Author: Justine

Well, what an eventful week in the Faroe Islands! I have a lot to write so I’ll put it in headings!

CROSSING TO MYKINES

After Koltur, we paddled 23nautical miles to Mykines, the westernmost island. We left in quite calm conditions but the wind picked up and this combined with a 2 metre swell gave quite exciting rebounding waves off the cliffs, even 100 metres offshore. Despite this, the tide was behind us and we made good time. The 2-3mile crossing to Mykines is well known for being rough and treacherous. 14 metre overfalls have been seen in this area in a bad storm, so it was with some anticipation (and a lot of fog and rain) that we crossed. We stayed a few miles south of the island for the crossing and avoided the ‘scary’ area very succesfully. The tide carried us up to the SE corner of Mykines perfectly, and the crossing was a lot easier and calmer than paddling in the clapotis earlier in the day. Once we reached Mykines however the wind picked up again and we were once more in pyramidal rebounding waves. This time we had no tide behind us so we slowly crept along the cliffs to the SouthWest end of the island where we had been told we could land. The 3 miles seemed to take forever, and as we drew closer to where the houses were marked on the map we began to doubt that there would be anywhere to land – it just looked like cliffs everywhere. Just then, a small boat appeared behind us – it was the ferry and we were both very pleased to see it. We watched as the ferry pulled ahead of us and then paused for a while before seeming to disappear into the cliffs. When we reached the entrance to the ‘harbour’ we could see why the ferry had paused.

LANDING IN MYKINES
A small concrete quay jutted out into the bay, but the swells were breaking onto it, and over it. Waves were also breaking over shallow rocks at different places before the quay and we’d have to weave around the areas of white sea to get there. It didn’t look very friendly, but we had no other options ( except for a long long paddle back to another island). In the end we made it through the breaking waves OK, but it was cetainly full of adrenalin. And we were lucky that we arrived when there were still ferry passengers at the quay because several strong men helped us to lift our kayaks out of the turbulent water and carry them up some steps. Then as we were starting to get organised, a man in policemans waterproofs came up to us and said ” Come with me, up to the yellow house, we will take care of you”. We weren´t sure exactly what that meant, but when we got up to the yellow house, cups of tea were thrust into our hands and we were sat down at a table full of food and ordered to eat. There must have been about 15 people in the house, of all generations, chattering and smiling and making us feel welcome. They told us that in 1988 they hosted a Dutch party of kayakers who landed on Mykines, and ten years later in 1998 they looked after another party of Dutch kayakers ( and 1 of the men was the same). As far as they knew, we were the 3rd group of people to kayak to Mykines. We were 2 years early to make another anniversary, but they looked after us just the same! Alun was happy because he got to watch the world cup final on a big screen TV with the family. We were also given a room to sleep in, and had the chance to take a shower.

