Hólar!

Iceland isn't known for its forests, so it seems funny that all of our practical work so far has involved trees in some way shape or form!

We escaped the ash cloud in Reykjavik on Tuesday, and after a ten hour drive through some stunning scenery, arrived at the tiny village of Ásbyrgi in Jökulsárglúfur national park in north-east Iceland. Ásbyrgi is famous for its massive horseshoe shaped canyon, carved out by glacial floods over thousands of years, and our job was to get their campsite ready for the summer. This mostly involved dragging away large sections of overgrowing trees as the park ranger cut them down, loading them onto a trailer and then unloading them and sorting them by size at the other end. The branches were pretty enormous and I would love to know how many kilos we shifted over the two days!


Since then we have relocated to a village called Hólar in central north Iceland, which is home to a small university (only a few hundred students) that specialises in equestrianism, aquaculture, and rural tourism. The rest of our team arrived on Friday, so we now number 19 at the campsite, and we are two days into our practical training week. Yesterday we went out into the pine forest nearby in small teams and learnt how to fell trees (before you wonder what conservationists are doing cutting trees down, they were densely packed together and thinning them out will do them some good!). We then sawed up the logs into equal lengths and used these today to repair damaged sections of the hiking trails around Hólar, building steps in steep sections, and bridges across streams. It's been hard work, but good fun at the same time and there is something really quite special about realising that the piece of material you need is too short, and simply popping into the forest to fell a tree and saw yourself a new piece. No chance of jumping in the car and doing an emergency B&Q run around these parts!


So, so far, so good. We will continue with our training for the rest of the week, finishing our trail projects and going out and about in the mountains to learn about using GPS and surveying work. After that we will head down to Skaftafell in the south as the ash situation is looking better, and will split up into smaller teams to tackle various projects that need doing. There are lots of great people in the team and we are having a good laugh, despite the rather chilly weather (we can practically see the arctic circle from here after all!) and a few people, myself included, getting colds and coughs. Working and living outside takes some getting used to, but my spirits are high and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week!

A right pain in the ash

I made it to Iceland in the nick of time - less than an hour after my flight touched down in Keflavík, the Grímsvötn volcano erupted in south-east Iceland, covering the area around the Vatnajökull glacier with ash and grounding all international flights. This has repercussions for our volunteer programme, as our base camp in Skaftafell has been evacuated and it doesn't look like we´ll be going there any time soon!

The ash has also reached Reykjavík - it looked like a large thundercloud rolling in from the east last night (see pics below). Today we had planned to climb Mount Esja to the north of the city to assess the state of its hiking trails and test out a new surveying system, but just as we were about to set off, we received a call from the air monitoring people to tell us that the air quality was not safe at the top. Hopefully we will be able to go up later in the week. In the meantime we now have a free day, and given that the hostel we are staying in has dozens of back-issues of National Geographic dating back to the 1960s, I think I'll manage to entertain myself just fine!

Yesterday, though, was a glorious sunny day. I met up with Eva, a fellow volunteer who stayed in the same hostel as me for the first night, and we set off to explore the city. We went to the top of the famous Hallgrímskirkja for panoramic views of Reykjavík and beyond (see pic below of the toy houses!). We then decided on a whim decided to go to the Perlan exhibition centre to see what was there. It turned out to be hosting a travel and tourism show for the weekend, so we pottered around picking up leaflets and trying various free food samples, then by utter coincidence, Eva bumped into a friend of hers from a previous trip to Iceland, who had travelled all the way down from the north-west of the country! Jón then took us for lunch and we had a good chat about the Westfjörds region, where he runs a guesthouse and fishing excursions for tourists in a small village of 150 people. It sounds gorgeous and we promised to try and visit during our holiday week.

Ten volunteers have arrived so far and we are expecting around ten more by the end of the week. Our training starts at the weekend and has been relocated from ash-covered Skaftafell to Hólar, a small town in the north of the country. Those of us that are already here should be heading up there within the next couple of days to start setting things up. Hopefully! We'll see which way the wind blows...

