August 17 - Heimaey, Westman Islands, Iceland

It’s a misty day here in our first Icelandic port. We’re anchored off the town of Heimaey on the largest of the Westman Islands, an archipelago consisting of about 13 islands.  All of them were formed by submarine eruptions which eventually became large enough to appear above the ocean’s surface.  Heimaey is the largest and only one inhabited.  There is a population of about 4500 people, and around 8 million puffins live here in the summer months. 

I took a three-hour tour with a 26-year-old native of Heimaey named Arnar.  His English was probably better than mine.  As I write it is a very foggy and misty day and the temperature is significantly cooler than it has been.  When we boarded the bus the first thing Arnar showed us was a baby puffin or a  puffling.  The baby was found this morning in the parking lot near the bus. Arnar explained how puffins are reared.  The parents mate for life and the female will lay a single egg in a burrow, which can be as deep as three meters.  They feed the puffling until it has fledged. The parents then take off and the puffling will try to take off usually landing in the water because it can’t yet fly well.  I’m not sure I understood it, but apparently the young ones can survive bobbing around on the sea until their feathers have come out enough that they can take off.  Here in Heimaey each summer the residents find about 15 to 18 thousand pufflings stranded on land or streets.  They are taken to a place on the island where they are weighed, marked in some way and then set free on the water around the Westman Islands.  The birds will return every year to the same place for the mating ritual.  And that’s probably more than any of us who aren’t ornithologists needs to know about puffins.

Here's the little puffling.  He hasn't developed the puffin's distinctive yellow-orange beak or black and white feathers.

And here are some grownups on a steep hillside where they like to roost and burrow.

I'm just adding this in because I forgot.  There's a golf course here.  Who would have thought that?  There were quite a few people on the course despite the misty, moisty weather.

It's a pretty rugged coastline!

A little blurry.  Sorry about that!

To be honest, this place, especially on a foggy day like today, hasn’t got a great deal to see or do. All the earth that we could see was as black as coal because it’s all volcanic.  At first I thought I was seeing mounds of coal and it took a minute for it to click in my head.  While I didn’t see much through the mist, I did hear a few interesting tales so I’ll recount those now.

Iceland was settled by Norse travelers sometime in the 9th century A.D., long before Amerigo Vespucci or Columbus came this way.  Among the Norsemen who came here were two brothers who on their way across the ocean stopped in Ireland and picked up a few slaves.  The brothers settled in different spots in Iceland.  The slaves belonging to one brother rebelled, killed their Norse masters, and stole their boats.  The other brother learned of the killings, went after the Irish rogues and tracked them down to Heimaey and killed them all.  He then called that island and those around it the “Vestmenn” islands, literally Westmen because the Norse called the Celts of Scotland and Ireland westmen.

But that’s not one of the most interesting stories I wanted to tell; I digressed.  In 1627 a band of Barbary Pirates from Algiers (yes, the one in North Africa and which was then part of the Ottoman Empire) arrived at Heimaey.  The pirates were looking for blonde haired, blue-eyed people to sell in their slave markets.  Women of course being the preferred ones.  They captured 234 people and took them home where they were sold off, most spending the rest of their lives in captivity.  One of the captives, a Lutheran minister, managed to get away after three years and he wrote an account of his experience.  In 1636 funds were raised to ransom 34 more of the captives and most of them returned to Iceland.  Somehow I just never imagined Barbary pirates roaming around the North Atlantic. It’s also sobering to think that today in some parts of the world there are people and cultures which traffick women, especially blonde blue-eyed ones.

