I took my drone on both holidays this year, but cycling through the footage is something that I’ve put off. Nothing bears a quick photo edit.
None the less, one down (Greece), one to go (Faroe Islands), though it’s unlikely that the second one will get done before I go on my next holiday (Isle of Skye).
On the final day, the flight back wasn’t until the afternoon. We left the airBnB early enough to leave time to go and visit the sights on Vagar (The island with the airport on it) before going to the airport.
The first stop off was the Trollfinger. It is signposted and there is a (very) small car park at the end of a very pot-holey road. Then there was a path to the view point. All very nice and easy to get to.
The second stop off was at the Nix horse statue. A nix is a water creature that can transform into any shape.
The third and final stop off was at the waterfall from earlier in the week – where there was no mist! Hurray!
And then it was back to Edinburgh and back home!
This was the second attempt to get to Kalsoy, the first day we had got up for the 8am ferry the day before but decided when we got there that the weather wasn’t great and we didn’t want to waste a trip.
This time the weather was much better, but we were unsure if the hike would be free or not. Some reports on the internet were saying you had to pay for it, some were saying you didn’t…. so we just turned up and hoped for the best.
The 8am ferry was pretty empty – as you would expect. I think the ferry can fit about 17 cars on it, but that is a close fit! There were about 7 cars on the outbound ferry.
We drove to the top of the island, and saw a message at the start of the hike – it said to be careful and enjoy the hike and if you enjoyed it to leave a donation in the box. Hurray! It was a free hike (with optional tip).
The hike was easy, although really muddy in places. You hike around the mountain not over it, so it was pretty straight forward as there is a clearly visible route to follow. The sign at the start asks that you stick to the path.
When we got to the lighthouse it was super, duper windy – so windy that I couldn’t walk out to the view point to take the photo I wanted! We walked back and visited the other two villages on the island, before heading back to the ferry port queue.
The ferry times are odd and the ferry’s stop going from the island at 1020, and don’t start again until 310, so we had a bit of a wait! We were in the queue for about 12, and by 1 it was clear there were more than 17 cars waiting for the 310 ferry – so a trip to Kalsoy is a trip you have to plan!
On the sixth day… The weather still wasn’t great. It wasn’t raining much, but it was drizzly and misty. We decided to go to the capital for lunch, and then if the weather cleared up to hike up Klakkur in the afternoon.
It was a windy day as well, so the clouds and weather did in fact blow over somewhat.
However, unfortunately the weather didn’t blow over as much as I would have liked. But we still hiked up Klakkur.
After being really lucky with the weather, we were due a bit of rain. So we had a full day of it. We decided to drive around the northern islands and see how many little villages we could visit.
The weather stayed poor all day pretty much, there were occasional breaks in the rain, but it was very cloudy and overcast all day.
The little villages are well connected, and this was the first time we drove through longer single track tunnels. They were a bit scary at first, because they were so long, but once you’ve gone through once an gotten used to it hey are fine – you just have to follow the rules.
On this day we encountered a lot of animals blocking the road – kB had to get out of the car and shoo geese, ducks and sheep.
On the whole the sheep just moved out of the way, but there was one time where a sheep started licking/chewing on the front of the car. lol
On day 3 it was sunny sunny sun sun sun. We decided to drive around some of the towns on Eysturoy, following the buttercup routes that we didn’t do on day 1. We then drove to Streymoy an visited some of the towns on there, including Saksun (above).
Saksun has 8 people living there, and one of them is clearly annoyed by the number of tourists visiting – around the church there were signs saying that if you trespassed he would phone the police.
After visiting the two main islands, given the nice weather, we decided to do the walk to Sørvágsvatn. Which is another walk you have to pay to do. The temperature on this day was 20 degrees, and kB got a little bit sun burnt – even though he had suntan creme on.
Driving around the Faroe Islands is really lovely, there isn’t much traffic at all and the roads are in really good repair. The only problem (and I use that term loosly) is that everything is so spaced out!
As much as a lot more people are vising the Faroe Islands, it still isn’t busy by any stretch of the imagination.
Buttercup routes are the more scenic routes on the Faroe Islands. They are labelled with a little buttercup so you know where they are when you are driving along.
Due to a lack of water, the waterfall wasn’t at it’s peak!
But it was also the only day where we got to see the sun actually set, so that was nice!
On the second day we had paid to go on a hike to Drangarnir. This hike has been closed to the public by the landowner, and the only way to do it is to pay for an approved guide to take you on either Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday.
As we left the house in the morning it was very misty, but as we had paid we went to the meeting point. There were quite a few people there already and we parked up and waited for the guide to turn up. Rather un-optimistically the guide said that we would set off and “see what we could see”. He was optimistic that we would be able to see the sea stacks up close, but wasn’t so sure that we would be able to see the sea stacks from afar.
The hike across (You walk around the edge of the cliff rather than over the top) wasn’t too great in terms of views. This could have had something to do with the mist, or maybe not. However when we hiked up the first cliff and got to the top… We could see the sea stacks – hurray!
We had a mini break to take some photos and have a snack before carrying on the sea stacks.
The closer we got to the sea stacks, the more the mist cleared. Eventually a bit of blue sky broke through.
We got to spend enough un-rushed time around the main view point that we could grab photos and have a bit of a rest.
For the way back we got to go on a boat!
By the time the boat had returned to the harbour the sky was totally blue! We decided to go to try and see Múlafossur Waterfall, which was on the same island and only about a 10 minute drive away.
When we went through the tunnel and came out of the other side…. It was soooo misty! The rest of the Faroe Islands was bathed in sunlight!
At the start of August we went to the Faroe Islands for a week. We stopped in an AirBnB and hired a car to get ourselves around. The Faroe Islands has been on my bucket list since before it became an Instagram hotspot, and this was the year I finally got to tick it off.
On the first day we went around the top of Eysturoy. This is one of the middle islands in the Faroe Islands. First we drove to and hiked up the highest mountain in the Faroe Islands, which is called Slættaratindur. When we got about 2/3 of the way up it clouded over and we couldn’t see any of the views. Hahaha.
We then decided to drive around some of the villages on the top of this island.
I’m a sucker for a viewpoint, and it wouldn’t be a trip to Slovenia without a trip to Lake Bled (I guess?) so we hopped on the bus and off we went. We got off the bus and did the hike to this view point straight away.
We got a bit lost near the top as it was in forest and not well sign posted, but we made it and the views were spot on. There were some of the steepest stairs ever on the way up, and getting back down them was super hard – I had to walk down the sideways because my feet were too big to fit on them. Pretty sure the gradient was like 120% (Or at least it felt like it)
Lake Bled was nice, but not my cup of tea because it was quite busy. I was glad we’d not stopped there, as pretty as it was.
After tea there was another spot on sunset so I went down to Lake Bohinj and took some final sunset shots, as we were off early the next morning to make our flight.
