This year I’ve planned to travel three times but due to a variety of unfortunate circumstances, I’ve ended up sitting on my ass going slowly stir-crazy for eight (8!) months. I’ve not left the country since Italy last October.

In February I was meant to go to Wales — a tour of the coast, from Cardiff to Pembrokeshire, up to Aberystwyth and finally a day or two under the shadow of Snowdonia, the highest mountain in England and Wales! I booked plush hotel rooms and cute, romantic B&Bs. I worked on my cardiac fitness through a strict training regime. I even dug out the dusty Sebby Sex Manual that hadn’t seen active use since university. AND THEN… the girl cancelled two weeks before we were due to leave. Bugger.

In March there was meant to be an epic coming-of-age trip to the Isle of Skye (in Scotland) with my American cousin Mike. But he broke his leg in a cycling accident (I told him exercise wasn’t healthy, but did he listen, nooo…)

And in April I was meant to go to Ireland… but my host, Irish Dave, was held up in Boston (damn those Americans). I’ve always wondered if all those Davids are bothered by the prefixes they get lumbered with: Fat, Small, Irish, Scottish. I’m often glad that I got lumbered with a 9-letter name (and 35 letters in total… thanks, mum and dad). If nothing else, at least my name is unconventional.

Anyway, May has come and gone (it’s birthday season for our family, so it’s hard to excuse myself to travel), and now it’s June. Never have I felt more ready to travel! My fingers scream at me every time I sit down to type and at night my eyes ache, even when shut. Then there’s the matter of overall fitness — it can’t be good to sit around on your ass for two-thirds of a year, right? I’m amazed that when I do travel, I manage to walk for two weeks without collapsing once — though the regular pizza and gelato breaks probably help…

With that whine out of the way, I can now tell you that I’m going to the Faroe Islands! And there’s no girl, cousin or prefixed Dave involved with the arrangements! The Faroes are a small cluster of islands half way between Scotland and Iceland, i.e. in the middle of frickin’ no where, with a grand total of 49,000 wind-swept citizens. The biggest city, Torshavn, has 13,000 people — but the rest of the population is spread out over the archipelago of 18 islands and 120 towns and villages. The smallest town has a population of… 1. The average temperature at the height of summer, in case you were wondering,  is 11 degrees Celsius. But it rarely goes below freezing, what with it being surrounded by lots and lots of water which in turn is under the effect of the Gulf Stream. It’s damp all year round; just how I like it!

Why am I going? Because it’s the most beautiful place in the world. The National Geographic magazine called it the ‘most appealing place in the world’, ahead of the Azores, Bermuda and Hawaii — and if the National Geographic say it’s pretty, who am I to argue?

The main problem is actually getting there. Being, officially, part of the Danish Kingdom, you can fly there from Copenhagen all year round. From the UK you can only fly there during the summer months, and there’s only 1 or 2 flights a week! There’s also the problem of fog. There’s lots of damn fog. It’s not uncommon for there to be too much fog to land the plane, in which case you’re diverted to Iceland for a few days. Assuming you make it to the Faroes in one piece, you then have to find somewhere to stay — tourism isn’t a big thing there, what with there being almost nothing to do, except look at rocks and stuff. I think there are no more than 10 hotels in the Faroes.

Fortunately, I shan’t be staying in an over-priced hotel! I have a friend that I can stay with (God bless World of Warcraft…) and he has a boat to get around with. He’s also an enthusiastic photographer, so I hope he’ll be able to show me all of the sights. He keeps mentioning under-water caves, which I assume are dangerous little things you can visit on your boat while the tide’s out. In fact, I remember some TV episode of ‘Dramatic Reenactment Life Savers’ where a couple of explorers got stuck in such a cave after the tide came in…

Such photographic opportunities leads me into a little business venture I thought of in the shower this morning. My hands were working their way over the rolling, English hillocks of my chest and stomach/paunch when my Jew-sense started tinglin’. My nose actually twitched and my hands stopped moving while I turned the thought over. I have a thoroughly un-Jew nose, which I am normally grateful for, but there are times when I wouldn’t mind it being a bit bigger. Anyway…

