DAY FIVE

In the morning I arose at 5am and was on the road for 6.30. The sun was shining and more importantly there was no wind, excellent! Now I could put some miles on my clock.

The road was in fairly good condition and to start with hilly but as I left Hofn behind it became flatter. Within an hour I was able to see the southern most tip of the largest glacier in Europe the Vatnjokull, the road took me across the moraine that the glacier has left behind.
It was teeming with bird life, I was dive-bombed frequently by skewers, turns and the occasional petrel all seeing me as a threat to their nests. The view to my right was fantastic I could see three enormous fingers of ice from the glacier cutting through the jagged volcanic rock and to my left beyond the glacial moraine was the blue expanse of the North Atlantic.
About 5-6km short of Jokulsarlon the road passes very close to a valley glacier and the freezing wind that came off of it nearly blew the trike and me over into the road. After attempting to ride through this stretch for what seemed hours I had to pull in to the right, face into wind and lean over the trike to steady it in the gusts. Just as I was contemplating hitching a lift out of the immediate line of the wind I heard a familiar voice.

Cycling up behind me was Fredrick a Belgian triathelete and two Swiss guys I had met on the bus they were also doing battle with the wind. They stopped and we all "commented" on the strength and temperature of the wind before attempting again to move on to Jokulsarlon. Frederick offered to ride to my right and hopefully deflect some of the wind away from my bigger and bulkier trike, it worked and we all managed to make about 7-8kph.
On arrival at Jokulsarlon, one of the Swiss guys looked out to sea and spotted a whale. We just caught a glimpse as it dived under the surface feeding on the abundant plankton which in turn are feeding on the endless nutrients that are supplied by the melting glacier at this time of year. As we pulled into the car park of this popular tourist attraction

I thanked them all for their help and we took some pictures of the colossal icebergs that peel off of the glacier at this point and float around in a huge 100m deep glacial lake.
I left the guys to have their lunch, it was 4.30pm, I had eaten earlier and explained to them that I wanted to get to Skaftafell by mid evening and if I didn't leave now I would never get there especially if I encountered any more wind blown stretches.
So off I went and made good time until about 8km from Skaftafell when I was confronted with a steep and long hill and to top it all off a strong cold head wind. It took me an hour to travel 1km and as I sat physically drained at the side of the road with 100m of the hill to go an Icelander in a pick up truck stopped and offered me a lift. It was 9.30pm I had another 7 km to go and the strength and direction of the wind was against me if I didn't take this lift I wouldn't make the campsite until midnight so I loaded up and collapsed in the front seat having completed 130km.

At the campsite I threw the tent up and whilst my food was cooking did my nightly maintenance on the trike which consisted of oiling up and tightening all the nuts and bolts. The trike mechanically was holding up very well I had only had one problem and that was with the suspension, which was quickly rectified. At about 12.30am Frederick arrived minus the two Swiss, he too was extremely tired he had had the same problem as me and also hitched a lift (I found out later that the Swiss guys had done the same but gone to another campsite).