….or “F” is for fascinating. Of course there are a few other adjectives that could be used: cold, expensive, volcanic, friendly, tree-less, dark to name a few. But after just a short stay there (3 days) we would probably settle for “interesting” because, for us, that sums Iceland up nicely. We enjoyed every minute of our stay there, and would certainly agree with the Immigration officer at Keflavik Airport who told us that 3 days simply wasn’t enough. However, he did stamp our passports and let us in….and the short Icelandic adventure began.

It actually began with a slight disappointment….we’d booked some excursions in advance, starting with a first night 3 hour outing, after dark, to a suitable spot away from the Reykjavik city lights, to hopefully see the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. By the time we reached our apartment in downtown Reykjavik, about 60km from the airport, that night’s trip had already been cancelled because of the 100% cloud cover…..and although we did manage to get out on the next night’s expedition instead, it was abandoned after about 2 hours because of the Lights just weren’t cooperating, then on the third night we didn’t even leave town, again because of cloud. So, sadly, one of the hoped for highlights of our stay never eventuated…but when it boils down, Mother Nature is in charge, not us!

A note on that initial trip in from the airport too….unsurprisingly, neither of us have ever been to Mars but when we do go there, we’ll recognise the Martian version of Iceland. It was just mile after mile of freezing cold starkness, with no sign of human habitation anywhere, and as barren a landscape as you could imagine. Maybe there’s places in Antarctica like this (Cousin Roger??) but if not, then we’re fairly sure that the Moon or Mars is the closest equivalent. Not an unpleasant outlook mind you, just an unexpected one. The almost total lack of houses shouldn’t really be a surprise though as there are only about 320,000 Icelanders for a start off and 93% of them live in urban areas….and nearly half of those in Reykjavik.

And while we’re on the population….did you know that everyone is in just the one phone book, and that they are listed under their first names? Iceland is the only country in the region to still use the traditional Scandinavian system of knowing everyone (even the PM) by their first names….but to reduce confusion a little bit, the person’s profession is also listed. Bjork the singer isn’t only known as that because its easier to fit on a CD label than her full name of Björk Guðmundsdóttir, but mainly because that’s how fellow Icelanders would greet her, whether they know her or not. And let’s digress a little further….Iceland does have surnames but doesn’t pass them on them like we do….so a family of four (Mum, Dad, son and daughter) will have four different surnames: let’s say a man named Jón Gunnarsson has a son named Eric. Eric’s last name will not be Gunnarsson like his father’s; he will be Eric Jónsson, because Eric is the son of Jón. And his daughter Sigríður would be Sigríður Jónsdóttir, as in “Jón’s daughter”. And Mum’s surname of course, is based on her father’s name! Confused??

Enough of that….back to the landscape. Its starkness and seemingly inhospitable vistas are also Iceland’s strong point – it is precisely this that makes it such an amazing place to visit. You sit in a warm comfortable bus (and here’s a plug for Reykjavik Excursions….their buses are world class) and look across mile after mile of snow, ice and lava rock, leading all the way to the mountains and glaciers on the horizon. It dawns on you that there is really nothing that’s not black or white in your view (any grass or scrub at this time of year is well covered in deep snow and there are almost no trees whatsoever – at one stage one of our guides pointed to two scraggly plants about a metre high perhaps and a few centimetres apart in the snow and only slightly tongue-in-cheek told us that we were looking at an Icelandic forest!). You step out of the bus and the minus 5 temperature with an additional wind chill factor of maybe another 5 or 10 degrees hits you immediately. But you don’t want to get right back on that bus – far from it – because the vista before you is simply stunning….it is so worth the discomfort of the cold to see what lies before you. It could be just that never-ending vista of black rock and white snow, it could be a boiling hot geyser such as at Strokkur erupting high into the icy cold air every few minutes, it could be the most amazing semi-frozen waterfall at Gullfoss, it could be warm sulphurous pools set amongst dark volcanic rock at the Blue Lagoon, or it could be the view, in the distance, of the currently calm volcano of Eyjafjallajökull….. everywhere you look that sense of endless nothingness soon transforms into a realisation that there’s a lot more to Iceland than first meets the eye.

