland & Grimsey Island 2024

We had a 5 hour drive ahead of us once we said our goodbyes at the wharf following the kayak trip. Our first stop was the Bónus supermarket at Ísafjörður,  then we drove along the north and east coast of Westfjiords making brief stops along the way. We stayed at the Hvammstangi Campground that was only a few kilometres off the Ring Road and there were a number of French and Dutch tourists that made the common kitchen busy. As we hadn't seen many tourists in the past week, it sure felt we had hit the tourist circuit at the campground.

We were rolling a little after 7:00am and made our way to the Hvitserkur, a basalt volcanic dyke that has been eroded away and from some angles, looks like an animal, perhaps a rhino. We took the #711 road to reach it, there were a handful of people there. It was an impressive setting and we could have gone for a shoreline hike, but we had other things to do that day. We returned to the Ring Road via the #717 and that  allowed a stop at Borgarvirki  another volcanic plug that was once a Viking fortress but nowadays offers a great view of the surroundings. 

We pulled off the #1 onto the  #76 that follows the western shores of the Troll Peninsula. Our first stop was at the  Hofsós swimming pool, a splendid heated open air swimming poll run by the local municipality. We made our way north stopping at various awe spots, including Haganesvík Beach for a short walk.  We reached Siglufjörður a little after 2:00pm and had a walk around. It was the warmest day of our trip and the thermometer touched 21C for a brief moment.  Siglufjörður was a herring fishery town and it was one of the most interesting towns that we came across in Iceland. Our kayak guide had advised us to go for a hike in the nearby Héðinsfjörður from the road out to the coast. It took some effort in the early summer conditions to reach the beach. We carried on through single lane tunnels to Ólafsfjörður and our expected campground. We didn't think too much of the Ólafsfjörður campground, so we pressed onto the Dalvik Campground and that turned out to be much busier than we wanted.

We had time in the morning to do a load of laundry at the Dalvik campground. We packed up travel bags and food for a couple of nights and parked the car at the Grimsey ferry.  It was a three hour ferry ride north to Grimsey. There were about thirty tourists on board, but it seems that almost all of them were day trippers.  We were quite surprised to have Gaga of the Basar Guesthouse greet us on arrival and she drove us the 1km to the guest house and got us established in our comfortable room.  

Each summer  a million birds, including 100,000 puffins, nest on Grimsey Island and we were out the door for the afternoon. Like many others, we gravitated north and crossed the Arctic Circle that afternoon. There were birds everywhere. The cliffs were like layer cakes with the puffins on the top layer.  By the time we returned to the guesthouse, our clothes had a fine layer of bird poop on them, from crawling to the cliff edges. A British photographic group was staying at the Basar Guesthouse and many of them had been up all through the previous night as the clear conditions made the golden hour into a golden night. The sun doesn't set at all in the month of June on Grimsey. I considered the bird life to be completely insane. We self-catered dinner.

We had a full day on Grimsey Island and gorged on watching birds. We watched them before breakfast, then after breakfast, we headed south through the village and to the southern end and the lighthouse, walking back along the eastern side, much of it along cliff edges. We'd crawl to the edge so we wouldn't scare too many birds and watch the puffins. During that period, the eggs had been laid in the burrows, and there was quite a lot puffins simply hanging around waiting for the eggs to hatch. Sometimes many of them would take flight in huge swarms. We were  exhausted when we returned for another self-catered dinner. In the evening, many of the puffins went out to sea. There was no ferry on that day of the week, so there were just a few of us tourists wandering the island that particular day.

On our last day on Grimsey Island, we had till 4:00pm before the ferry departed to the mainland.  We had plenty of time to watch birds that day, and we stayed mostly at the north and eastern sides of the island. I spent some time trying to photograph birds in flight, which was no easy task. We got back to the guesthouse by 3:00pm and caught the 4:00pm ferry returning to Dalvik by just after 7:00pm.