Ice Ice Baby

What’s that coming over the mountain? Another mountain.

Before I start telling you how much I loved my plant-based yoga retreat nestled in a valley between snow-capped mountains in northern Iceland, a caveat. I had enormous flugscham (flight shame) for getting on an aeroplane just weeks after protesting the climate crisis holding my homemade sign urging us all to stop keeping calm and carrying on. Oh, the hypocrisy! I know. Don’t worry about bullying me, I already hate myself. 

In my weak and indefensible defence, I booked this holiday 18 months ago, which was a blissfully ignorant time before I fully understood my individual responsibility to make different choices and be a better citizen of the world.

I have since committed to flying less, maybe even not at all, so I am sorry that I flew to Iceland.

However, as flights go… it was a pretty epic swansong to international airborne travel. These pictures were taken from my plane seat:

Leaving Reykjavik

Cue a lot of window-photos

Arriving in Akureyri

Despite the fact I have lived with a professional photographer for over ten years, I still don’t know my aperture from my shutter speed, so the night before I left for Iceland was spent scrambling around the internet trying to become a YouTube master of long exposure, in case I was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. ‘How to photograph the Northern Lights’ safely screenshotted, I felt confident I would probably take as good a photo as my husband would have were he to have accompanied me. I mean, it can’t be that hard. 

Follow the windy path then take a left at the mountain. Destination: #content

Testament to how beautiful the scenery was, I don’t even mind that I didn’t see the aurora borealis. My awe was satisfied by valleys, fjords, thermal spas and waterfalls. And, mountains.

There’s one.

Iceland was my destination of choice thanks to Reclaim Yourself, “yoga retreats in extraordinary places”. They’ve got their tagline down. This was yoga with a view. In upward dog, I gazed at mountains. While attempting to meditate, I opened one eye and checked the mountains were still there, an ever reassuring presence sometimes covered in more snow, sometimes less. Sometimes obscured by clouds, sometimes dancing with the stars.

I was accompanied on my adventure by my friend Boodle, who is an excellent travel buddy. 

Mountain Pose.

Boo and I have known each other 12 years and our friendship only grows as our interests, hobbies and wants grow clearer and stronger. We discovered an uncanny ability to know when each other needed chats, snacks, silence, headstands, handstands, lights on, lights out, both literal and metaphorical.

Where’s Boo?

Ah, there she is…

There were 20 yogis brought together for a week of stretching, bending, breathing and twists. A mighty fine selection of humans who had walked a path through their lives that had brought them to this particular mountain on this particular retreat on this particular week. We had yoga in common, that much was a given, but as the week went on and the bonding blossomed, I found out so much more about this eclectic bunch. We laughed and cried, we sat in a hot tub discussing life, we squealed over pancakes and developed in-jokes about mushrooms. When the retreat queen, Jools, told us at the end that we were a special group, I beamed like the shameless compliment hunter that I am. 

Soaking up the view…

The yoga, led by Adam Husler, was challenging, rewarding and humbling. I was taught to strip my yoga back to basics. There’s still so much I have to learn and I am but a mere amateur. But, despite feeling like I was rubbish at even the most simple of moves, I was proud of my body. My various ailments held out and I just about survived intact. I didn’t get any pics of the yoga because I was busy being present, so here’s another mountain. 

Another brilliant thing I didn’t take a photo of was the food. Oh, the food! A plant based smorgasbord of goodies. Burgers, soup, casseroles, lasagnes, poached pears, dulce de leche drowning a millionaire’s shortbread thing so delicious I would like to eat it every day please. We were so well fed and - bonus - we were allowed to drink coffee! Because too much deprivation is just unnecessary. But yes, forgot to take any pics, so would you like to see another mountain?

My favourite extracurricular activity had to be the ascension of a 700m mountain. It was god damn steep and at times I feared I’d lose my footing and tumble to my end, but we made it to the summit and the spectacular views afforded up there. I attempted a handstand, of course. Alas, my hands were too cold and I failed miserably, so here’s the view on our way back down.

We also went whale watching, which I thought was an activity aligned with my moral code. The whales would be freely going about their business and indeed, by giving my money to a whale watching expedition, I was sending a little message to the tourist board - whale watching in! Whale hunting out! It was alright, I suppose. We did see one whale, who gave us some pretty good fin flirting, but on the way back to the harbour we stopped to go fishing. While people posed for photos with their still living, still suffering fish, a hook caught in their gills, I got in a right huff. I mean, if you’re going to eat fish, there’s no better way to do it than to catch it yourself, kill it yourself and cook it yourself, but it was the prolonging of the suffering between catch and death I had a problem with. Pose for photos after you put your dinner out of its misery. The irony of the awe with which we marvelled one sea creature followed by the flippancy with which we killed another, was not lost on me. Suffice to say, I sat out the fishing and frowned a lot.

View from the boat. Ignore fishing rod.

In lighter news, we had a lovely day out at an alkaline bathing lagoon, stopping off en route to marvel at a waterfall.

While luxuriating in the hot springs, I attempted to entertain my new friends with my impression of the South Wales accent. It’s hard to put across in the written form just how good I am at saying ‘Where are you? Oh, there you are then,’ in my grandmother-in-law’s accent but trust me, I nail it. After I’d said my line and everyone had a good laugh, we considered the fact that maybe, even out here in a hot spring in the middle of nowhere, upper Iceland, we might be offending someone. At that moment, two sweet young women next to us put their hands in the air and said: ‘We’re from South Wales.’ They assured me they were not offended and I was, as suspected, nailing the accent. I remain mortified.

I spent a lot of time gazing at mountains and soaking up peacefulness. In an uncertain world, where we all have to commit to having fewer children, eating less meat, flying less, driving less, finding more in less, I’m thankful one of my last flights took me somewhere so special. Got to make these rare and treasured adventures count now. 

I think what this travelogue has really lacked is photos of mountains.

One more mountain, for the road.