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The Faroe Islands

On the way home.. cruising across the north Atlantic via the Faroe Islands. We docked at Torshavn - a very pretty little town which is the 'capital' of the Faroes. The Island is part of Denmark but seems to look after itself. 

It is famous for its beautuful red painted parliament buildings sitting on the quayside with stunning turf rooves - Tingane. Turf rooves are not uncommon across the town as we discovered when we went exploring. 

We checked in the tourist information where we given 2 maps one detailed of town centre and the second a wider view of the surrounding area.... I mention this only because once we did start exploring in spite of having maps we got hopelessly lost and in fact spent a good hour in the suburbs of Torshavn trying to find coast path - more of that later....

We also asked about the viking sundial... of which the tourist person had no idea - but helpfully googled it and we found a approximate possible location. 

This was near the Tinganes - meaning the parliament houses so off we went over past the old buildings and started scouring the rocks for the sundial carving. It didnt take long actually' and it was surprising clear given how old it was. 

We walked up through the town heading for the art gallery. This took us through a fab little park with loads of trees and jungly bits - a welcome respite to all the town stuff and finally to the gallery. It was a nice airy space and once again full of interesting varied art. The gallery tries to convey the spirit of the Iskands and mostly it suceeds... There were a lot of landscapes some of which were really eyecatching and dramatic. There was alot ot space given over to culture - chain dancing - local crafts. The fishing industry was very evident and were references to whaling - both positive and negative. There was a life size model of a pilot whale made from glued together toy soldiers (not quite so eerie as Dino and Jake Chapmans toy soldier swastika) - when you got close to this whale it 'spoke' to you... various recording of different whale noises or people telling whale stories...

The visiting exhibition seemed to be about women... boobs and birthing... it was quite abstract and apart from one enormous piece of stunning life drawing - it didnt grab me at all.  

The large life piece depicted the cycle of life. The drawings - charcoal and colour washing were beautiful executed and displayed. I looked at it for a long time. I need to get back to life drawing....

There was an amazing room with very brightly colored walls lit up under mirrored ceiling and a mirrored floor which obviously gave you the feeling of infinity it was quite funky.
We left the gallery to go look for... some ROCKS... and then we got lost🤣🤣.

We never did find the rocks or even the coast path... we did wander about the housing estate and probably trespass in peoples gardens... we kept getting tantalising glimpses of the path but no clear route to reach it..

We finally hit the main road which gave us some lovely coastal views but no rocks🙁 and by this time we were desperate for a cuppa so we sloped off back to the ship.

That was our last port of call. All the places we have been have been really interesting and served to make us decide another trip to explore further regions is definetrly on the list of imminent adventures.

But we still had to finish this one... we treated ourselves to a meal in the very very nice specialist on board restraurant where we had 'masterchef' type food- extremely tasty and then finally... at last... it was a clear night fot Dr Freds final stargazing session. First night out of the 3 planned.... at last a beautiful clear sky - no moon and and an incredible milky way. Great way to finish the cruise. Dr Fred had a final talk to do the next day - the talk in which he pretty much admits publically to be a geek... actually admitting he counted 51, 377 grains of sand in order to prove/ disprove Carl Sagan theory of there are as many stars in the universe as grains of sand on the earths beaches.... 🤣🤣. His talk on Stars and Sand went down very well. 

So now the home strait... back to newcastle and a few weks before we need our sea legs again. 

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