WATCHING THE WORLD CUP IN THE YELLOW HOUSE

PUFFIN HUNTING
We spent almost 2 days on Mykines which is famous for it’s birds. It has the only gannet colony in the Faroes and thousands and thousands of puffins. Swarms of them sit on the sea, and stand on the cliff tops. On Monday, we had the chance to go puffin hunting with Karl from the yellow house. Catching and eating birds is traditional on the Faroe Islands, in the past they relíed on the birds as a big part of their diet. We were excited to go hunting today because I just purchased a new optics for my hunting rifle. They are only allowed to hunt puffins from 6am – 12 noon, but we were up at 5am, to walk up to the cliffs to be sure of getting the best ‘seat’ for catching puffins. Karl carried a big net on the end of a 6metre pole and he explained to us that the direction the puffins fly in depends on the wind direction and strength. today was a South-Westerly which pleased him. We sat down at Karls favourite ‘seat’ and hundreds of puffins were circling above in a big group. Karl lay his net on the ground in front of him and held the end of the pole. He was chatting to us about how the puffins seem to know the length of the net and fly just out of range, but he always had 1 eye on the sky. Suddenly, the net shot up into the air behind him, and before I could see what had happened, Karl was pulling the pole through his hands, pulling the net towards him and there was a puffin in it. He took out the puffin and – there is no nice way of saying it – broke it’s neck. The bird was instantly dead. It was strange for me to see this, as I felt sad to see such a cute bird be removed from it’s natural environment and killed, but I also respect the fact that the Faroese are out there living in balance with nature, killing what they need to eat, honestly and with their own hands. I cannot say it is cruel when I probably eat battery farmed chickens and other animals which have been bred just for slaughter. I don’t find out the details of what I eat so it’s easier to ignore any cruelty. Also, ironically, the puffins are not doing so well in the Faroes recently, and it’s the same story all over the world. The reason is perhaps partly overfishing, and partly global climate change. The seas are changing temperature which means that sand eels and other small fish that the seabirds eat are not doing aswell as they did, or are not as plentiful at the right times. So man as a whole is destroying millions of seabirds by our industrial lifestyle. In this context, and despite not liking seeing the puffins killed, I find that I can’t disagree with Karl killing a few hundred puffins, all of which will be eaten. I didn’t mean to get into a moral argument here, but it’s hard to write about this without giving my opinion. It was also hard not to admire Karl for his skill at catching the puffins. Alun nicknamed him Karl ‘Federer’ Leonsson for his use of backhands, forehands and slice strokes.

In the afternoon, we watched Karl, his father and his brother in law use specially built machines to take the feathers off the puffins, then chop off the limbs. The puffins will then all be frozen and eaten later in the year. Some will be sold. We had a turn at chopping the limbs off and it’s harder than it looks! ( well, thats my excuse). All in all, the Leonsson family showed us great kindness and hospitality, insisting that we eat with them while we were in the island and always keen to chat to us about life in the Faroes. I will always remember our stay with them.

PADDLING TO VAGAR
That evening, we got on the water at 7.30pm – oh, the joys of almost no darkness! We paddled 10miles back across to Vagar island. It was a beautiful calm evening and a lovely paddle. We camped at a small abandoned village ( well, 1 house) called Viki ( I think!). It was a bit of a mission landing and hauling our boats over some rocks, but was a beautiful spot.
THE HIDDEN ENTRANCE TO SAXSUN

CATCHING FISH AND STUNNING CLIFFS

Next morninig, we crossed to Streymoy island and continued in our kayaks up the stunning west coast. It was a strange experience to feel completely alone on the sea and then as we approached the cliffs, 6 boats full of tourists appeared, taking the sightseers into caves and around sea stacks. It was a truely stunning and impressive piece of coastline with over 400 metre high cliffs for a 6 mile stretch. I also used my new hand fishing line for the first time… and caught 3 fish….. all at once!! It was quite scary trying to pull the fish up and I thought they would pull my kayak into the cliffs at one point! We landed at the beautiful natural harbour of Saxsun in the early evening in increasing winds…. That night the winds got stronger and stronger and stronger….. and I have run out of time so I’ll have to continue that story next time I get to a computer….

Alun and I are in the dramatic Faroe Islands – described by our friend Axel like paddling in the sea of flames, and we can already see why. Their tidal stream atlas shows dangerous tidal streams and overfalls as intimidating red streaks, or flames on the ocean. It´s enough to make you think twice about getting on the water, but the scenery is stunning, with steep high cliffs and islands all around. It reminds me a little bit of Orkney and Shetland but everything is on a grander scale. We are near the southern end of the islands in the relatively fertile and less steep islands, and still we climbed a hill of 480metres today on an island less than 2 miles long.

We are on Klotur Island, one of 18 islands in the group. Just 1 family live here and farm the land here. They have a few hundred sheep and about 50 Scottish Highland cattle! It is the only good beef cattle in the Faroes and it’s all organic so the beef is well known here. On Wednesday we took the Norona ferry from Lerwick in Shetland to the capital Torshavn. We stocked up with a delicious buffet breakfast, one of those where you know you are going to eat too much and feel a bit ill but there is so much delicious food to cram in! I had emailed a local paddler who bought one of my DVDs from the internet, Andras, and he met us the ferry and took us and our kayaks to his house (with an elaborate home made system for tying the boats to the roof of his bmw, without a roof rack!) We camped in his garden and walked into Torshavn for a look around. Thank you Andras for your hospitality!