That’s story number one, now here’s story number two.  At 01:00 on January 23, 1973 the mountain Eldfell on Heimaey began a volcanic eruption. Within hours a mile-long fissure grew and lava begun spewing out. Fortunately, the seas had been rough because of windy conditions so the fishing fleet that would normally be out to sea was in the harbor.  The population was put aboard the boats and taken to the mainland carrying only a few of their possessions.  As the eruption continued the fissures closed and the lava became a concentrated river of fire headed toward the harbor.  The population was worried that the lava would close the mouth of the harbor which would have essentially made Heimaey uninhabitable.  300 men volunteered to stay behind to 1) try to protect as many homes as they could from being incinerated and 2) find a way to stop or divert the lava flow.  Those 300 received assistance from the US Navy which provided them with massive pumps which the men then used to spray cold sea water on the forward edge of the flow in an effort to cool and solidify it.  Something like that had evidently never been tried and no one knew if it would work.  It did!  One of those brave volunteers happened to be our bus driver Griff.  I talked to him for a few minutes and asked him what that was like and whether they had any kind of breathing apparatus or special gear.  He said they only had helmets and he told me that at times they were getting singed because they were close enough to the moving lava that the heat was scorching.   He also said the noise was deafening. The harbor was saved as were some of the houses.  Only one person lost his life.  The volunteers were all given a special medal by the government of Iceland.  I asked if I could take his picture and he didn't want me to do that.  He said he didn't think what he and the others had done was anything more than anyone else would have done.

One of the houses buried in the eruption, excavated later and the museum built around it.

One of the US Navy pumps used to save Heimaey

I thought that was a great story and I felt honored to have met such a brave person.  Talking to Griff made my day in Heimaey a wonderful one despite the fog and mist. A museum about Eldfell and it’s eruption was built around a house that was excavated from the ash.  In places the ash and particulates from the event were 30 or 40 feet deep.  Not far away from Heimaey to the southeast is one of the newest islands on Earth, Surtsey Island which began as an eruption 130 meters below and finally reached the surface in June 1967.  Places like Iceland and Hawaii remind me that we’re on an ever-changing planet and I’m only here for less than a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things

August 15  -  Isle of Lewis and Harris

We docked today in the port of Stornoway, the largest city on the Island of Lewis and Harris, the largest of the Outer Hebrides.  This is actually two islands connected by a very narrow land bridge. They are part of an archipelago of Scotland and our last port before we sail west to Iceland.  They  have been inhabited for thousands of years as archaeologists have found traces of early settlements dating back at least 5000 years.  Through the millennia there is evidence in both language and artifacts of Scots, Gaels, Picts and Vikings.

I took an all-day tour which actually could have been a little shorter but it was still enjoyable.  The countryside is very interesting to someone like me who comes from flat coastal Virginia which is lush and green.  Here the hill sides are green but the vegetation is mostly scrubby grass with  patches of gorse and wildflowers and the flatlands are mainly peat bogs.   It apparently doesn't get really cold here because the weather is influenced by the Gulf Stream as it passes by northern Europe. For example they don't get lots of snow in the winter. Our guide Dora (who is a German from Bremen) told us that at one time much of the island was forested but the trees were cut down for fuel.  At some point one of the wealthy landowners started a reforestation project so there are patches of forest but for the most part it’s still treeless.  She told us that in the past before really good computer graphics were available, film crews would come to the island and take shots to be used as the surface of other planets.   They would just remove the color and perhaps add a little  brown or gray to the scenery.

Some nice bogs

The population of the island is around 20,000, and like many other very rural and undeveloped areas, the population is declining.  Young people have to go to the mainland for university or trade schools and many don’t choose to return.  Most of the population work for the local government or for oil rigs north and east of the northern part of Scotland.  The oil workers generally spend two weeks on the rigs and two weeks off.  Our bus driver Gordon normally works on a rig in the North Sea.

In times past people cut and dried peat to use to heat their homes and to cook.  As we drove along we saw the remains of some of those homes which are called “black houses” because they originally didn’t have chimneys and the peat fires burned in an open hearth in the middle of the house turning the interior black from the smoke.  (Not very healthy either!). Around 1910 the government began helping to build houses with chimneys and those are the “white houses.”  Many of the residents are crofters.  That was a term I’d heard of but wasn’t sure what it meant.  People  leased a strip of land, called a croft, from a large landowner and they could build and farm on it.  The only limitation was that it could not have something on it which interfered with neighboring crofts.  Most of the land that makes up  Harris was donated by a former wealthy landowner to the Harris Trust which benefits all the islanders.   Our guide told us that after she decided to live here she became a crofter.  Dora said she pays the grand sum of  £ 6 per year rent for her croft.

