Rounders

No, not Rounders, but rounders.

As Iceland sits between Europe and the Americas, this game sits between cricket and baseball, bridging together Britons and Americans, and any Canadian hangers-on.

Play Ball

When all you have is a cricket bat, everything starts to look like a cricket ball.

Lagoon

Flashback: Tuesday, July 20, 2004

After a hard day of surveying, and dodging the skuas, a pleasant surprise trip to the Jökulsárlón (glacial lagoon).

Placid

If it looks familiar, you may have seen this place before, in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider or Die Another Day.

Circling

The tour boats are actually amphibious boats with wheels, painted grey for Angelina Jolie's visit.

Bridge

It is rumoured that they use tugboats to keep the bergs in the lagoon for the tourists. I wonder if they also tow away the muddy and unsightly ones.

Calving

The Breiðamerkurjökull which feeds the lagoon is rapidly retreating. One day this may all be gone.

Jökulsárlón Panorama

Ice Climb

Flashback: Saturday, July 17, 2004

Our ride today is the trusty Volvo Laplander - the Swedish Jeep.

Laplander

It's a dangerous path up to Svinafellsjökull. The weather is also miserably rainy, for the first time since we got here.

Dangerous Path

I have many rucksacks with loops for an ice axe, and now I have the axe. With the crampons attached to the boots, and some instruction and practice on how to stop a fall, it's up the glacier we go.

Climbing

While we're not actually tackling vertical walls, it's a pretty dangerous path on the ice as well. One of our party was from Israel, where he's presumably done some military training. Yet he almost took a tumble, saved only by an older lady.

Crevasse

On the one side is a sharp drop into oblivion. On the other, is a gentle rolling slope for about 15 metres, and then a sharp drop into oblivion. To add insult to injury, the large super-glacial ice crystals would probably shred your waterproof trousers on the way down.

Icy Waves

Like a sea of ice, the glacier ripples out, all the way to the mountains.