This is the place to find the updates on our travels: where we've been and (in due course) a little bit about the places.
Day 3 was sunny and cloudless the whole day. The destination today was Cradle Mountain visitor centre – about 2.5-3 hours or 185 km away in the alpine mountains. There were 2 route options from Strahan of similar length and we chose the one retracing our steps to visit Queenstown – a town we had skipped 2 days earlier due to the time of day and inclement weather.
Queenstown is an old mining town [add detail]. Hunters Hotel in the centre of town was dated circa 1898 and most of the buildings had an air of neglect as seemed to be common in these more remote locations. The railway station however has been repurposed as a tourist attraction (the West Coast Wilderness Railway) providing a link to Strachan through the rainforest and serving a good cup of coffee, even if the credit card machine didn’t work.
Next stop after Queenstown (via a couple of photo stops of lake and mountain scenery en-route) was the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre which is a required stop to purchase a park entry ticket and to catch the shuttle bus up to the walking trails in the area and in particular, Dove lake. During normal opening hours, cars are not allowed this far into the park and the shuttle bus journey is 20 minutes making it a long walk to the start of the hiking trails.
Arriving at the Visitor Centre at 13:40, we were more than a little disappointed to discover that the shuttle service had been suspended due to scheduled works on the road to the walking trails. Not impressed! The only option was to check in to our accommodation, 15 minutes drive down the road – a forest lodge, pretty much in the middle of nowhere (no internet!)
The (small number) of images from the day (mainly Queenstown) can be seen here.
Cradle Mountain, we revisited early the next morning when luckily the sky was cloudless - images here.
Rather than driving, Day 2 was spent in taking a boat trip from Strahan, partly out into the Indian Ocean (next stop south America) and partly back inland up the Gordon river. Strahan sits about halfway down Tasmania on the west coast. It was originally developed as a port of access for the mining settlements in the area and is the base for boat trips to Sarah Island, the notorious penal settlement that gained a reputation as the harshest penal settlement in the Australian colonies for convicts that had re-offended (1822-1833).
The trip started early at 8.30 with a sailing from Strahan out towards the open sea, only made possible with the creation of a submerged rock wall (created by convicts) in 1897/98 which directed the tide to naturally dredge the channel. Returning back towards Strahan, the boat then took a scenic tour up the Gordon River, through the Franklin Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area of ancient rainforest. This part of the trip included a stop and boardwalk through the forest allowing a close-up view of the dense and impenetrable vegetation.
After a pleasant lunch aboard, the second stop was back to Sarah Island with a guided tour of the former penal colony. Horrendous stories of life (and beatings) on the island were heard followed by an unusual transformation to shipyard, given the abundance of local huon wood.
Returning to Strahan, the remainder of the afternoon was spent with a walk to the local Hogarth Falls: not especially dramatic in terms of height or water volume but an interesting 20 minute walk through the local rainforest with plenty of tree ferns.
Images from the cruise and locality in and around Strahan can be found here.
Images from Strahan itself can be seen here.
Having spent 3 nights in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania (which is probably OK to see the main central sights), we set off today on a 7 day excursion of the island. Although small in comparison to Australia, Tasmania is actually reasonably sized measuring 364km north to south and 306km east to west with a population of 576,000.
Hire car pickup was not as smooth as for the Sydney to Melbourne run. The vehicle provided was older with rather more existing damage to record and a hard sell on supplementary insurance. The process took an hour - far more than it should have done and delayed our start. This particular day was also the longest leg, travelling almost the whole width of the island (306km) from Hobart to Strachan through a significant amount of national park (part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area).
Such a journey also needed to include photo stops at scenic points and occasional small diversions to interesting places en route. Many of the places sported familiar English names like Norfolk, Hayes, Cambridge and Uxbridge.
