Monday 6 September 2021

Liverpool (1): Castle Street and the Catholic Cathedral

Fine Buildings, Old and New

Why Liverpool?

Liverpool

The 6th is Lynne’s birthday (a prime number, since you asked) and we usually go somewhere to celebrate. Last year covid ensured the somewhere was nowhere; this year the somewhere is Liverpool.

Basic English Geography
A little help

Liverpool is 60 miles from home, 80 minutes into the city centre if the M6 and M62 behave themselves. I thought it was further, but then I had never been there before. Lynne had been suggesting the city as a destination for some time but despite the docklands and old centre being the ‘Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool UNESCO World Heritage Site’ I was reluctant. Was it Liverpool’s reputation as a city well past its prime, or its accent which (to me) always sounds aggressive, or maybe I just had a prejudice I needed to get over?

As we were considering where to go, Travelzoo came up with a Liverpool hotel offer that was hard to ignore; it was time to bite the nettle and grasp the bullet. Then Liverpool played right into my prejudice by losing its UNESCO listing, but too late, we had already booked.

Arriving in Liverpool, Leaving Again and Promptly Returning

The motorways ran smoothly and once in the city’s outskirts we relied on the sat nav to reach our destination. All went well until it instructed me to take the 4th exit from a roundabout. Realising I was about to turn back up the road I had come down, I decided I must have miss-counted exits and promptly turned left. The road immediately dived into the Mersey Tunnel. Two miles later we emerged at Birkenhead, paid the toll, drove round the block, paid another toll and returned. It was the first of two fleeting visits to Birkenhead during our stay.

The huge concrete eyesore by Birkenhead Ferry Dock is part of the tunnel ventilation system.
The design by Herbert James Rowse is (or was) highly thought of

Oddly, I have always wanted to go through the Mersey Tunnel. It was spoken of in awe in the 1950s when I was small enough to be easily impressed. It was the world’s longest road tunnel when it opened in 1934 and remained the longest underwater road tunnel until 1955. It is a tiddler by modern standards.

We had driven through the Queensway (Birkenhead) Tunnel. The Kingsway (Wallasey) Tunnel opened in 1971, and both are predated by the railway tunnel of 1886.

Castle Street

We did better with our second attempt, ditched the car in the appropriate car park and set out to find some lunch.

Coffee and a sandwich felt appropriate so we entered the first coffee shop we saw, sat down and were promptly presented with a menu of high-carbohydrate choices. Only toasted bagels met our light lunch criteria, but no, we were told, they were only served as an accompaniment. Surveying the loaded plates around us, we wondered why anybody would want a plate of carbs and trans-fats with a side order of more carbs.

We made our excuses and left. Looking back, the word ‘coffee’ was prominent but there was a smaller sign we had missed, ‘All Day American Breakfast.’ Breakfast foods, American or British, and even croissant and pain au chocolat, should, I think, stay in the breakfast ghetto.

Lunch at Rudy's

Castle Street, the next left, had wide pavements lined with tables and umbrellas. Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza looked cheerful, the menu outside offered an antipasto sharing plate, and on a warm late summer’s day (even if September is officially autumn) a glass of wine felt much more attractive than a cup of coffee.

Antipasto, Castle Street, Liverpool

The street is lined with seriously self-important buildings. In the 19th century Liverpool was the world’s busiest and wealthiest port and financial institutions abounded. Liverpool had the first Underwriters Association and the Liverpool Institute of Accountants, incorporated in 1870, was the oldest of the associations that merged to form The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. All these people had to work somewhere, and Castle Street was a favoured location.

Castle Street, Liverpool ('Hospitality' spreads onto the pavement more on the opposite - south facing - side of the street)

The ground floors of these buildings have now been largely colonised by the ‘hospitality industry’ what goes on upstairs is unknown to me.

Liverpool Town Hall

The most important building, straddling the end of the street, is the town hall. A Grade I listed building described by Historic England as "one of the finest surviving 18th-century town halls”, it was designed by John Wood the Elder (who kicked off the Georgian renaissance of Bath – see the Bath post in this blog) and built between 1749 and 1754.