Our drive took us first to the Maraig Viewpoint which overlooked North Harris.  The island is very hilly and rocky and as I wrote earlier is mainly covered with scrubby grass and some varieties of heather and thistle.  The place is home to a lot of types of birds including several species of birds of prey, like golden eagles and sea eagles. In fact the raptors are pretty much the only predator on the island so I’m surprised they haven’t been overrun by rabbits.  As in  Ireland there are no snakes (my kind of place!).  The rocks of which Lewis and Harris are composed are primarily gneiss which is a very hard metamorphic rock similar to granite.  From the viewpoint we could see the many hills, mountains and inlets that make up the island.  One unfortunate thing we found though was there are lots of what the locals call “midgies.” These are small biting flies which are evidently common in Scotland.  They were upon us in an instant when we got out of the bus.  They bite but at least on me didn’t leave any bite marks. Also fortunately they don’t carry any diseases but they are definitely a nuisance.

The view from Maraig. What you can't see are the thousands, at least, of midgies that attacked us.

We proceeded south on the island and made a stop at a pretty beach on a protected bay. There were lots of wildflowers along the path leading to the beach.  I especially liked the ones that looked like some kind of thistles. From there we drove to the southeastern village of Rodel.  At one time it was evidently the capital of Harris. It is now known for St. Clement’s Church.  St. Clement’s was built on the orders of the chief of the MacLeod clan in the late 15th or early 16th century.  It’s built of local gneiss in a cruciform pattern with a tower at the west end.  It’s very rustic to say the least, but looks great in it’s setting with sheep grazing just outside.

This nice fellow was on his way to church.

I think this sheep was in fact a ham.  He seemed to pose for me.

That’s something I should mention.  We saw lots of sheep as we rode around.  Some of them were grazing right up along the edges of the road and those didn’t seem in the least bit bothered by us going by.

We next drove to Tarbert, the largest town we saw and the home of the Harris Distillery and Harris Tweeds.  We had a light lunch in the old Harris Hotel and then had time to visit both the Harris tweed shop and the distillery.  I didn’t buy anything.  The tweeds were nice looking but they’re pretty heavy and a little scratchy so I didn’t find them tempting.  As for the distillery, I just don’t like whiskey.

The Harris Hotel where we ate a light lunch

I don't think the fireplaces belonging to these chimneys have been used very recently.

Just a nice stone building in Tarbert

After our brief stay in Tarbert we headed back to the commercial port of Stornoway and returned to the ship.  As you can perhaps tell, there just isn’t a great deal to see here.  Our tour really should have been shorter, but that’s the way it goes.  Tomorrow we have a sea day and I’m looking forward to that. The weather was still good today after starting out pretty misty.  We've traveled considerably further north so it was cooler and I think any balmy days are past us.

August 14 - Tobermory, the Isle of Mull

The weather gods have continued to smile on us here on the good ship Seabourn Sojourn.  While it’s cloudy, we’ve had no rain, no wind and the temperature is a pleasant 68°.  We’re anchored in the bay off Tobermory, the principal town of this island which is one of the Scottish Inner Hebrides islands.  I didn’t join a tour today; instead I took the tender ashore and walked through the little picturesque town.

First I must tell you about a local legend about the place. The story goes that a Spanish galleon, part of the Spanish Armada in 1588, was fleeing the English navy and like many of the ships in the armada encountered a big storm and was blown far off course. She was blown north of Scotland and then down along its west coast. The ship sought refuge and provisions in the bay of Tobermory when the storm abated.  Then as the legend goes when there was a dispute over payment, a local witch cast a spell on the ship.  As legend has it the Spanish ship caught fire, the gunpowder magazine exploded and the ship sank. According to the story in her hold she carried £ 300,000  in gold bullion.  Several unsuccessful attempts have been made  to find the lost legendary gold. A few old cannon have been found.  It’s a nice story though, isn’t it?