The idea is: could I possibly sell personalised landscapes? I was thinking of a beautiful Faroese landscape, with me standing in the corner holding up a piece of paper with your name on it. Like this:

Only it’ll be a prettier landscape, and it’ll be your name instead of ‘SEB’ — or, heck, you can choose your own message. ‘[YOUR NAME] SENT SEBASTIAN TO PROSPECT FOR GOLD’ — whatever tickles your fancy! I will also wear your hair band or hat of choice — of which I have many. I will even share my gold-sequinned Minnie Mouse ears, if there’s enough interest (i.e. someone actually buys a Personalised Sebby Landscape). For the right price, I might even dress up in your costume of choice, but bear in mind that I doubt I can get the fluffy dog suit through customs.

Here are a few photos of the Faroese landscape to whet your appetite. A Personalised Sebby Landscape of similar or even better quality could be yours…!!

(That’s Aurora Borealis — the Northern Lights — which I sadly won’t be able to see during my visit… but they’re pretty, eh?)

Buy your own personalised, amazingly aesthetic Faroese landscape today for only £20!

If I haven’t yet convinced you to buy one (it being a recession and all), I will be demonstrating the wonders of personalised landscapes — and my hairbands — over the next few weeks, before I actually leave (sometime around the beginning of July, I hope). Also, if you have any Nordic/Arctic Circle travel tips, now’s the time to share.

If you are in any way squeamish at the sight of meat or blood, or you’re a militant vegetarian/Greenpeace member, you probably want to skip this entry. Just scroll on down really quickly past the nasty pictures. If you like, there’s some photos of me making an ass of myself yesterday — but if you’ve already seen those, um… go buy a photo of mine?

Anyway, all links in this entry, apart from one, are ‘safe’. I’m not going to surprise you with some gory, nasty photo, don’t worry. There are at least two graphic photos in the entry itself though — you have been warned. Oh, and if you have no idea why I’m talking about the Faroe Islands, it’s because I’m going there next month!

The Faroe Islands, by virtue of being, literally, in the middle of frackin’ nowhere is a little stuck when it comes to food. Their first airport was built in 1942 by British forces; for the 1500 years leading up to the airport they had to sustain themselves through self-sufficiency alone. The poor island-dwellers haven’t been  dealt a very good hand though (and why would people live there in the first place, anyway?): they have some grass, but due to the prevailing winds and inclement weather, the grass isn’t bountiful enough to rear cows for food. Above-ground vegetables are also hard to grow for the same reasons! They have potatoes, but even they are relatively recent import for Christ’s sake. Their primary food source is sheep, which account for something like 50% of their total diet.

(Not actually in the Faroes — just a doe-eyed sheep that I found in Wales years and years ago, which I’ve not shared before!)

Along with sheep, and by far their richest resource, they have the North Atlantic (which happens to be one of the cleanest bodies of water in the world). It’s positively stuffed full of fish and whales, both of which have been farmed for hundreds of years. They also eat seabirds, like puffins — but don’t worry, they’ve been sustainably hunted for 300 years and there are millions of them up there. Even the pilot whale, their whaling website hastens to add, is very gently farmed: an average of 950 have been caught in the last 10 years, which provides 30% of all meat produced in the Faroes! As you can imagine, very little goes to waste — even the blubber is used… or consumed! (If I sell enough Personalised Sebby Landscapes, I will eat whale blubber and photograph it, just for you guys.)

With their four food types out of the way — sheep, fish, bird and whale — I’m now going to wow you with their delicacies. I use the term ‘delicacy’ loosely. Even my Faroese friends tell me that most of these foods should be eaten with your eyes shut and a clothes peg across the bridge of your nose. Only push onwards if you’re interested in what a smoked sheep looks like; you have been warned… again!