The first significant stop was at the Russell Falls, a 15 minute walk into the Mount Field National Park through magnificent tress and tree ferns. Many of these places are served by paved paths and visitor centres for which the park authorities require a daily fee of AUD48 (~£25). Continuing on, we passed some impressive hydro-electric power stations up in the mountains along steep winding roads before coming down the other side along equally winding and heavily forested routes. The roads are generally all single tarmac carriageway with occasional overtaking lanes but there are also quite a few lengths of roadworks where speed restrictions are (always) 40kmph.
On entering the National Park, the weather (which had been reasonably kind until then) took a turn for the worse with low cloud and rain setting in. This significantly limited the landscape photography where the views would otherwise have been quite dramatic. As we began to leave the park towards Queenstown, the rain became heavy. I just managed to get a shot from the Iron Bore lookout but further lookouts above Queenstown were impossible, despite there being some very dramatic colours in the rock.
Queenstown is an old mining town which would have been interesting to explore but we were out of time with still another hour (40km) to go to Strahan on the coast. We arrived at Strahan as the rain stopped to find a most impressive accommodation in the Strahan Wilderness Lodge, originally built in 1897 as a mine manager's residence. Including stops, the total journey time for this leg from Hobart was 8 hours.
Click here to see the 'Leg 1' gallery.
Just a change of one letter: Iceland to Ireland! I’d only been to Ireland once before and that was a brief work visit to Belfast, and never to southern Ireland. The differences between northern Ireland and southern Ireland and between UK and EU were therefore a mystery. After quizzing several locals about this, my conclusions is that the strongest identity still lies in coming from Ireland as a whole. The concept of Eire is little used and residents feel more of a connection with their country overall (Ireland) then they do with the EU, even in southern Ireland. It is all somewhat confusing.
The route and places visited can be seen here
Although spread across 2 sailings, my first visit to Ireland on this occasion was to the port of Belfast from where I was able to take a trip to the Giant’s Causeway, some 2hrs away on the north eastern coast. Having seen many pictures of this UNESCO world heritage, I was keen to get my own views. The Causeway itself is actually about a mile down a tarmac path from the car park and the National Trust visitor centre which opened in 2012 to cater for the ~1m visitors each year. The 40,000 basalt columns also extend over a smaller area than I had imagined and in July, they were teeming with tourists. Apparently, to get the stones to yourself and to better feel the power of the ocean, a visit in February is a better choice. Legend has it that these stones were laid by 2 warring giants – Finn McCool on the Antrim coast and Benandonner who lived on the Scottish island of Staffa, with the Causeway extending between the 2 locations. But then there’s the geological explanation of a ‘tessellated pavement’.
Views of the Giant's Causeway and Belfast port can be seen here
My next view of Ireland was from a sailing around several scenic coastal areas: Lough Swilly (with care about where to put the ‘s’), Tory Island, Arranmore Island and the Slieve League Cliffs. The weather was unfortunately poor for the first 3 but brightened the following day for the Slieve League Cliffs and the visit to Killybegs.
Views of the northern coastline can be seen here
And Slieve League Cliffs here
Killybegs is Ireland's largest and most important fishing port, famous for its bustling deepwater harbour. The day started with a walk through the Irish countryside to see the farming and sheep rearing activity followed later in the day by a self-tour around the town of Killybegs including its impressive fleet of modern fishing vessels as well as its connections to the fate of the Spanish Armada in 1588, many ships of which were wrecked along the west coast of Ireland in storms after a failed attempt the attack England.
The Killybegs Gallery is here
After Killybegs, we called at Galway, a much bigger and lively city that Killybegs and home to several festivals including the International Arts Festival which happened to be on at the time of visit. The Latin Quarter in particular is very colourful and vibrant with many pubs and restaurants and like Killybegs, Galway has links to the Spanish Armada with 300 Spanish sailors buried on their Forthill Cemetary.
Galway gallery is here
Some 50km from Galway is The Burren National Park, a vast porous limestone pavement through which water has drained over thousands of years to create extensive cave systems. We were lucky to see one such system - Aillwee Caves and this together with the surrounding landscapes and villages can be seen here.