Yesterday Andras dropped us off on his way to work, at a small beach just south of the city. A few walkers gave us amused looks as we packed everything into our kayaks in the drizzle. According to Andras, kayaking is not very common here and we are an unusual sight. We decided to just paddle about 13 nautical miles to the island of Koltur because Axel had told us that he had met some interesting local people on the small island. “It won’t take us long”, I told Alun, confidently, “We’ll have the tide with us and there isn’t much wind”.

Once we got away from town and turned around a few small headlands, it turned out that the wind was a lot stronger than predicted, and of course, was in our faces. We could see a lot of intimidating white water marking the channel where the tide was going with us, but it was a long way from shore and heading in the wrong direction. We weren´t positive that it would curve around and take us around to the West into the channel we wanted to paddle into, so we hugged the shore and fought the wind and the eddy. It was slow going, but the cliffs to our right were very pretty – even though at less than 50metres high they don’t even get a mention in any tourist guides in a group of islands where the average height of the land is 300 metres! When we reached the SE corner of the island, there was quite an exciting tidal race, and there seemed to be breaking waves everywhere in the channel we ultimately wanted to cross. We paddled hesitantly around the corner and hugged the coast again, out of most of the breaking waves. After 2 miles close to the shore, the sea seemed much calmer in the fjord. We stopped briefly at a 900 year old turf-roofed house – it has been shipped in from Norway and reassembled there, making it possibly the oldest pre-fabricated house in the world? After bread, jam, cheese and a hard boiled egg (well,it’s what we had in our day hatch)we got back on the water and decided to cross the 2mile channel to our island of Koltur. The tide should be with us, going to the West and it was. We had 3knots of current with us, and it’s only the smallest of neap tides at the moment. We passed close to the island of Hestur, the top engulffed in mist, and aimed towards Koltur. We knew the water in the channel between Hestur and Koltur should be sucking us to the south so we didn’t get too close. The waves certainly got bigger as we crossed the channel and there was a moderate sized race close to Koltur, but the current wansn’t strong and we made it to Koltur easily in an ever-lowering mist.

We landed by a small quay, and walked up to the house, appearing from the mist. We soon met Bjorn and Luka, the couple who have lived here alone for just over 10 years. Not only are they farming, but they also have plans to restore the old turf-covered buildings, which are the best example of a farming community in the Faroes 50 years ago. There is a guy from Czech Republic, David staying here with them for a month – he studies languages and is here to learn Faroese. It’s a beautiful place, with an impossibly tall bulging hill on the west side, a smaller hill on the east side and a small valley inbetween. They even have a small sandy beach on the north side. On our walk today we saw lots of birds, including a tern colony, fulmars, a wren, wimberels and oyster catchers. We spent the evening last night chatting with them and eating traditional dried sheep meat, aswell as other types of sheep meat, made into pate and all sorts of tasty things.

They have a website, and you can read a bit about it, in English following the link below.

http://www.koltur.com/bp/index.php?id=14

It was windy again today, and misty and raining this morning. It was one of those marginal padlding days where you could go, but you could justify staying! We decided to stay here for the day and have an explore of the land. We climbed the big hill as the mist cleared and had fantastic views over many of the other islands. It’s truely a stunning place and I can’t wait for the next 2 and a half weeks of exploring it. We also watched with interest the many tidal races around the islands, there was always white water somewhere, but the location of the race seemed to move along a fjord and never stay in the same place. That was a new experience for me, so we are slowing starting to try to understand this magnificent land. Tomorrow we hope to paddle – if conditions are good we will try to get to Mykines, the furthest west of the islands, through a notorious tidal race. If it is not good, then we will probably go to Vestmanna up one of the sheltered fjords. We are told there is a city party there tomorrow night!!