In the Faroes the entire concept of artistic, culinary prowess is foreign. Only in recent years, since the second World War, have international dishes begun to pop up (like pizza). Food preparation in the Faroes is rarely anything other than functional. Now, moving on: if you’re a cook yourself, or you studied biology at school, you probably know that salt is a very good preservative. In fact, it was the only preservative we had for hundreds of years! Sailors had big barrels of fish and meat, heavily salted and Old Worlde travellers would often carry salted meat jerky. And up in the Faroes… they have salty wind! Lots and lots of salty wind.

I wish I was making this up but, in the Faroes, meat preparation and preservation — the age-old and finest tradition, the most elite way to cure meat and fish — is to hang it in the salty sea air. While hanging meat is nothing new — we normally do it with smoke, instead of all-natural home-reared ‘salt air’… — the Faroese have gone one further!

They hang whole sheep up. For days and even weeks, they slice that sucker open and hang it up to dry. And, if you go the whole hog and hang it for over a year and eat it raw, you get the finest of all Faroese delicacies: Skerpikjøt.

Yum (you have to admit, it looks truly awesome). Such is the prevalence and popularity of hanging meat, most Faroese houses have out-buildings called ‘hjallur’ that are dedicated to wind-drying. I don’t know if they hang them for months to bring out the flavour, or if they’re just too lazy to light a fire. I’ll be sure to sample it when I visit next month.

As I’ve already hinted, due to their dreary desolation in the middle of the Atlantic, nothing is wasted on the Faroe Islands. They eat whale blubber, something most people will find revolting (though, it’s the same as eating pork rind, no?) but perhaps more disgustingly the only bit of sheep that they have deemed ‘inedible’ is the current contents of its stomach…

(Click here to see the sheep’s head. I didn’t feel comfortable putting it right here on my blog… it’s pretty grim. My inner connoisseur appreciates the two potatoes laid daintily by its side though…)

Yup, brains and eyeballs. And I suppose they eat the intestines too… the Faroese really get love value for money! It also seems they eat a lot of mutton, rather than lamb, so I assume they milk the sheep for years before finally butchering them. If any vegetarians are still reading, I hope you’re impressed with their very efficient use of livestock!

Finally, though I’m not sure if it’s true (my Faroese friends might be playing a mean trick on me), the epitome of blue-ribbon, Michelin-star Faroese catering is… stuffed puffin! But try as I might, this is the best photo I could find of a stuffed puffin.

So, to conclude, the Faroe Islands don’t actually haev any real delicacies. Just really old-school ways of preparing food that some wise-ass Tourism Department decided to label as ‘delicacies’. Smart, cruel bastards.

There are lots of pretty photos in this entry. Feel free to scroll down to them if you don’t feel like reading. They’re not my photos though — but you get lots of those next week!

For the rest of the week you’ll likely get more highly interesting (or perhaps boring) posts on the Faroe Islands. If you didn’t know, or you’ve only just discovered the delightfully British realm of my blog, I’m going on holiday on the 13th July — next Monday! I have to admit, when I realised I was leaving in under a week I squealed with both excitement and worry. I think you’re meant to do lot of preparatory work before flying into a cold, rainy, desolate middle-of-nowhere island. A lot of preparation which I’ve kind of skipped doing so far. Oops.

I blame this blog! I’m writing when I should be cleaning my camera lenses! I’m shoving frozen peas down my shorts when I ought to be making sure I have enough clean jumpers (sweaters) to keep me warm!

Anyway, I have done a little research into what will be my home for 17 days (which is an awfully long time to spend in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, I tell you!)

First, a more detailed map.

If you’re wondering how big these islands are, the simple answer is ‘small’; the exact answer is: from north to south  it’s 70 miles (113km) and from east to west only 47 miles (75km)! There are 18 islands which have a rather grand total area of 545 square miles (1400km²) — the UK, by comparison, is 94,000 square miles. And the UK is small (the USA is 3.7 million square miles, by the way — you think you have population issues…?) If you click the map, you’ll see where I’m staying — Klaksik — in the the north east, quite close to ‘BORÐOY’. It’s only about 20 miles as the crow flies from the capital Tórshavn but it still takes 50 minutes to drive it (look for the bridges and tunnels between the islands shown by dotted lines, there’s no direct route!)