Liverpool Town Hall

James Wyatt designed the 1785 northern extension, and the dome which was added during rebuilding after the 1795 fire. Wyatt also appears in this blog for his work on Plas Newydd, Anglesey.

Gino d'Acampo

Opposit, on the corner of Castle and Dale Streets, is the Liverpool iteration of Gino d’Acampo’s small restaurant chain. It is housed in a building of uncompromisingly modern design, but in scale with its neighbours and I think I rather like it.

Gino d'Acampo, Castle Street

Pleasant as our lunch had been, Rudy's more upmarket neighbour seemed preferable for Lynne’s birthday dinner, so we dropped in to reserve a table. They had a couple of slots, one far too early, the other after my bed time so we booked for tomorrow, a day late maybe but the right time for dinner was, we judged, more important than the right day.

Aloft Hotel

After lunch we walked 100m up Dale Street and checked into our hotel.

Aloft Hotels are part of the Marriott Group; we generally avoid major chains, but it is not always possible. It is a ‘hip hotel housed in the iconic Grade II-listed Royal Insurance Building.’

Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

Obviously, I did not write that last sentence. I try to use words with precision and there is a gold star for anybody who can tell me precisely what ‘iconic’ means in that sentence. I have also reached an age when I expect ‘hip’ to be followed by ‘replacement.’ The writers of the hotel web site had no such scruples.

Doyle's sketch (Public Domain, thanks you Wikipedia)

The head office of The Royal Insurance Company was completed in 1903. A competition to design the new building had been won by James F. Doyle, whose drawing (left) sees the building as if on a greenfield site, though it would have been as hemmed in then as it is now.

The construction method was modern - it was an early steel frame building – but the decoration, described by Pevsner as sumptuous Neo-Baroque on the grandest scale, must have looked dated when it was built.

The entrance is ornate, though a closer look at the sculpture above the door suggests the sculptor was a cause for concern.

Doorway, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The frieze below the window is also remarkable. The soldier-like figures suggest the British Empire is out there comforting widows and their children, building railways across the wilderness and erecting churches to shine light into the world’s darkest places, all these activities protected by the Royal Insurance Company. I would call this Capitalist Realism, a counterpart to the Socialist Realism we have seen in Eastern Europe and beyond – were there. not already a ‘Capitalist Realism’ based on pop art and irony.

Frieze, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

Inside, the steel frame construction allowed the whole ground floor to be one vast general office. Now it is broken up by the needs of a hotel; reception, restaurant, bar and more being divisions of a single room. We visited the bar twice, once for our ‘welcome drink’ (part of the Travelzoo package) and once for a nightcap. It was hardly lively on either occasion.

Bar, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The hotel rooms are just hotel rooms like any other, but I liked the stairwell (though we always used the lift).

Stairwell, Aloft Hotel, Liverpool

The Royal Insurance Company moved out in the late 1980s and the building’s subsequent dilapidation contributed to Liverpool’s reputation mentioned earlier. That it was rescued and refurbished and became a boutique hotel in 2014 is a sign of the city’s welcome regeneration.

Aloft Hotel to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

From the hotel we took a twenty-minute walk across the city to Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral.

Liverpool Playhouse and the Radio City Tower

Our route took us past the Playhouse Theatre. Re-opened since Covid has reached its endgame (or is that wishful thinking?) they have a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the end of September/early October. Behind it is the St John’s shopping centre and the Radio city Tower. At 125m (not including antennae) it is Liverpool’s second tallest building, has three radio studios and a viewing platform. Built in 1969, Historic England described it as “embodying the technological bravura and spirit of the space age.” The ‘technological bravura’ has not aged well (nor has the phrase 'space age') and the number of radio stations that have come and gone in the lest decade suggests all is not well.

