This photo was used in another entry on my blog, but I’m going to write a little bit more about it — and, also, you might want to just look at pretty photos, rather than trawl through a whole blog entry. Though, there’s a podcast, if you want to listen to a Brit rambling on about not much in particular, and another pretty photo of Venice.

Anyway, the photo, taken in October 2008 from the banks of the river Arno in Florence. I think I’m standing on Ponte Vecchio, unique in its age and incredibly good condition. Famously, Hitler spared the bridge, when all other bridges were destroyed. Possibly because it’s so beautiful, and so full of charm, lined almost exclusively today with jewellery shops.

It’s 900 years old, in its current form, and there’s been a bridge there in some form for over a thousand years.

Enjoy the photo; it’s a rather remarkable sky, suitable for Skywatch Friday!

This is a photo that was actually taken about 15 minutes before my last Skywatch Friday entry (spot the roof of the building below in the other photo!) This is one of the few times that a photo has actually captured both the beauty and the gentle illumination of the clouds accurately. Normally what you see in person, while striking, doesn’t actually look like the photos you take — photos of sunsets are usually overexposed or burned out, swamped in yellow light. It might not be unpleasant to look at, but it probably doesn’t look a whole lot like the sunset you actually experienced!

This one though… this sunset is perfect. Every time I look at it I want to be back in Florence, standing on the Ponte Vecchio bridge — at over 1000 years old, by far the oldest structure I’ve ever stood on. I want to walk through the old, dilapidated, rustic streets. I want to kick back in one of the lovely pizza parlours with some olives and a bottle of Chianti — and of course, some crusty bread, oil and balsamic vinegar.

I look forward to sharing a few more photos from my trip to Italy with you all, my fellow sky-watchers!

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.

This week I created some buttons that, if you have your own blog, you can put in your sidebar. Hopefully you find one of the two pictures inoffensive enough to have on your blog. If not, I should have one of me in a doctor’s jacket and stethoscope next week, which should be quite pleasing to those few girls out there that like their men in uniforms… Now, on with the show!

Dear Dr Moses, Parter of the Seas,

Is it true that you can’t go swimming until half an hour after eating or is it a myth? If not, why not?

- Naturally Buoyant from Boston [Perhaps I should provide a way of uploading photos to accompany questions... -S]

Now this is one I’ve always wondered about! First, the kind of exercise is irrelevant — running, cycling, swimming — they are all equally bad after eating! This is because your body requires a lot of energy to digest food. Your stomach and intestine require a lot of oxygen, and thus blood, to successfully process your meal. But if you exercise, oxygen is required by your legs and arms, and heart — and there’s only so much oxygen to go around! That’s when your muscles cramp: your leg muscles spasm because they’re not receiving enough oxygen.

The problem with swimming in specific is: if you have cramps in your legs you might drown. Cramps while running or cycling are obviously not as dangerous (unless you face plant the curb).

Also worth noting is that if you must swim after eating, eat something light — fruit or carbs. Fats and proteins are harder to digest and require more time (and energy) for your intestine and stomach to process completely. You should probably wait 2 or 3 hours after a big, fatty meal before swimming.

Apparently there’s also a rumour/myth that you can pass out from swimming after eating. It’s not impossible, but it’s much more likely to be caused by some other physical condition: a fever that raises your body temperature so high that jumping into cold water causes shock, and thus making you pass out (and then drowning!). Your body temperature goes up a little after eating, which is probably where this rumour comes from.

Dear Seb,

I have a blog stalker!

He leaves epic comments on my blog and is overly touchy-feely when we chat online. He hugs and kisses and…  he’s just too nice, creepy-like. This has gone beyond just ‘Mr Nice Guy’ and it’s freaking me out!

I think he’s made of marshmallows and vaginas [Beautiful imagery -S]. I can tell he’s a total Mommy’s boy, and he’s overly emotional.  He annoys the hell out of me, and though I’ve blocked him because I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s smothering me on the internet, he sends me emails every day saying he loves me and misses me. LOVES me?

I’ve had about four conversations with him, during which I found myself leaning back in my computer chair, gasping for breath as I felt I was being suffocated with false affections… WTF do I do?

Sincerely,
Smothered in the States

I think this is a problem that many bloggers might’ve experienced, or may experience one day: the scary commenter that both makes your skin crawl and drives other commenters away. The chat and email situation is another thing entirely — you can block his emails, don’t forget, just as you’ve already blocked his chatter!

But the blog stalking, well, that’s potentially a whole lot more sticky. If he’s as benign as he appears, you probably have nothing to worry about — but stalking is the kind of thing that starts off as a flight of fancy, a mere crush, but quickly turns into something a whole lot more sinister!