So I’ll be spending most of my time in a town with a vast population of about 4,500 (the second largest in the country!) The address of where I’m staying is simply the town name followed by a number (‘Klaksik 53′) — how cool is that?! If you’re nodding and saying ‘Cool!’ then good on you; that is why I chose the Faroe Islands! There are only a handful of locations like it in the world, and this is the only one that isn’t tropical.

Anyway, the people — they’re like Vikings, with all the braided beards, horned helmets and daunting tallness removed. I’m told I’ll be the tallest person in the country (…!) I will of course obtain photographic proof that they’re all really short (and cute, in the case of the girls, my host hastened to add). They seem to have kept their Scandinavian looks, but thanks to to the occasional rape-and-pillage by Portugese, Spanish and Turkish sailors there are a few darker-skinned and intense-looking people too. Mostly though, they’re just plain short.  Probably due to the inbreeding, if you think about it: 2,000 Viking settlers started it all and almost everyone there today stems from those original bloodlines. First cousins are considered ‘quite distant’ in Faroese terms…

(Incidentally, none of these photos are mine. They all come from Ólavur Frederiksen’s site, a fantastic Faroese photographer.)

There haven’t been any celebrities of International renown (except perhaps for Teitur, a musician) — perhaps on a local or Nordic scale, or if you’re really into ancient Norse texts, you might find some. They’re famous for fishing whales (and their wind-dried sheep) — that’s about it. If you don’t believe me, here’s a list of all their famous people. Leave a comment if you recognise any of them.

On the topic of whales, apparently, if I’m very lucky, I’ll get to participate in a whale hunt! Whaling is part of their culture, their heritage and their livelihood. There aren’t a whole lot of resources in the Faroe Islands; the sea is one of them and whales have provided valuable meat (and blubber!) for centuries. It’s a little sad that it has almost been banned, even though only 950 are caught each year. Is butchering pigs or cows any worse? They’re all mammals…

If only a bloody, sanguine-saturated sea didn’t make for such an awesome photo, eh?

(It was a toss-up between a photo of them jumping jovially through the water, or one of them dead on a beach…)

I won’t actually be killing any whales (I think) — it’s more of an involved process than ‘just’ killing them: there’s a sighting (probably by some ‘official whale scouter’); then the rallying of the whole town (really, the whole town takes part). Then they all jump into boats to hunt and drive them towards the beach. And then… I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to wait and see!

Talking of boats, we’ll have one to get around with. Which is how we’ll get to the tiniest and most remote islands (some of which have a population of… 1) and also how we’ll get to rocks (smaller and less grassy than an ‘island’) that have nothing on them but thousands of puffins. Puffins like these:

It can get a little rough at sea though, which is apparently why we have to stay very close to the coast. If you check the map again and find ‘Suðuroy’ (which we will be visiting), the following video is an example of what the sea can be like during the crossing:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODEYNRa7Oc4[/youtube]

I have a feeling that being able to tread water for 10 minutes might not be all that helpful if we capsize. Hopefully he has life jackets…

Back to the geography: the Faroe Islands are very low-lying (the highest point is only 880m!) but incredibly craggy. Black rock juts out of the short grass and almost nothing grows well there — except for sheep. There are lots and lots of sheep.

Also, I guess because of erosion by both sea and wind, almost every coastline is a cliff. This makes for some terrifying views which I am incredibly eager to photograph. Just look at this:

(Does your stomach flip a little looking down there…?)

And soon, in just 6 days, I’ll be there! Taking photos, hunting whales and eating puffin kebab! Remember, it’s not too late to buy your very own Personalised Faroese Landscape (but it’s probably too late to order in any fancy props, so bear that in mind).

