Google wipes the slate clean!
I
have just lost over an hour’s work!
Chrome decided there was too much going on and closed down the
laptop!! So, with apologies for not
keeping up while we drove, ferried, and very often walked around the islands
making me too tired to concentrate, here are a few days memories with assistance
from Howard’s diary:
Wednesday 18th We had a nice post breakfast walk up past the
town’s main church then stopping in at the tourist information centre and got a
good map of the island. Back to the
hotel – which will always look to me like
a big blue square box – in time for an 11.30am pick up by a local guide. Before
leaving for the tour we ducked into the Botex store and picked up a couple of stag
deer cushion covers then Howard made sure he ordered our dinner for tonight Torgir Strom a retired sea captain drove along the southern arm of the fiord,
through Hov and to Porkeri (pronounced Porcheri). We looked over the heritage listed church
with its divine interior wood work and the original Faroese flag on
display. Also on view an ancient Viking
rune stone, however, the meaning of its markings are lost. Torgir dropped us of at the local community
house where a friend (another retired sea captain) was waiting to serve us a
lunch made by his wife. All of the included lunches on our tours
consist of traditional smorgasbrot – open sandwiches of varied cold meats,
cheese, egg, mayo/pickle dressings and if lucky some fresh salad slices. All will look lovingly prepared and will be delicious. We
asked our man to join us in coffee and have a chat. When we tell him we are from Australia and
why we came all this way he tells us that about 18 months ago 3 Tasmanians
visited the island. We hear this story
several times. After lunch we moved
on to Vagur, an old fishing port where Torig shows us an old 1874 sailing ship,
of which he was once skipper, still working and being used as a sail trainer
for the current crop of skipper trainees.
(Torig still teaches sailing at the
local college). Torig gave us some interesting
information; fish caught here are filleted and packed for export. The scales, bones and fish heads are packed
and frozen into blocks and exported to Nigeria where they are used for cheap
fish soup – protein for the dirt poor. Next we made our way up the narrow, winding
road to the peak of Beinisvord – where there
was not a scrap to be seen due to the low cloud. Luckily, some of the cloud was blown away and
we managed some brief views of the inspiring coast. From there we dropped down to Sumba, then
drove down to Cape Akraberg lighthouse on the southern most point of the Faroes. Here we were blown about by the wind before
returning to the car and then headed north and across to the western coast to
another fishing village, Famjin (the Fam part
of the village name apparently derived from two French Femmes said to have
lived there early on). Here after a
bit of a walk around we had yummie waffles
& icecream & hot chocolate & coffee for afternoon tea, upstairs at
a tiny café barely big enough to stand up in.
Everywhere we turned there was spectacular scenery. We arrived back at Tvoroyri an hour overdue. It had been a great tour. I ducked in to Botex to buy a decent sized
handbag that I’d spotted earlier, then joined Howard.
Just
as well we’d warned the hotel of our intention of eating in because when we
arrived the waitress of the hour asked if we’d booked. We ordered a glass of wine and soon Apron Lady
arrived with her magnificent offerings which we later had to walk off by
checking out part of a walk we intended to do tomorrow afternoon before
returning to the ferry back to Torshavn.
Thursday 19th July
We
checked out early – one last look at that disconcerting photo of a killed,
beached whale, in the entrance foyer and we were off to Hualba, then north to Sandvik
where we took a lane heading west, parked at a farmhouse and did a 1 to 2
uphill to the cliff’s edge to see the Asmundarstakkur rock stack and a few
suicide sheep grazing at impossible angles and closeness to the edges. Continued on a bit up the steep slopes to the
plunging cliffs of Glyvraberg. Scrambled
back cross country and down slopes to the car then stopped at Sandvik to check
out the beach, particularly the sand, which was in places black and very soft. Returned to Hualba, drove to the coast and
back then back to Toroyri for shopping and the drive out to the start of the
walk to Lake Hvanahagi that we scoped yesterday. Had lunch in the car, had some words with the
farmer there – you guessed it, a retired sea captain!! He told us that we should enjoy the walk and
we did. The track was just a series of
sheep tracks, up and up, higher and higher until we eventually came to the end
of the earth but no lake! SO we walked
along the cliff line (well, a bit back from it) for a few hundred more metres
until we came to a rocky ledge and way down there was the lake. Not as dramatic as in the poster in the
tourist centre, that one had much more water in the lake, but still
wonderful! It was time to head back to
the car. A scramble down to the lake
would have taken hours and we needed to head back as our ferry was leaving at
3.30pm. Another great walk, our second
for the day! We met up with the other
two couples doing this same car tour, on the ferry and compared experiences.
Back
in Torshavn we headed out to find our 4 star hotel high up in the clouds, and
if we were lucky, overlooking the harbour.
https://picasaweb.google.com/irenewheatley/2012FaroesSoduroyIslandTouring?authuser=0&feat=directlink
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