Country Life: June 2022

Wow. :)

Our ship was the MS Borealis - with 702 cabins and 678 crew. She weighs in at just under 62 tonns. Is 238 metres long and 35 metres wide at the beam. She has a maximum speed of 25 knots, pulled/pushed by 5 x ZAV 40S Sulzer Engines. She was refitted in June 2021, so in good condition. It was a really comfortable ship, even in high sea (some days/nights the waves were swelling up to 7 metres - great fun!!).

We sailed from Liverpool to Belfast (with a stop to look around on a hop on-hop off bus) and then on to Iceland - going anti-clockwise. One or two of the excursions and ports were not accessible due to very rough seas and high winds but Fred Olsen staff made alternative arrangements for most of these things. For example, we were supposed to go on a whale watching tour on the first day but because of the weather, this had to be cancelled - as Borealis was delayed in the sea, having to sail quite slowly to navigate the rough weather. We ended up doing a tour of Akureyri instead. We spoke to people who did the whale watching tour (nearly froze their butts off too) and they only saw one whale, so not bothered that we didn't go on the whale watching thing. I've done that in SA plenty of times. We did see whales off the left hand side of the ship (don't ask me what's the right one - port or starboard??) .. a small group of humpbacks blowing.

Our captain re-routed us for our final port of call to the Faroe Islands- Torshavn as again we couldn't pull into Seydisfjordur - not because we couldn't get in but because we would not be able to get out, the winds would just keep pushing the ship back into the dock! Crazy things ships. I am not writing up my diary, just posting photographic highlights from the Icelandic portion of the tour on here. I have loads of videos but I'll save them for another time. I still have gigs more photos but I think these are enough for now. Sorry for the antiquated way Blogger displays groups of pictures, you can't put them into a gallery format, so just have to scroll through.

I ventured out onto the front of the ship on day one and nearly got myself and my phone blown off the deck and into the sea ... the wind was hectic!

Arriving in Reykjavik - Monday 20th June.

The Pearl centre

Touring further on the Golden Circle route

Gulfoss

Geysir

Wednesday 22nd June - Isafjordur, Hornstrandir and Drangaskord.

Dynjandi falls, Westfjords and the area around Isafjordur

Laufas

Akureyi

Crossing the Arctic Circle Thurday 23rd June 2022 at 8.47pm ... the crew did initiations for those that were willing to have icecubes and freezing water poured down the back of their shirts. I was already in the start of Covid and wasn't up to that!