Liverpool Playhouse, St John's Shopping Centre and the Radio City Tower

The Vines

Albert B Vines opened a pub, which he called the Vines, in Lime Street in 1867. When Walkers Brewery acquired the site in 1907, they kept the name but had the pub rebuilt by architect Walter W Thomas (not to be confused with Walter A Thomas who was responsible for the Liver Building). If the buildings in Castle Street are self-important and the Royal Insurance/Aloft building is heading towards self-parody, this is outright fantasy. Thomas was responsible for several Liverpool pubs, the Vines and at least one other are now Grade 2* listed. I think it is an eyesore.

The Vines, Lime Street

Silent Witness

From Lime Street we walked up the gentle curve of Mount Pleasant towards Liverpool University and the Metropolitan (Roman Catholic) Cathedral.

Crossing the road, we saw a knot of people in a space between the cathedral steps and the Liverpool Science Park. There were cameras and electronic equipment, busy people buzzing around and large men urging the public to move on. Had they been less keen for us to go, I would not have stayed.

From the cathedral steps we could see two people we recognised as David Caves and Emilia Fox, having a quiet but urgent conversation across the top of low wall, cameras inches from their faces. The current series of Silent Witness was already running, so I was surprised they were still filming - and that this undistinguished little corner had been chosen as a location. Not for the first time we were struck by how quiet and undemonstrative television acting is compared with the stage version.

I have a good, full-face picture of Emilia Fox but if somebody had taken an unauthorised photo of me when I was working and put it on the internet, I would have been annoyed. Well-known people deserve courtesy too, so I am not posting it.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Henry VIII’s Reformation abolished the Catholic Church in England and twenty or so ancient Catholic cathedrals became Anglican overnight. For the next 200 years, other than during the brief reign of Queen Mary (1553-8), being a practising Catholic in England became difficult and occasionally fatal.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Attitudes were changing by the late 18th century and the first post-reformation catholic church was built in 1786 in Dorset. After further easing of restrictions the Pope felt it was time to re-institute catholic dioceses and in 1850 thirteen new dioceses were created. George Hilary Brown became the first ever Bishop of Liverpool (there was no Anglican bishop until 1880).

Inside Liverpool's Catholic Cathedral

A bishop needs a cathedral and in 1853 Edward Welby Pugin (son of the better-known Augustus Pugin) was commissioned to build one, but the project ran out of money with only the Lady Chapel completed.

In 1891 the north of England became the Catholic Province of Liverpool, making the bishop an archbishop, but still he had no cathedral.

Central lantern, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

They had another go in 1930s. Work on Sir Edwin Lutyens’ over-ambitious design was halted by World War II, restarted in 1956 and abandoned in 1958 with only the crypt completed.

Lynne lights a candle, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

Third time lucky. Sir Frederick Gibberd won a world-wide design competition, work started in 1962 and the cathedral was consecrated in 1967.

The circular design gives every worshipper an unobscured view of the altar and puts the priest in the centre of the congregation, not separate from it, in accordance with the aims of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5).

Abraham and the Ram by Sean Rice, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

The circular shape and soft lighting create an atmosphere of great calm. Most of the glazing is the work John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, whose richly coloured dalle de verre (slabs of coloured glass set in a matrix of, in this case, stainless steel) in the suspended lantern ensures the light is multicoloured, yet of even strength.

One of the Stations of the Cross, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

The Cathedral was built remarkably quickly and relatively cheaply which has led to some problems with the fabric. It has been called "a thin and brittle take on an Oscar Niemeyer original in Brasilia," (Stephen Bayley) though others believe the resemblance merely superficial. I find it a beautiful and strangely gentle building, as remarkable inside as out and undoubtedly my favourite modern church.

Dinner at All Bar One

With Gino d’Acampo booked for the morrow we selected tonight’s (cheaper) restaurant by perusing websites. After our ‘free’ pre-dinner drink in the hotel we set off, turned down the wrong road from Castle Street, found ourselves outside All Bar One and decided to stay.

