Storurð and Borgarfjörður Estri
After our beautiful day yesterday, we woke up in the thick of the fog in Seyðisförður. Vedur had forecasted another very clear day, however, so we weren't worried. It's true that this small village is often in a thick mist in the morning that usually clears up during the day.
Today, we'd planned a big hike, estimated at nearly 5 hours, to reach Storurð. To do this, we took the road to Borgarfjörður Estri.
The Storurð hike
Storurð is located at the foot of the famous Dyrfjöll Mountains, where there are huge rounded volcanic rocks and several small glacial lakes of magnificent turquoise blue.
On the other hand, this small paradise is a bit hard to get to, but it's worth a little effort. There were 3 possible hiking trails to get there:
- From the Njarðvik car park on road 94 (4.5 km one way)
- From the Vatnsskarð car park on road 94 (7.1 km one way)
- From the Vatnsskarðsvegur car park on road 94 (7.5 km one way)
You should know that many hikers chose one of these 3 trails one way, then take another to return. The disadvantage of this option was to end the hike with a long walk on the road to reach your original car park.
The sky was magnificent and the temperature close to 20 °C, so we decided to do the longest hike in this fine weather, starting at the Vatnsskarðsvegur car park.
It should be noted that the longest hike was also the easiest as it ran along the Súlur mountain, with no significant elevation, practically flat all the way. The walk was a pleasure, the path was well-marked on both dirt and grass, and even children enjoyed it.
We crossed beautiful meadows and small streams, especially in the second part of the hike. Several small waterfalls cropped up as we walked, and after walking 7.3 km we arrived in front of a huge pile of rocks, the famous "giant boulders," and had choose which way to go around them (it was a loop anyway).
We went to the right and after going up and down we spotted small ponds of a splendid turquoise blue. We chose to picnic at one of these beautiful pools.
The loop was about 2 km long and the picnic spot was just beautiful, nestled at the foot of the Dyrfjöll mountains with their snowy slopes. The return was without much difficulty. The hike in total, including the loop, was almost 17 km long and took us 4H45 not including the lunch break.
The puffins of Borgarfjörður Estri
After this very nice walk, we were a bit tired but happy that we were back on the road to the small village of Borgarfjörður Estri. After a quick walk in the small village we continued to Borgarfjarðarhöfn.
Borgarfjarðarhöfn was the small port of Borgarfjörður Estri where a promontory jutted into the sea that was home to numerous birds, especially puffins. We were lucky because despite the month of August being well underway, they were still walking around and doing their thing on the promontory. We watched them catch fish and when they got one they were photographed by everyone like tiny celebrities in suits.
We returned to our lodging at the end of the afternoon, very tired from the hikes. Tomorrow we could rest a little.