Or it could be the Christmas card like street scenes in downtown Reykjavik – dark until around 10am when we were there, but they compensate with wonderfully warm, cosy looking lights in shop windows and floodlighting of all public buildings. If there’s one thing that Iceland is not short of, it’s power….they have electricity in abundance and extremely cheaply too. In 2011, Iceland produced 99.98% of its electricity from hydro or geothermal plants – the remaining 0.02% came from imported fuel oils and they aim to have eliminated this source altogether within the next few years. There’s so much power that they have huge glasshouse complexes growing a lot of their local vegetable needs all year round – we visited a tomato place where they can pick a few rows of the crop every single day of the year, because the banks and banks of lights which are on 14-16 hours a day keep things growing strongly, even when it’s 20 below outside.

There’s much more to say of course but to cut a potentially long story short – we thoroughly enjoyed our brief stay in Iceland and would visit again in a flash if we could. For a longer time though, and maybe in summer just to see the contrast! But first we need to win Lotto, as the one drawback is the enormous cost of everything….they are still struggling to recover from the well publicised financial meltdown a few years ago (Q: what’s the capital of Iceland? A: about 200 kronur!), and as a result, for example, even a simple budget lunch of soup and bread for two, plus a cake to share, will cost at least NZ$40-$50. And the supermarkets don’t have the Icelandic equivalent of “Save” anywhere in their names, that’s for sure!

If I can get them to upload properly, there’s a few photos here to give you a bit of an idea of what we saw. For now though, bless í bili as they say in Iceland….goodbye for now!

When I was a little boy, our family had two sets of placemats, well two that I remember anyway. There was one set only for “good”, which showed fairly dreary Old Masters paintings, and another “everyday” set which had a “Scenic Scotland” theme. [Incidentally, the latter set probably came from one of Mum’s Scots pen-friends who were really good value because they always sent us Christmas presents…..however, to save money they sent them by sea-mail, always waiting until about mid-December to do so. Thus, every year I scored an extra Christmas present….but sometime in March!]

The placemats in question are a bit of a distant memory now (my much wiser and very much older sister probably remembers them better) but I seem to recall scenes like Eilean Donan Castle, Loch Lomond, the Pass of Glencoe and the like. And, now, after a wonderful fortnight north of the border earlier this year, we have been to all those places and many more, and it would be nice to share a sampling of our experiences with you. So, please be seated, and prepare yourself for a dinner table tour of Scotland.

Entree
We started our time with a few days in a place which, to be fair, probably doesn’t feature on too many placemats. But it’s an under-rated place, perhaps not often visited by tourists which is their loss, very much loved by its “locals” and rightly so – I’m referring to Greenock, which lies on the left bank of the Clyde, downriver from Glasgow Anyway it may not be on the beaten track but it knows how to put on a good time – we were visiting our good friends Jeannie and Jonathan Clough (who have recently returned from their own year-long world tour which included the 2011 Rugby World Cup which is when we met them, and who are currently living in Greenock with Jeannie’s parents) – and the J’s took us first-footing in the very early hours of 2013. It’s a night we’ll never forget….in fact, it’s one we’ll always remember! How could you forget it being 8am on New Year’s morning before we got home, and with a traditional “Ne’er Day Dinner” of steak and trifle scheduled for 2pm, there was little time for luxuries like sleep. We met some wonderful people, had a fantastic time, and, yes, had one or two wee drams to celebrate Hogmanay!

Soup
Whilst we were with the J’s they took us on a couple of outings – one across on the ferry to Dunoon, and then through the misty back roads to a lovely little loch-side town called Inveraray, before returning after lunch via the Loch Lomond road. Then, a few days later, as the two of us set out on our own again, we stopped for lunch at Luss on the banks of Loch Lomond. The mist had cleared, the loch was clear and still, and the snow capped top of Ben Lomond rose on the far shore. Quite a magnificent scene.
The second trip with Jeannie and Jonathan was to Stirling Castle which was a great day out – full of history and tales from England and Scotland’s at-times rather testy historical relationship. Well, not so historical for some of course! On the way we visited what we think was the site of the Battle of Bannockburn, although it’s a bit hard to tell when they’ve closed (demolished, more like) the visitor centre for renovations. But at Stirling, they’ve finished all that, with the restored Great Hall, the Royal Chambers, even the original kitchens which are all magnificent. And there are so many stories of Royal intrigue and plotting to tell after the visit to the Castle, but sadly no space to include them here…