We’ve enjoyed mostly lovely weather for the Shetland sympoisum – which I forgot to mention that we kayaked right to the door of…. It’s a beautiful place, ‘bigger islands than Orkney, with more hills and moorland. If you like caves and sea stacks then Shetland is the place for you. I was lucky enough to be mostly asigned to day trips during the sympoisum and Alun and I enjoyed a day paddle around Muckle Roe, which is a lovely granite island about 15km around, with stunning red caves and passages through rocks. It’s always a delight to poke your bow into a dark cave and creep forwards carefully until you see a gleam of light shining a hundred metres away. You have found a way through!! The swell was pretty big on this day so I’m told we couldn’t get into ‘the best caves’, but I was very satisfied with what we did manage to explore. I think we’d still be there if we had been able to get into every cave.

Yesterday we paddled around the small island of Noss which has some of the best ‘bird cliffs’ in Shetland ( except for the island Foula which we hope to visit also). I think the cliffs are about 180metres high and there is a large gannet colony, and a few other stow-aways in amongst the gannets. Guillemots, razor bills, puffins and fulmars also made their nests there. We enjoyed fantasic views and sounds over lunch as we landed at some almost horizontal ledges underneath the towering colony. A few people found themselves a bit too much ‘underneath’ some of the flying birds, and the sea was used to clean affected clothes and hair.

We might be going to Faroe tomorrow – a bit of an earlier departure than planned because of a minimal ferry schedule to get us back from Shetland to Orkney. If so, we hope to paddle a day or 2 more in Shetland after Faroe, and before returning home. I will keep trying to add photos! Happy paddling!

We made it to Shetland! We had 2 incredibly contrasting crossings, each of 28 nautical miles by the time we landed. The weather couldn’t have been any calmer for the journey from North Ronaldsay to Fair Isle. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the sea was as smooth as velvet and a beautiful deep blue colour where the sky was reflected in it. We let the last of the flood tide tide sweep us to the east a bit before the flood tide swept us west for 4 hours. We chose our ferry glide angle and ended up in exactly the right spot at the SE corner of the approx. 3 mile long island. Although the tidal atlas shows that the tide is pretty much at right angles to our desired path, I think we actually had more tide against us than with us, as we travelled at an average of 3 knots ( slower than we’d have expected in such calm conditions). If I did it again I’d go 6 hours earlier on the last of the ebb as I suspect this would be a bit more favourable. However the way we did it meant that we arrived at Fair Isle just as the tides were reaching the start of a 3 hour slack-ish period ( just in case something had gone wrong with the navigation, or we’d been slower than expected). Eventually we landed at about 9pm after 9 hours in the kayak.

I was feeling a bit ill when we reached Fair Isle, with a sore back and tummy. the next morning I was worse. Alun called out the local nurse who diagnosed that I had a kidney infection. 2 hours later I was on antibiotics and drinking cranberry juice, but the whole of that day I felt week and had pains in my tummy. It was a beautiful bright day with very little wind ( perfect for crossing to Shetland) but I was in no fit state to paddle and we wanted to have a rest day and a bit of a look around Fair Isle, which is a beautiful island with thousands of birds – 10 different species breed there.

After an early-ish night I felt a bit better on wednesday but not really like kayaking 28 nautical miles. We decided to stay another day, but when we got a forecast we realised that our good weather window was slipping away. I felt a bit better and we decided to leave that afternoon. the tides were right for us at 4pm and we would actually get a bit of help from them on this part of the journey. We weren’t worried about landing late because it doesn’t really get dark here at this time of year, but we were a bit worried about the force 3 SE wind.

NORTH HAVEN ON FAIR ISLE
As we started off the wind gradually picked up, until it was F5-6. The bad weather that we had tried to avoid had come in early. the sea conditions were exciting, with waves to surf and we made good progress, travelling at almost 5 knots. Unfortunately the tide turned when we were about a mile away from land and suddenly we had wind against tide off Fitfull Head. Our progress slowed right down and we had a bit more urgent surfing to do, but we made it safely to land. We camped at Spiggie Loch on the West side of the island – a beautiful spot. 28 miles in 7hours 15mins.

now its symposium time! I will try to add a few pictures when i get the chance