The little town is very picturesque with the houses along the waterfront painted lots of different colors.  I was told in the coffee shop I stopped in for a cup of hot chocolate that the town had just been spiffed up because a British TV company was filming some TV series episodes here.  I’d never heard of the series; I’ll have to look for it.  There were a surprising number of tourists here.  There were even a couple of bus tours that had come over on a ferry from the mainland.  The place was actually quite charming.   I initially wasn’t going to go ashore but I’m glad I did.  

This was taken from the tender dock but I wanted to show the variety of colors on the houses.

A colorful Post Office

It's Scotland so there has to be a distillery.

I like all the chimney pots on the roofs.

The café and bakery where I had a luscious cup of hot chocolate. (I confess I also had a piece of chocolate cake.)

As I said it’s a cloudy day and there were misty clouds hanging over the island which gave it a little mysterious air.  I could believe there was a witch somewhere there who could cast spells if someone displeased her.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for fairy tales.  I was born in the hometown of the Brothers Grimm.

This is the Sojourn way out in the bay.

I'm not sure I'd sail on this one.  She's The Flying Dutchman and she might never return.

That’s it for now.  Tomorrow we make our last stop in the UK.

 

August 13 - Lochs, Castles, and Haggis

On Wednesday morning after crossing the Irish Sea, we anchored off the little town of Dunoon.  The itinerary says we’re in Holy Loch; the map says we’re in the Firth of Clyde.  I’m not really sure where we are except that I know we’re in northwestern Scotland. For the sake of clarification a firth is essentially a fjord, although usually not as deep as the latter.  A loch is a Scottish word for a body of water which may be fresh or salt and is almost completely surrounded by land.

Dunoon from the ship

Anyway, back to today.  Some of us  may have heard of Holy Loch because during WWII it was used as a Royal Navy submarine base and from 1961 to 1992 during the Cold War it was a US Navy ballistic missile sub base.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union it  was no longer deemed necessary so the base was closed, although I think the Royal Navy still has a presence here.  This port was one of the few for which I booked a tour in advance when I decided to come on the cruise.  From here I was able to visit Inveraray Castle, a place I was excited to see.

I’m a big fan of Downtown Abbey so before I left home I binge-watched the whole series again.  For all the DA fans who may be reading this, Inveraray is the place the Crawleys went to visit “Cousin Shrimpy” in the Highlands of Scotland.

We tendered ashore and boarded our bus for the drive  through the highlands to the little town of Inveraray.  The countryside was quite beautiful with what I’ll call small mountains most of which were covered with pine forests.  Our guide Elspeth told us that around the beginning of the 20th century the forests had been pretty well cut down.  The government began a program to reforest and this area looks like it was successful.  The terrain looked quite different from the part of the highlands I visited a couple of years ago further north.  There I saw mainly sheep pastureland.  This area today reminded me a lot of parts of western Virginia around the Blue Ridge mountains.  All of the countryside we drove through belongs to the council of Argyll and Bute and the castle we visited is the ancestral home of the Duke of Argyll.

These are a few photos of the countryside

After an hour ride we arrived and I wasn’t disappointed. As we drove up the driveway and the castle came into view I could imagine the Crawleys riding up to be greeted by Shrimpy and his family.  Elspeth told us that if a flag with a gold and black triangle and two white bars was flying from the turret it meant that the Duke was in residence, and sure enough it was.  We entered and the first room we saw was the dining room.  It was set splendidly with china, crystal and silver and several golden ship models which added to the sparkle of the table.  The walls and ceiling were adorned with paintings and friezes and it was all very impressive. On small tables in two corners there were photographs taken during the filming of the DA episodes here.  One was a photo of the late Dame Maggie Smith, the Dowager Countess (by the way my favorite character in the series) and the other of the TV family dining at the table.  I asked one of the castle attendants if a piper still comes in to play as one did on TV.  He told me that occasionally a piper comes to play for a special event, but it’s not the norm.

