Interrupting my chronological travel stories to talk about today’s news. As of this posting, the 2,000+ earthquakes per day that southwest Iceland has been experiencing have slowed. That is not as good as it sounds, as in the past, a lessening of earthquakes has meant that a volcanic eruption is imminent. They say the amount of potential magma is much greater than past eruptions, making this a particularly significant eruption. One town has been evacuated, and the country just waits.
The reason I’m mentioning this volcano in my blog (apart from the fact that it is a desperately frightening story) is that I am scheduled to fly to Stockholm on Thursday, returning Sunday. If my trip has to be cancelled due to an ash cloud like the one that grounded European flights for a week back in 2010, well, that’s fine – I can always book a last minute train trip to London or a car trip to East Anglia or wherever. But what if I get there and then I’m trapped in Stockholm? Yes, I realise this is waaaay up the first-world-problems ladder. And any other time this wouldn’t be the huge worry that it currently is. My concern is that I leave for Canada two weeks today. I kinda need to be back here packing and if I can’t fly back to Scotland, I guess I will have to look at a two-day train trip from Stockholm through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and England. But I feel guilty thinking about this, given what the Icelandic people are facing. The waiting must be terrible.
So back to the people of Grindavik and southwest Iceland – our thoughts are with them.