As promised, just before I go to bed (I have to be up at 8am tomorrow! EIGHT!) here’s a ‘pre-Faroes’ self-portrait. Taken on the weak premise that I wanted to see just how hot my ‘layers’ setup actually is. And then, once the camera started clicking and the sun started setting… Well, you can see the result for yourself.

And I am smiling! Just a little smile, but you can’t see it very clearly. A thoughtful smirk.

(Click for full size, it’s worth it, to check out the hair. Can just about make out my dimple too, actually.)

My sister (who cut my hair) said I look like a mod; a little like Rod Stewart in fact. I think I look like Liam Gallagher. Neither of those options are particularly favourable. Let’s see what 17 days of salty wind does to it…

Arrived safely!

Went for a drive around 11:30 (just before midnight…!) and took these two photos, both from Muli, an abandoned village on the island of Bordoy. It was only abandoned in 1998 as life there is unsustainable (miles from anywhere, and only reachable by boat for much of its history). My host, as part of work experience, once shoveled 5 tons of sheep shit out of one of the sheds there (which is why we were there I think…)

Tomorrow we hope for less fog. And less rain. I think this is going to be a wet holiday.

I know I’m being dramatic but it’s TRUE!

When your heart is beating 200 times per minute it has to be bad news, unless you’re an Olympiad, right?

We had to stop four times, and two of the six actually turned back, unable to make it to the summit. But with my geeky, atrophied not-used-in-over-10-month legs, my shrivelled lungs and the heart of a man half my size… I made it!

(I not putting enough effort into describing just how unpleasant it was to climb the mountain. But that’s because I’m very tired and words aren’t coming easily and I have my hosts sitting either side of me… they’re trying to look like they’re not reading this but they obviously are…)

And I got two nice photos as a reward! Most of them featured a lens covered in rain. These two, miraculously, are clean.

It’s still really foggy but the bright patch in the first photo is the only break in the clouds that I’ve seen in the last 48 hours. It’s not due to clear up properly until Friday though…

It’s hard to describe just how quickly the fog moves though. You can see in the first photo that fog is actually clearing on the left side of the photo but pooling and curling around the rocks on the right side! And five seconds later you can’t even see the town below. In the second photo I’m just looking down over the side…

I think we’re resting tomorrow. And I’m looking at investing in a sedan chair. Let’s see how good their famed hospitality really is.

Yesterday we went for an ‘easy walk’.

Well, it was meant to be an easy walk until my hosts — my guides – forgot where exactly where we were going.

<Whispers>

‘It’s just over the next rise…’

‘No, I’m sure it’s over there…’

‘Well, let’s just go all over the mountains. I’m sure Seb will be fine… Look at him, he’s all big and strong and…’

<They think I can’t hear them. But my hearing is heightened in extreme circumstances…>

“Hey guys, what’s happening? My legs are like jelly — they still haven’t recovered after our warm up mountain climb yesterday — and my heart is suggesting in no uncertain terms that to continue would be akin to harakiri. You keep saying our destination is ‘just over there’… it’s been two hours, three chasms, four moraines and a handful of waterfalls…”

‘It is just over here! Come on!’

… (Something tells me they’re enjoying this way too much)…

In the end, it turned out that we’d climbed about a kilometer above our actual destination. But I did get to sit beside a waterfall and watch the fog slowly blow in and lazily fold its way over the hills. Visibility got down to about 5 meters and then… it just blew away. Magical!

Two photos for you this morning — one from about half way up the hill, one from the bottom. I have a bunch of ‘snaps’ that I’ll probably share at the end of the trip. Me looking like death, me sprawled out on a rock, me skinny dipping in a pool beneath a waterfall — that kind of thing.

In other news, I’m still not sleeping more than 2 or 3 hours each night. We’re going to try hanging black bags over the windows, see if that helps. I had fish pie last night and it was lovely. Still no whale, still no puffin — but I’ll try to rectify that in the next few days.

Oh, and there’s a wet t-shirt context next Wednesday! I thought those had been outlawed by feminists around the world… obviously not in the Faroes. Yay!

I’ll keep this one short as I want to try and get some proper sleep tonight (I finally have black bags over my bedroom windows!)