And here are more pictures of the rooms than anyone but I want to see.

Dinner is served!

If you've seen Downtown Abbey this photo and the next should bring back memories.

We also visited a drawing room, similarly decorated, a room described as what used to be the Duke’s library (but the cabinets on all the walls were completely filled with lovely china) and what used to be the main entrance hall, which I remembered from the TV episodes.  That room reminded me a lot of the entrance hall of the Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg.  If I’m remembering that correctly it’s similarly decorated with lots of swords and muskets arranged on the walls.  I’m guessing the décor was meant to either impress or intimidate visitors who came to the castle.  The Duke and his family actually live in the castle so our visit was mainly confined to those few rooms.  People who wanted to go up one floor could go and see one bedroom used in the filming.  My knees don’t like steps much so instead I chose  to use my few steps to go down to the old kitchens which I found much more interesting.  The kitchen is partially below ground and I thought it was fascinating.  The walls had shelves holding a fortune’s worth of gleaming copper pots and there were several wood-fired stoves.  One had a huge spit with a fake pig roasting on it.  There was a large pulley system above that stove to raise and lower the spit when it held a large piece of meat.  In my mind I could see Mrs. Patmore and Daisy bustling about preparing grand meals for the guests upstairs.

The drawing room

A lovely harp to provide a little entertainment

This was supposed to be a library but I didn't see a single book!

The entrance hall that reminded me of CW and the Governor's Palace

These next photos are my favorite room in the place - the kitchen! I could practically hear Mrs. Patmore yelling at Daisy not to let the gravy get cold or to take the pudding out.

Outside there were some gardens but after the ones at Powerscourt in Ireland these paled by comparison.  The one attraction was that a man walked by who someone said was the Duke out for a stroll. I don’t know it he was and I didn’t try to take a photo, so I’ll never know if I was close to such a high nobleman.  I didn’t feel any tingles.

We got back on our bus and headed back to Dunoon.  I have to say something about the weather.  One always hears about the dreadful weather in the British Isles.  Perhaps I’m blessed because we have had absolutely glorious weather these past few days. Today it was in the low 80°s and the sky was a gorgeous blue.  I got back to the ship in time for a jam-packed afternoon of games and lectures.

The Shamrock Tenors whose performance I saw last night were a lot of fun.  I won’t say they were the best singers I’ve ever heard but they were enthusiastic and it was good fun to watch.  They had everyone clapping and singing along when we knew the words.  Tonight’s show was an English singer who has appeared on the BBC and at Albert Hall.  She sings a lot of jazz and songs from people like Frank Sinatra. It was the kind of music many of us passengers can relate to so I think we all enjoyed it very much.

This is a very long blog post but I want to remember lots of things so bear with me.  Tonight at dinner my host was a really interesting guy.  He is a professor of vulcanology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.  Having a vulcanologist on this cruise is especially nice because we’re spending a few days in Iceland which is one of the most geologically active places on the planet.  This man was born in Würzburg, Germany, just down the Main River from where I was born. We had such an interesting conversation about volcanoes and earthquakes because of all the activity that’s been going on in the last month or so around the world.  He was quite disappointed that the Icelandic volcano that had been erupting has apparently shut down for the time being.  At dinner each tonight the Chef has at least one local themed dish as an entrée.  Tonight it was haggis.   Now I’ve read about haggis but never seen it on a menu anywhere, so I had to try it.  I ordered a small portion and another more normal entrée.  The professor also decided to try it.  Well, surprise, surprise!  It was actually very good.  I have no idea if it was authentic but it tasted quite nice.  Of course, the fact that it was nicely dressed in a lovely brown gravy with onions may have had something to do with that.  But I liked it!

So, it has been a lovely day and a wonderful cruise so far. I did go dancing until very late.  I have to be a little careful about how much I move because I can feel my joints complaining, but I still have great fun. I won't even try to say "bye for now" in Scottish gaelic.  TTFN.