There’s a lot of resources on the Internet about dealing with real-world stalkers, but very little on the topic of blog stalking. I would suggest you take sensible precautions:

• Blog under a pseudonym — You’ll still have a problem here if you’ve given your full name and location in the past, but this should at least stop the ‘opportunist’ predators.
• Self-host your blog — If you host your own blog (WordPress or TypePad, for example), you have a lot of control over who reads your entries. You can always turn your blog ‘private’ too, but that’s admitting defeat, and you shouldn’t suffer at the grubby, spindly hands of a stalker!
• Change your address/contact details — This is the best real life way to escape a stalker too! Think about changing your blog and/or email address. Again, this is letting the stalker win — sucks.
• Contact his/her ISP — If you have their personal details (which is likely, considering they have probably made contact), you can probably contact their Internet provider and have them suspended for harassment. This isn’t a simple task though and you should probably contact the police before you try to do it yourself!

If all else fails: send him a photo of a hairy, fat trucking type that can’t see his own penis  — claim that’s what you really look like, and that pretending to be someone else is your method of escaping the daily grind.

Seb the Biologist!

Quickly, I don’t know how long I’ve got to live!

I’m swallowing and hence withholding burps; am I going to explode?!

Hiccup,
Suck ‘n Blow in the South East

No. You might fart more though, which could be embarrassing. Stop being a damn drama queen! (This was actually sent a few days ago, so the person that sent it might have exploded before reading my soothing words. In which case, I guess I’m partially to blame…)

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:

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).

What with all the excitement of my holiday on Monday I have to admit that I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write. Which is annoying because I really like writing! And I won’t get to write properly until after my trip. I hope I can survive (and satisfy you guys) with just lots and lots and lots of photos. Here’s hoping!

Anyway… I caught an episode of a fantastic series that’s airing in the UK on Channel 4 at the moment: Inside Nature’s Giants. The first episode featured an elephant (which I missed!) but this week they autopsied a massive Fin Whale (second only in size to the Blue Whale, the largest creature on the planet) — and as the Faroe Islands have lots of Fin Whales, I was obviously very interested! This poor girl had beached itself in Ireland and died — but not to waste such a golden opportunity, a crack team of biologists and veterinary scientists flew in to cut the beastie into little pieces –  in the name of science and commercial TV! (Here’s a video clip which I hope you can view outside the UK.)

I won’t lie: it was pretty damn grim to see the whale’s coroner knee-deep in whale bits (there’s no other word or words that can suitably describe the pink, wobbly mass she was wading through). ‘If I can just reach a little bit further up here into this cavity I can free its heart, but it’s tied down by all of these blood vessels…’ She’s hacking away with a machete! Chopping away at a dead whale!

The heart of this leviathan is a cubic meter! The main scientist (the one with the sharpest knife) held up a segment of its aorta (the main output artery of the heart) and it was about the size of your head! And its heart only beats three times a minute! (Which is how it stays underwater for so long.) The whole whale weighs 60 tons (55,000kg) and is 65 feet (20m) long! When feeding it swallows 70 cubic meters (18,000 gallons) of water and then spits it back out through its filters, capturing fish and crustaceans. It can empty and fill its 3000-litre lungs in one breath — which it only needs to do once every 40 minutes!

But the amazing bit? They’re mammals, just like you and I! They originally started off as dog-like creatures with hoofed feet. 53 million years ago these ‘pakicetids’ jumped into the water and never looked back. It took 15 million years for them to lose their legs and become fully marine. 8 million years more and they had learnt to echolocate (the ’sonar’ that they use to locate food and obstacles). 10 million years later they diversified into dolphins and porpoises — and that’s where we are today.

‘Just’ 53 million years to mutate from average-sized land-dwelling mammal to the largest species this planet has ever known — the Blue Whale (which are bigger than commercial jets, by the way). Their new-born children weigh 6,000lbs (2,700kg) and drink 400 litres of milk a day! But as weird and foreign and huge as they are, they’re still mammals. These monsters are genetically more similar to a mouse than a fish.

And that made me think about where we’d be in 53 million years.

Humans are incredibly young in the grand scale of things. We — Homo habilis, our very, very primitive ancestors — started using tools around 2.5 million years ago, which set us apart from our chimpanzee brethren. And look how far (or not?) we’ve come in just 2.5 million years! In another 51.5 million years what could we possibly evolve into?

I’ve talked a tiny bit about the future of the human race but hardly touched on the topic of evolution.Will we even live long enough to experience tangible evolution? And if we do evolve significantly, what form will it take? Looking at that little dorky dog-like creature above, and then at the Blue Whale it’s almost impossible to fathom what we might become if given enough time! What environmental condition or external stimulus will have the biggest impact on our evolution? Will we develop a 6th finger on each hand to help us type faster? Will evolution instead take the form of transhumanism: bionic arms and eyes, and cybernetic implants?

The problem is, evolution is slow. You can forget ruggedised skin to survive global warming (or impending ice age if you’re that way inclined). You can forget wings to fly around with (though that might happen if we move to a planet with less gravity!) In fact… I really have no idea what we might evolve into. It’s like being asked ‘what do you think the world will be like in 100 years?‘ but exponentially more difficult to answer.

Looking at history we’re actually more likely to wiped out by a meteor before we evolve into something new and exciting. With us obliterated, the whales might sneak back onto land and spend another 53 million years transforming back into dogs:  speaking dogs with opposable thumbs capable of using tools.

Hmmm…

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!