The sun finally came out! At least it did in the north east of the archipelago. We used the webcams that are placed all over the country to check — in real-time! To capitalise, we headed up to Vidareidi (from which point we could see Muli, the abandoned town I photographed the other day) and walked south along the coast.

The Atlantic Ocean has never looked quite so alluring. Deep-azure, turquoise, cobalt, midnight, Egyptian — blue! But not the wussy, pale blues of the Caribbean but dark, intense shades.

Also, there wasn’t a single hill in sight. Just lovely, flat coastlines. It looks like the islands were once volcanic (but I’m sure someone (mum?) will take one look at the photos and tell me exactly what kind of rock it is!) Actually, thinking about it, I found a vein of quartz so I’m sure it was once volcanic.

Anyway, two lovely photos from the island of Vidoy (and one of me posing at the end…):

And the bonus photo — me posing on the end of a very, very precarious rock. The fall is about 10 meters. There’s a photo of me losing my balance a few seconds later… but I look petrified, so we’ll just skip past that one…

Got up at 8am today… after going to bed at 2… fell asleep sometime around 5…

Actually got woken up in the middle of my first real sleep in the last five days! Bah.

Anyway, I’m a day behind on the photos now and I imagine I’ll only slip further behind as I reeeally need to try and sleep right about… now.

But we went out into the Atlantic today, up along the west coast of the Faroes. Alongside some huge, nay ginormous, cliffs (about 500 meters tall — imposing!) There were some puffins but they were very small even at the end of my largest penis extension (i.e. telescopic lens). I look forward to getting up close and personal with them next week.

Tomorrow features the Eating Of The Whale. We had to rummage around the city to see if anyone still had some from the last whale hunt… and we found some! Their hospitality here is truly amazing (the hunk of dark-black whale flehs that I’ve been given is worth about £500…!)

For now, you get three photos of me on the prow of the ship. Possibly having a bit of a Titanic moment (though without the inevitable iceberging…)

The second photo actually features a real, live smile. Save it to your harddisk; it’ll be worth something one day.

(They’re laughing at me. ‘Damn tourists…’)

(Just gathering my balance; not very easy to do out in the Atlantic… and look, a smile!)

(They didn’t actually do this bit in the film. But I felt that I hadn’t made a big enough fool of myself, so, y’know…)

‘It’s one of those smaller whales’ they said, obviously searching for the right translation.

They tricked me!

There I sat, munching thoughtfully on a piece of jet-black meat. ‘A bit like beef. Different aftertaste though.’ My host’s mother had cooked up the chunk of ‘whale’, served in a sauce made of its own gravy. It was underwhelming! I don’t mean that it tasted bad — it was lovely! — but obviously, after all of that foreplay, I expected a veritable taste explosion. Instead, it was like very dense, stewed beef. And black… really, it’s black meat. Very odd; very tasty!

‘You need to try it with spik, the blubber! That makes all the difference.’ I nodded my approval, not wanting to look like a wussy, cowardly tourist.

So, still to try: puffin, blubber and, as it turns out, whale! Yes, I did some research I actually ate Atlantic white-sided dolphin! But don’t worry, they’re not endangered and nor do they look nothing like those cute Bottlenosed ‘Flipper’ dolphins. In fact, they are just like little whales!

At least that’s what I’m telling myself…

Two more photos for you, one from a pretty little village called Gjógv (which is a tourist trap, or so I’m told) which has this huge canyon in its back yard. Really, the rear of their houses backs onto a 100-meter deep chasm. There isn’t even a fence to prevent any would-be dare-devil kiddies from jumping into the water below.

The other photo is an incredibly colourful cave that we went into on our trip into the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Streymoy. If anyone knows how such colours came to exist, do share! I assume it’s algae growth or chemical deposits…

(The majority of the canyon is around the corner out of sight… I tried to photograph it but failed, alas!)

(AND the blue sea! Could you get more colourful if you tried?)

Only three days until the wet t-shirt contest!!