Fish & Chips, All Bar One, Liverpool

All Bar One is a chain of 52 ‘stylish city bars in central locations’ (their website). Our only previous encounter with them was in Harrogate in 2018 when it would have fulfilled the description had Harrogate been a city. Liverpool, despite being very much city, is downmarket from Harrogate (most places are), and its All Bar One was darker and scruffier. Even so Lynne was happy with her fish and chips. My Pad Thai was far too sweet, probably from an oversweet cook-in sauce – I doubt that much is cooked from scratch in these establishment.

Tuesday 17 August 2021

Iceland (8): A Day in Reykjavik

An Open-Air Museum, a Remarkable Church and the Sun Voyager

Árbæjarsafn, Árbær Open-Air Museum

Iceland

Reykjavik

On our final day in Reykjavik, we decided to spend the morning at an open-air museum.

In 1900 Reykjavik had a population of 78,000, by 1950 it had almost doubled and there was some concern that ‘old Reykjavik' was disappearing. In 1957, the city council agreed to create an open-air museum with old houses of historical interest. Árbær Farm and Inn, once a rest stop for people travelling to and from Reykjavík was by then abandoned and on the edge of the urban sprawl. It was the perfect place for a building museum.

I like building museums, we have visited several excellent examples in Denmark, Poland and the UK, but these are places that, unlike Iceland, have attractive vernacular buildings. Iceland is volcanic so the rocks are relatively recent and there is little building stone, no raw materials for brickmaking, and very few trees for timber. As a result, most Icelandic buildings look like they were bolted together from a flatpack and then painted in a spectrum of colours stretching from magnolia to grimy grey. The standard of interior decoration is high and they are very comfortable, but the outsides are almost uniformly drab. I was interested to see what a building museum could offer.

Árbæjarsafn was a twenty-minute drive from our city centre hotel. The buildings are well laid out and below are pictures of several of them and their contents – not too many, I am trying to keep this readable, and anyway it is not a guide book.

The ÍR House

In 1859 French Catholic missionaries arrived in Reykjavik, purchased some land and built a chapel. It was the first Catholic Church is Iceland since the Reformation. In 1897 the chapel was replaced by this prefabricated building imported from Norway.

The ÍR House, Árbæjarsafn

In 1929, the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the King made this building redundant and it was given to Reykjavik Sports Club (ÍR). It was relocated and became a sports hall. It now houses an exhibition of toys, and a reminder of its original purpose.

Inside the ÍR House, Árbæjarsafn

Laufásvegur 31

A timber house with corrugated iron cladding, Laufásvegur 31, was built in 1902 and was one of a number of prefabricated Swiss-chalet style buildings brought over from Norway at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century. It was owned by a merchant, Hannes Thorarensen, who lived there with his family until 1967. The Laufásvegur site was then bought by the British government for the construction of a new embassy and the house donated to the museum.

Laufásvegur 31, Árbæjarsafn

Árbær

The Árbær farmhouses are the only museum buildings still in their original locations. Built between 1891 and 1920, turf and stone were used in the oldest construction, but they are mostly timber.

Árbær Farm, the only building in its original location, Árbæjarsafn

Longer than they look from the outside, the living space was larger than we expected…

Árbær Farmhouse interior, Árbæjarsafn

…but seemed somewhat spartan.

Árbær Farmhouse interior, Árbæjarsafn

I am unsure the date of the current furnishing, but the farmhouse was occupied until 1948.

The Sheepshed

The turf house by the farm is undatable, and so is the sheepshed. Many of Iceland’s oldest buildings look like this and some are still in use for storing farm machinery or sheltering animals. In the past I presume they also provided human habitation, but I have encountered little information.

The sheepshed,.Árbæjarsafn. I think the roof needs mowing

Hábær

Hábær was built in Reykjavik in 1867 by a labourer called Jón Vigfússon. It was rebuilt in 1887. This style of house with stacked main walls and a timber roof was peculiar to Reykjavik and most examples were built in the final decades on the 19th century.

Hárbær, Árbæjarsafn

There is much more, but I think that is enough, they do look a bit samey. I will finish with a photo looking over some of the museum houses to modern housing on the hill behind.

