My last full day…
…on the Faroe Islands.
I’m taking it easy today, just relaxing in the common room of my last campsite.
Yesterday, I left Suðuroy by ferry back up to Torshavn, then drove back to the campsite I stayed in during my first full day here.
My Driving route and Hiking route, plus a few pictures of my campsite from afar
I liked that campsite, perhaps mostly because it was quite remote and therefore very quiet, on that first visit. That night there was only one other car there, with a couple from The Netherlands staying in a tent. We had a nice conversation over dinner.
This time there were more tourists, including both a couple larger campers and later a van, plus others that must have been staying in tents. I didn’t strike up a conversation with anyone, though, and still had the common room to myself.
I decided to take one of the hikes that I had studied back in Denmark (I’ve taken very few of the 30+ I mapped out!). It was a nice walk up to the top of the hill overlooking the town. The fog was so thick that, once at the top, I couldn’t see much, though that enhanced the charm, from my perspective.
I slept luxuriously late, knowing that I have already seen everything I was hoping to see during this visit.
Reflecting on my visit, I can conclude that 17 nights was, perhaps, 2 nights too many. That is, I’ve started “repeating myself” last night and tonight, where I am again staying at a site that I’ve visited before. On the other hand, the ferry schedule limited me to either 3, 7, 10, 13, or 17 night visits, and 13 nights would have been 2 few, so I think I made the right choice.
I would rather have seen everything I wanted and have an extra two nights than miss out on something I had hoped to see.
Tomorrow afternoon, I board the ferry again to head to Iceland. I’ve been told by another tourist I met a few days back, who had just returned from 10 days on Iceland, that the campsites there are more crowded and have fewer facilities. I’ve been spoiled a bit on the Faroe Islands, where I have often been one of very few fellow campers at a site and have often had the common room to myself.
I have not done nearly as much planning for my trip to Iceland, though I have mapped out over 80 campsites. My main choice will be whether to drive north or south after arriving. After that, I’ll mostly keep driving until I get back to the place I started (on the north-eastern coast, opposite of where Reykjavik, Iceland’s capitol is situated).
That should be about 4000 km of driving, and many manage it in a week or two, so my four weeks should give me plenty of time to explore.
As for hiking or other activities, I’ll have to figure that out once I’m there.
My arrangements for sleeping in the car continue to suit me very well. My bed is very comfortable and plugging in to the camp electricity has meant that I wake with a fully charged car, just as I was hoping.
I’m continuing to draw and practice ukulele most days. Yesterday, while waiting for the ferry, I decided to attempt drawing with my iPad again (I’ve been mostly drawing on my paper sketchpad on this visit).
My iPad sketch
I chose to make the experience as close to drawing with pencil and paper as I could. That is, I used a pressure sensitive “brush” in PhotoShop with a small (5 pixel) “tip”, and never used an “eraser”, just kept adding lines. I drew from a picture I had found on Flickr which I displayed on my other, smaller iPad as I drew. I draw with an Apple pencil.
Even so, the experience is different. I have attempted to draw from this photograph before and I feel like the results from this attempt are better. That might be because I learned from mistakes I made in my earlier attempt, but I think it is also thanks to my Apple Pencil / iPad allowing for a greater range of light to dark strokes, so the early lines that were off the mark didn’t hurt as much as they do with a graphite pencil and paper.
My Nerdy Vacation
Aside from drawing, I continue to enjoy analyzing aspects of my trip that most people would find uninteresting.
I’m keeping track of what I spend compared to my original estimates. I’m way under my estimates for some things and pretty close on others. There were a few things I had not thought to estimate expenses for, but they have not amounted to much.
So even though I’ve chosen to eat in cafes and restaurants quite often, I’ve used 40% less money on food than I had guessed. That makes up for the fact that I’ve used 7% more on campsites than I had estimated. Overall, the Faroe Islands portion of my trip cost ~30% less than I had estimated.
I expect Iceland to be more expensive in general, and I’m curious to see if my estimates were equally off or not. The other tourist I had talked to said that his experience was that prices had increased for most everything on Iceland due to inflation.
I’ve also created a “driving calendar”, so that I can see (and remember) where I drove and hiked each day.
My “driving” calendar (my version is zoomable)
Basically, I managed to drive on pretty much every “major” road (and most of the “minor” roads) on the Faroe Islands (that you can get to by tunnel or ferry) and visit nearly every town.
That reminds me of a documentary I saw back in the 80s or 90s about an autistic man who was bicycling to every business in his state, alphabetically, for no reason other than to check them off. It didn’t matter to him if he had visited one next door the previous day, he would stick to his alphabetical list as his guide. I do wonder sometimes if I’m not a little bit autistic.