Getting in the mood...

BBC4's recent Iceland season couldn't have been better timed. Here are two of the highlights, still available on BBC iPlayer until Sunday 22nd:

Julia Bradbury's Icelandic Walk:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0110grr/Julia_Bradburys_Icelandic_Walk/
Julia Bradbury hikes the famous Laugavegurinn trail in Iceland, which just so happens to pass right by the Eyjafjallajökull glacier and its eponymous volcano, which erupted last spring and caused air traffic chaos on both sides of the atlantic. I am really keen to hike at least part of this route while I am in Iceland, and given that previous ICV volunteers have worked on the trail, I may just get the chance to...

Storyville: Last days of the Arctic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0110ghk/Storyville_20102011_Last_Days_of_the_Arctic_Capturing_the_Faces_of_the_North/
A moving documentary following a photographer who has spent the past twenty years travelling to remote parts of Iceland and Greenland, documenting the traditional ways of life in the north that are fast disappearing due to climate change and modern technology. Stunning scenery and photography.

So, why is it you're going to Iceland again...?

It's not every day that you announce that you are quitting a perfectly good job to go and live in a tent in Iceland for three months. So I thought a good way to kick this blog off would be to explain the method to my madness!

I had originally planned to spend this summer in Montreal, mostly sunning myself in pavement cafés, practicing my québécois and perhaps taking a few evening courses in preparation for starting a Masters in September. Unfortunately though, the visa gods had other ideas. I was ready to move on from my office job and so I began researching a Plan B. Ideally, this plan would involve some travel to areas of outstanding natural beauty, where I could indulge my passion for running around in the mountains.

I started by looking through bookmarks saved on my computer (probably from a dull grey weekend in February) and came across the website for Iceland Conservation Volunteers: http://english.ust.is/of-interest/ConservationVolunteers/ I remembered saving this last summer when I was thinking of doing a two-week 'voluntourism' holiday. Then I noticed that they also offer longer term projects from May to August. Interesting!

According the ICV website, their 'Wilderness Management' programme involves travelling all over Iceland to collect and analyse data, mostly on invasive plant species, to help conserve the country's fragile environment. Volunteers also carry out various practical tasks, such as building and repairing hiking trails, and installing signposts and viewing platforms near the many natural tourist attractions. Given that I am hoping to pursue a career in environmental management, this sounded to me like the perfect way to gain experience in the field and explore a stunning country while I'm at it.

The more I read about Iceland, the more I am convinced that I have made the right decision. For a start, it is described as a 'geographer's paradise,' the stuff of school textbooks the world over. Iceland is, in essence, one big volcano, sitting on the Mid-Atlantic ridge and straddling both the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, which continue to pull apart by around 2.5cm per year. As they separate, magma from the earth's mantle is forced to the surface and eventually cools to form a new land mass. This process is still very much ongoing, and the island of Surtsey off the south coast of Iceland was formed from a volcanic eruption under the sea as recently as the 1960s.

All of this volcanic activity, coupled with Iceland's location just below the Arctic Circle, has resulted in a dramatic landscape: countless fjords carved out during the Ice Age, geysers and hot springs, lava fields and deserts, mountains and glaciers. It also happens to be one of the cleanest countries in the world: the vast majority of Iceland's energy comes from hydroelectric and geothermal sources, so much so that the Kyoto Protocol has actually allowed them to increase their emissions by 10%!

Finally, I love to travel; nothing makes me feel more stimulated and alive. I believe that we should all take the opportunity to see as much of this beautiful planet as we can during our lifetimes, but without ruining it for both future generations and the other flora and fauna we share it with. This is why sustainable tourism is so important, and I can't wait to play my part in the Environment Agency's work over the summer. I know I will learn so much.

I hope to be able to share my experiences with you all too, although internet access may be somewhat sporadic! Wish me luck as I head off into the land of fire and ice....