Árbæjarsafn and the land beyond on a typically cool, drizzly August morning

The new apartments are, doubtless, more efficient and comfortable, but like the museum houses, functionality is all. Building in Iceland was and is about dealing with the conditions and the scarcity of resources, if you can manage that why bother about anything else.

Lunch

We drove back into central Reykjavik, parked the car near our hotel where it could stay until our crack of dawn departure tomorrow and walked up and down Austurstræti, our nearest road of restaurants. Our search for a cheapish lunch presented some difficulties, cheapish not being a word that has much traction in Iceland. Eventually we settled for a coffee and sharing bowl of haloumi fries, not health-food, but it would do.

Hallgrímskirkja

Skólavörðustigur

Full of carbohydrate, we walked to the end of ‘restaurant street’, crossed the main road into Bankastræti and 200m later turned into Skólavörðustigur.

Skólavörðustigur is dead straight and climbs gently for 500m to Hallgrímskírkja, the biggest church in Iceland. The pedestrianised end of the street was painted, permanently, with a rainbow flag in 2019 for Reykjavik Gay Pride Festival. I am also informed that for those who believe shopping is a recreational activity, this is the place to be.

Skólavörðustigur

The Church of Iceland

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland has a special place in the constitution. It is in full communion with the Lutheran Churches of other Nordic and Baltic Countries, and with the Church of England. The Bishop of Iceland, Agnes Sigurðardóttir, has a modest cathedral in central Reykjavik, the much larger Hallgrímskírkja is only a parish church. There is a story that the original design involved a smaller tower, but the height was increased to 75m to make it higher than the tower of the Catholic Cathedral.

Leif Ericsson

The statue in front is of Leif Erikson, the first European known to have visited the North American continent. He lived from around 970 to 1020 so it could be a good likeness, but nobody knows. Predating the church, it is the work of American sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder and was a gift from the United States to honour the 1930 Alþing Millennium.

Church Exterior

Work started on Hallgrimskirkja after World War II. It was completed in 1986 and named after the 17th century religious poet Hallgrímur Pétursson. The design, by State Architect Guðjón Samúelsson divides Reykjavik opinion. It supposedly represents Iceland’s rocks, mountains and glaciers, and although I can see the basalt columns, I can also see the likeness to a space shuttle.

Leif Erikson and Hallgrímskirkja

From a different angle, it looks like a barn behind an enormous phallus.

Hallgrímskirkja, a barn with a phallus

Having claimed earlier that Icelandic architecture makes little effort to be anything other than grimly functional, I have to give Hallgrimskirkja 10 out 10 for trying, even if I not sure I like it.

Church Interior

The interior is very plain, shockingly plain, Lynne thought, though I quite like a bit of minimalism.

Hallgrímskirkja interior

There is no argument about the organ, though; 15m high with over 5,000 pipes it is an impressive beast.

Organ, Hallgrímskirkja

Sólfar – The Sun Voyager

The older part of Reykjavik sits on a peninsula, and we made our way down to the northern shore where a footpath runs alongside the bay. Zig-zagging through residential streets was required to hit the 4-lane Highway 41 – which also follows the shore – at a crossing. On our way we passed some painted houses. I doubt these would be remarkable elsewhere, but here the unusually cheerful colours make a noticeable and very pleasant change.

Colourful houses, Reykjavik

Highway 41 was not as fierce as the map made it look – well this is Iceland, there’s not so many cars because there’s not so many people – and we followed the footpath westwards towards the tip of the peninsula.

Coastal path, Reykjavik

We soon we reached Sólfar, the Sun Voyager, a sleek contemporary portrayal of a Viking-age ship made of shiny silver steel (Rough Guide). The work of Jón Gunnar Árnason (1931-89), the design won a competition for an outdoor sculpture to celebrate Reykjavik’s 200th anniversary.

Sólfar, The Sun Voyager, Reykjavik

For the artist, Sólfar was not a Viking-age ship but a dream boat and an ode to the sun [representing] the promise of undiscovered territory and a dream of hope, progress and freedom. (Icelandtravel). Jón Gunnar (I am not claiming I knew him, that is the correct formal way to refer to an Icelander) was seriously ill with leukaemia and did not live to see the sculpture installed in 1990. Some have argued that Sun Voyager should be seen as a vessel that transports souls to the realm of the afterlife. (icelandtravel, again). The artist lived long enough to hear this and deny it, but it does have a ‘sailing into the sunset’ feel.

