Day 10

It was gone 9:30am when I decided to go for a ride on the bike, because the decision wasn’t straight forward.

And this wasn’t just any old ride, today’s ride was the reason I am on Grimsey Island.

If you know what bike trips I have done over the last 10 years, then you won’t be surprised by this one.

For today, I am yet again, going to be crossing the arctic circle by motorcycle!

When I came out here, it was unsure if I would be allowed to take the bike up to the marked spot, or whether I would have to walk it, but I was told from a local resident & business owner, sure you can, just follow the track and don’t veer off it and you will be fine.

So, with that new information, and the weather being dry and bright, I completely unloaded the luggage from the bike, put my gear on and off I went.

Now, from the village it is only something like 2.5 km, and there was only one track, so I didn’t need to use a sat nav, which is just as well, as it hasn’t worked properly since coming off the ferry yesterday.

Iceland will be my 6th country where I have crossed the arctic circle on a motorcycle, the 5 previous being Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This really, only leaves Russia left to do, and that is looking doubtful as to whether I will get that done in my lifetime with the current state of world affairs.

The track was rather slippery in places and as there were people about, so, I always kept my speed below 20mph and slowed down further when I come across anyone. I was heading for the monument that marks the location.

The arctic circle monument, called “Orbis et Globus” (Latin for “Circle and Sphere”), is a giant concrete orb weighing nearly nine tons, installed on North Iceland's Grímsey Island. Now I have been known to miss the odd sign post, but even without my sat nav, I was confident that I wouldn’t miss a huge concrete ball that was larger than my motorcycle!

Now, I have to admit, the main event was definitely the arctic circle crossing. So, once this was done, I thought I would just head on back to the village.

Never, did I realise that Puffin watching would take up far more of my time, and that I would take more photos of those cute little birds than I would take of my motorcycle at this pinnacle time.

The fact is, that I took 179 photos of the Puffins, and just 43 photos of my bike! Even the beautiful wild Icelandic horse came in with a respectable 26 photos grabbing third place.

The bonus of the day was that there was a free to use hose so I washed the worse of the mud off my bike!