There’s about a million and one articles flying around the psychology buzz-word of “self-care” at the moment. I was first introduced to the concept of self-care by a psychotherapist when discussing mindfulness.
So, we were pretty excited about snorkelling and hanging out between two tectonic plates…
By the time Sunday – our penultimate day in Iceland rolled round – and we’d felt the cold bite of a 70m storm from the moment we wake up, J and I were well and truly ready to jack the snorkelling in. H on the other hand was adamant we should go, so we wrapped up in our thermals, threw on some extra layers for good measure and, on slightly calmer roads, followed the Sat Nav to Penvgillar National Park.
After we arrived under the cover of darkness and hurried into the warmth of our cabin, we finished our proseccos and dutifully passed out – it had been a long day, with our journey taking in total about 15 hours after delays and waiting around. As an early bird, I woke up to hear the storm had eased, and to our utmost surprise, the sun was (albeit weakly) shining. Creeping out of bed, I looked out our front door…
Which was nothing compared to when I opened it…
We decided to don our thermals, and wonder down to the sea front which was about 600 yards from our cottage…
I nearly missed the bloody plane. Suffice it to say, doing a wine tasting seven hours before a flight won’t end well. Take it from me, DON’T do it. 😂.
After a long, horrific, delayed EasyJet flight, we touched down into a brutal storm. A shuttle took us to the car rental place where we were thrown some keys and told by a man in a thick Icelandic accent: “Hold on to the doors. We’ve had one of the cars already lose doors in the storm”…
The winds battered the car at 70mph, we blew all over the road in a tired old Hyundai, deep into remote Iceland, with the only respite from the car being blown across the road when we hit a toll tunnel, knowing we were ten minutes away from our destination.
Tired from extended delays, arms aching from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, we hooked a right into a sign post which made no sense, and were instructed to head to cottage 1. We took turns holding the door of the car, and after having been given the same warning about the cottage doors, ran in and out in a tandem of three to make sure we didn’t lose any doors.
February is always a fun month to me – it heralds the beginning of Six Nations, and it also kicks off my birthday month!
For the first time in years I threw a party for my birthday – the theme was “Party in the USA”, and there were surprisingly no Trumps, a few statues of Liberty, a baseball player… we threw on some hot dogs, made vodka jelly, had a Spotify shared playlist so people could contribute in the run up… all in all, it was AWESOME. 🙂
As I’ve mentioned many times, one of my biggest worries about moving to London was being far from big wide open spaces and lots of greenery and lush wildlife. That was long before I knew there was the likes of Bishops Park, Richmond Park and … well actually, before I realised there’s tonnes of greenery to be found in London – quite surprisingly!