There is no ‘correct’ interpretation, each viewer can make their own. I think this is an extraordinarily beautiful object and am happy to believe several contradictory interpretations simultaneously.

Dinner - and Icelandic Food in General

For our last meal in Iceland we returned to the place where we had started, the café offering the ‘World’s Worst Pizza.’ It is actually a glorified fish and chip shop, though the man of eastern Mediterranean appearance who seems to be in charge actually offers, by local standards, a wide-ranging menu. Lynne chose falafel and a Greek salad while I went for fish and chips, something I rarely order except at the annual Fish and Chip Walk. The chips were good but the cod was like no cod I have ever eaten before; light, fluffy sumptuous. I have a brief list of culinary Pythagorean ideals, the dishes or drinks of which every other version is a pale copy. I had never thought a piece of battered cod could enter such a list, but I was wrong. (Dinner at Hambleton Hall contains a complete list of these ideals.)

Sign outside a Reykjavik Restaurant

Nobody goes to Iceland for the food. Menus are brief and vary little, the cooking while always competent, lacks flair and the prices are eye-watering. But they do have some of the freshest fish available. We always enjoy the fresh fish in Portugal, but this is fresh white fish from cold northern waters and that has never come our way before. The arctic char at the Magma Hotel, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, the plaice at Borganes and now this battered cod will be treasured memories.

Epilogue

And so, our 8 days in Iceland come to an end. It has been a memorable journey; the country has a stark beauty where the traveller is forever being reminded of the immense power of nature. I have long been a fan of desert landscapes, in some ways Iceland is a desert in green and white rather than the usual yellow and brown.

The built environment is less pleasing, but resources are thin on the ground and just to live and thrive in this place is some sort of triumph, and they do thrive, Iceland is affluent and remarkably well organised. And there is not very much built environment, the island of Great Britain is twice the size of Iceland yet has 160 times the population, so the ugliness comes in small and almost ignorable portions.

The climate is generally dismal. We had a wonderful day of warm, gentle sunshine when we visited Þingvellir and I liked the long light evenings, but far too often Iceland’s August was reminiscent of late October in North Staffordshire, itself not noted for the balmiest of climates.

Will we return? Well, there is more to see so I cannot rule it out, but there are other places with more pressing invitations and warmer sunshine which need to be visited first, but I am very glad we went there once.

Iceland

Part 1 Introduction to Reykjavik
Part 2 West from Reykjavik along Route 1
Part 3 A Calving Glacier, a Basalt Pavement and an Otherworldly Canyon
Part 4 Vik, Skógafoss and Skógar
Part 5 The Golden Circle, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
Part 6 The Snæfellsnes Peninsula: Whale Watching and Fermented Shark
Part 7: Covid Testing, Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon
Part 8: A Day in Reykjavik

Monday 16 August 2021

Iceland (7) The Blue Lagoon, Covid Testing and Grindavik

Covid Formalities, a Grim Town and a Notorious Tourist Trap

Skyr

Iceland

We had stuff to do this morning, which meant a half-day off from the hard work of being on holiday.

But first there was breakfast. Fermented shark apart, Icelandic food specialities are thin on the ground. Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy describes three stages of civilization:

1. Will we eat?
2. What shall we eat?
3. Where shall we eat?

British civilization, such that it is, spent an inordinately long time in stage 2. Iceland, by contrast lingered long in Stage 1, the climate hampers almost all food production (except fermented shark) and geological instability can devastate harvests – the 1785 Laki eruption (see Part 3) poisoned the grassland almost wiping out the country’s farm animals and causing a famine that killed a quarter of the human population.

Iceland’s prosperity is relatively recent and in a couple of generations they skipped from Stage 1 to Stage 3. Stage 2, the one they hardly bothered with, is where most local food specialities are born.