Lastly, we called into Cobh (pronounced 'Cove' as Gaelic, from which the name comes, has no 'v' sound). Cobh is the main port to the city of Cork but is extensive with its own cathedral and well known for its multi-coloured houses in its own right. It was also the last departure point of the Titanic before she set sail across the Atlantic and the White Star booking and departure building on the harbour front remains and has been converted to a museum of 'The Titanic Experience'.
The Cobh gallery is here
Following the Faroe Islands, we sailed further north west to Iceland, headed first for the town of Akureyri at the end of the fjord ‘Eyjafjörður’. We had previously only ever been to Reykjavik and was expecting the northern coast of Iceland to be much more remote and sparsely populated and whilst that was true to an extent, the main towns and surrounding villages were quite well established with local industry based unsurprisingly on fishing and perhaps more surprisingly on sheep farming. From Akureyri, it was possible to visit 2 relatively local waterfalls and in doing so to experience the surrounding landscape: Goðafoss Waterfall, a 45 minute drive from Akureyri and Dettifoss Waterfall, another hour and a half from Goðafoss. Views of these 2 falls, the surrounding landscape and the town of Akureyri itself can be seen here.
After Akureyri, the next port of call was Isafjörður – a town in the far north west of Iceland (the Westfjords). This town sits in a dramatic valley between 2 steep sided fjords and again the local attraction an hour’s drive away is a dramatic waterfall – the Dynjandi Falls which cascade 100m down the mountain in a bridal veil formation. Unfortunately, the sun was behind the falls at the time we arrived and so photography was not ideal. As for Akureyri, all of these falls attract significant numbers of visitors, particularly in the summer and at these peak times, literally coachloads of tourists (ourselves included) arrive to see the sights which can be viewed here.
The town of Isafjörður (population 2,700) is also surprisingly well established with its roots in the fishing industry and now summer and winter tourism (skiing). For such a small population, the Icelandic government has invested in local infrastructure, drilling a 9.2km long tunnel (Westfjords Tunnel) through the mountainside to provide access to the next valley when winter snow made the overland road habitually impassible.
Most of the population (~60%) of Iceland are Lutheran though with immigration, those following the Catholic faith are increasing (~4%). In Isafjörður, there was no Catholic church and so a house was converted – now said to be the only church on Iceland with an integral garage.
The most famous church on Iceland is of course the Lutheran Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik, our next port of call. The classic tourist route from Reyjavik is the ‘Golden Circle which takes in the Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park, the Gulfoss Waterfall and the Geysir Geothermal area, but we visited all these places, along with the Blue Lagoon, last time we visited around 15 years ago and so this time was an opportunity so see the city of Reykjavik in a bit more detail, including a trip to the top of the Hallgrímskirkja church tower which offers a panoramic view of the city. On this occasion, the weather was kind all day too. Reykjavik sights are available here.
The last area of Iceland to view were the Westman Islands archipelago and in particular the islands of Surtsey and Heimaey on the south coast. Heimaey in particular is quite large with a population of 4,500 inhabitants and contains an active volcano which erupted in 1973 threatening to destroy the town. The locals pumped seawater on the advancing lava to solidify it. We didn’t stop on this occasion but passed a Holland America ship which was at anchor there. Westman Island views are available here.
And of course, Iceland is well known for whale sightings. It’s not generally the case that you can just look over the side of the ship and they are there although that does happen occasionally (as it did one evening for us.) More usually though, one joins a special whale sighting trip on a smaller boat which can go in search of them. The usual sighting is a minor breach of their back from the water. Sometimes they will blow but the photographic ‘holy grail’ of a breach of the whole mammal from the water or even a substantial tail slap are rather more rare. On this trip, I preferred the greater certainty of landscapes (also not a given with the very changeable Icelandic weather).
Summary of gallery links