Main
Next was a drive through Glencoe then over the sea to Skye on the Mallaig-Armadale ferry which we had to reverse the camper-van onto down a steeply sloping ramp in the dark and the snow! So we were on Skye, but unfortunately we barely saw the sky. We stayed two nights at Breakish, and on the day inbetween took ourselves on a drive around much of the Isle to places like Portree and Uig. It was almost constantly raining throughout, but it was still a great day – Skye in mid-winter is still a place of magnificent scenery, where even the brown winter growth of heather across the hills is a sight to behold. We can only imagine how wonderful it must look when the heather is in full purple bloom. The day we left Skye, we stopped for lunch at Eilean Donan – again it was raining and quite bleak, but some sights are still well worth making the effort to see, even when the weather is against you.

Dessert
When we reached Loch Ness, it wasn’t raining! It was very foggy instead. That meant when we stopped at the most interesting historical ruins of Urquhart Castle beside the Loch, we couldn’t see more than about 20m out from the shore. So, was Nessie frolicking around on the surface just a few metres further out into the Loch, or not? We’ll never know – although after learning a great deal by visiting the Loch Ness Monster Visitor Centre in nearby Drumnadrochit, it would be fair to say that as all the great stories get debunked as hoaxes or myths, it is more and more apparent that Nessie sadly doesn’t exist. Buuuuuut – then again, are all those people who confidently saw “something” wrong? And I’m sure I heard something out there in the mist….

Cheeseboard
We spent a couple of days in a small but lovely town in the Cairngorms named Grantown-on-Spey (leaving there was like being in Southland as we crossed a heap of rivers that are also street names in Invercargill – Spey, Forth, Tay, Dee etc) before heading to Edinburgh for our final few nights in Scotland. We managed to cover some of the usual touristy things like Edinburgh Castle including the Scottish Crown Jewels and the Stone of Scone (now returned to its rightful home by those thieving English!) and Greyfriars Bobby (ironically there’s a “Dogs Not Allowed” sign at the entrance to the Greyfriars Church Cemetery!) but we also took in two relatively new attractions. Firstly the underground houses and streets of St Mary’s Close which is where thousands of people used to live cheek by jowl in the squalor and near-darkness under buildings which the Council built on top of their community, after simply slicing off the top couple of stories of every building, and using what was left as foundations….too bad about the residents who were living there. If you decided to stay in what was now effectively an underground tenement (and when you’re poorer than church mice leaving isn’t really a option) and if you were lucky enough to survive the plague and other nasty diseases, the best you could hope for would be to only be ankle deep in the contents of everyone’s toilets as they tipped them out their windows – it was a real case of the houses at the top of the hill being the “best in the street”. And then secondly, we spent an afternoon visiting the former Royal Yacht “Britannia”, now retired and moored permanently at the Leith Docks. It was the best thing – we really enjoyed our chance to wander all over the ship, and to get a understanding of what life was like aboard. The surprising thing was that whilst it was very well appointed of course, and probably as the shiniest engine room ever to have gone to sea, it was not the ostentatious monument to extravagance that might have been expected – it truly was a relatively simple home away from home for the Royal Family. And we learned a few fascinating “behind-the-scenes” tales – just one example: when the Sitting Room was being designed, the shipyard installed a electric wall heater rather than an open fire as the Queen had requested…..because Royal Navy regulations, that even the Commander-in-Chief can’t override, state that an Able Seaman must be present beside a fire at all times with a bucket of water in his hand. And as that may have stifled the Family’s chance for a casual private chat, an electric fire was put in instead.

Coffee
As always, there’s so much to write about but a wish to not outlast anyone’s attention span, so there’s no room to tell you about the battlefield at Culloden, about our gondola ride up Aonach Mor to (not) see Ben Nevis in the mist, about a great walk around the ruins of Elgin Cathedral followed by a quick drive to the seaside at Lossiemouth, about our exclusive tour of the historic Dallas Dhu Whisky distillery, or about our afternoon at the Old Course at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews, to name but a few other highlights of a fantastic fortnight in Scotland…..

So, if we were in the placemat business, the 2013 version of our Scenic Scotland placemats might include some of the scenes in the album you’ll find here – but which six to choose?? We’d have to have a huge dining table to include ALL our favourite spots in Scotland that’s for sure!