They do, though, boast one venerable native product; skyr - described as a ‘fresh sour milk cheese’ - was mentioned in Egil’s Saga so it has been produced for at least 800 years. We had some (freshly made, not 800 years old) with our breakfast at Borganes and it undoubtedly sits somewhere in the yoghurt-y part of the dairy spectrum. It has been promoted in the UK of late, but we already have ordinary yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, crème fraiche and fromage frais and I cannot see that it is distinctive enough to claim a niche in that crowded area (sorry, Iceland, but I might be wrong.)

Skyr (presumably named after the leader of the Labour Party)
This pot, I notice, is made by ARLA, the British Dairy Farmers Coop and is 'Icelandic style yoghurt', so not the real deal

Covid Testing

Stuffed with skyr, and other breakfast goodies, we set out on the 80km drive south from Borganes to Reykjavik. We were on Iceland’s ring road, Route 1, so although it had only one lane in each direction, it was well-made and in good repair. Being important, it does not circumnavigate the two substantial inlets on the way but crosses a 520m long bridge immediately south of Borganes and dives into a 5.7km tunnel under the Hvalfjörður at Akranes.

From Borganes south to Reykjavik and then down to Grindavik on the Reykjanes Peninsula

Reykjavik

When international travel re-opened the British government produced a short green list of countries that could be visited without requiring quarantine. Not all the green list were attractive destinations, South Georgia, for example, has few facilities for tourist who are not penguins, and no permanent population.

Iceland was the best bet (and is much warmer than South Georgia), but there were still hoops to jump through including a covid test before arriving and another before leaving. We had duly made an appointment at the appropriate clinic and followed our sat nav to a part of Reykjavik we had not previously visited.

A long row of large, ugly shops cowered behind several ranks of parked cars. This is where you come to buy electrical goods, furniture, longboats and other necessities of Icelandic life (I may have made one of those up). The sky was grey, the air was chilly and the drizzle intermittent as we found a parking space and walked towards the clinic. It would have been a poor day in November, but this was August.

The queue outside the door marked ‘covid testing’ stretched all the way to the corner and round it, 100 metres or more. We joined the end. Forty minutes later we were close enough to the door to read a small sign pointing those, like us, requiring only a rapid antigen test to a nearby, unmarked, door. There was no queue there, after wasting forty minutes we were in and out in less than five.

Grindavik

With our nasal passages thoroughly probed, we had a couple of hours to find lunch and reach the Blue Lagoon in accordance with the timed ticket purchased for us by Regent Holidays of Bristol. We decided to go to Grindavík.

Fifty kilometres from Reykjavik and six from the Blue Lagoon, Grindavik is the chief town of the Grindavíkurbær Municipality which covers the southern half of the Reykjanes Peninsula. The town has around 2,500 inhabitants, making it a substantial settlement by Icelandic standards.

We approached through a regimented residential district, straight roads lined with white, mainly single storey buildings, many resembling static caravans. I have observed before that Icelandic vernacular architecture is relentlessly functional, though, judging by the hotels we have visited, comfortable and well-designed within. Iceland’s population has increased fivefold since 1900, doubling since 1960, so the housing stock is mostly modern - there very few ‘traditional’ buildings outside museums.

We missed the town centre and reached the docks. Grindavik is an important fishing port, but all the boats must have been at sea as activity at the docks, was notable only by its absence.

Grindavik harbour - a hive of activity

We eventually located what I felt might be the main street. Papa’s Restaurant, on the left, looked basic, but provided us with a tolerable pizza and a good strong cup of coffee at reasonable prices. During lunch, texts from the clinic gave us the all-clear and the magic barcodes required to board a plane

Central Grindavik, Papa's to the left, Salt fish Museum to the right

A few boards around town advertised Grindavik’s Salt Fish Museum. Signage on the building must have been be minimal as it was opposite Papa’s and we never noticed. It must have limited appeal but we might have dropped in had we seen it. As regular visitors to Portugal, we are well aware of the Portuguese love affair with bacalhau (dried salt cod), traditionally obtained from Icelandic waters, which started in the age before refrigeration and continues to this very day.

Another shot of Grindavik harbour. It is no more interesting than the first, but it breaks up the text

From the 16th century until their demise in 1830, Barbary Pirates were a major nuisance in the Mediterranean. They attacked merchant shipping and raided coastal towns and villages to enslave their populations. Their activity was at its peak in the first half of the 17th century, sometimes reaching beyond the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1627 they made several raids on Iceland. 15 people were taken from Grindavik in June and transported into slavery in Algiers. This was minor compared with the 200 taken from the nearby Westman Islands in July. There is more about this in Part 4: Skógar.

The Blue Lagoon

It was time to make the short journey to the Blue Lagoon, easily identifiable from most of the peninsula by the plume of steam hanging above the lagoon and its associated power station.

The Svartsengi Geothermal Power Station was built in 1976, Svartsengi meaning black meadow is a whimsical description of the Reykjanes lava field. Superheated water from beneath the lava runs through turbines to make electricity. The plant has expanded and now has 8 steam and brine wells and 5 steam wells producing 75MW of clean electricity. It also pumps heating water to the 21,000 homes on the peninsula.

The 'black meadow' Reykjanes Peninsula outside the Blue Lagoon

The salty, silica rich water cannot be recycled and run-off produced pools in the lava. These attracted bathers and the minerals were found to alleviated the symptoms of psoriasis. A purpose built bathing area was excavated in 1987. In 1992 it became ‘The Blue Lagoon’ and has developed into one of Iceland’s biggest tourist attractions with 1.3 million visitors in 2017.

We duly joined the crowd and shuffled forward until we received our towels, locker keys and instructions. “Shower before entering the pool,” we were told. “Wash every part of yourself thoroughly.” A young man somewhat ahead of us in the queue whined loudly, “but I prefer to shower afterwards.” Had I been closer I would have told him that I thought that everybody washing before entering the pool was a good idea, and nobody said he could not shower after as well, but I was too far away and do not like to raise my voice. What annoyed me was his tone of entitlement – it is as irritating in a would be bather as in a prime minister [Update July 2022: Resigned, soon to be ex-prime minister].

Once washed and changed we met beside the trough provided for punters to wade from the heated interior to the outdoor pool.

The water is chest deep, 37-39°C and milky blue because of its high silica content. This forms a soft white mud on the bottom which is surprisingly pleasant to walk through. The water is rich in algae and salts, but has an almost neutral pH.

You can sit on the steps round the edge and treat it like a huge communal hot tub, or you can wander around on foot (nobody swims) to the various nooks and crannies of the large irregularly shape pool – and that’s about it.

There is a bar and your entry comes with a free drink, so here is Lynne standing in what for her is uncomfortably deep water, clinging on to a glass of prosecco.

Lynne at the Blue Lagoon

I had popped back to the changing room to fetch my camera for the picture above. Then Lynne got out of the pool to return the compliment. As I eased myself back in my foot slipped resulting in a more precipitate re-entry than intended and a brief immersion in the milky water. Some people spend their time slapping the silica mud all over their skin in the belief it will do them good, I managed to smear it all over my hair by accident. Fortunately, I had handed both my camera and wine-glass to Lynne before my plunge.

Malevolent water-sprite spotted at the Blue Lagoon.

And that was it – and we most certainly had second showers before departure. The Blue Lagoon is a vast tourist trap, ensnaring nearly every first-time visitor, we almost felt we had to go otherwise we would not properly have been to Iceland. But was The Blue Lagoon worth its £50+ a head entry fee? Not for us, it wasn't and and there are other, less commercial geothermal pools dotted around the countryside.

Back to Reykjavik

Back in Reykjavik we checked in to the hotel we had used last week and in the evening, again walked up Austurstræti, a street of restaurants. We found a pub-like place where the food turned out to be simple but wholesome. Why we suddenly felt we should have two beers each, for the one and only time in Iceland, I do not know, but we must have been feeling wealthy