Just got done editing photos from summer 2016, in the few months before Jess and I got married.

In this blog, I look back at the sunny, warm day we went berry picking in Hvalfjörður, just north of Reykjavík. It was our first time foraging for berries. Growing up, I had a suspicion of berries. I remember being told not to pick them as they were probably poisonous. My only previous experience was as a kid going to a "pick your own" strawberry farm, coming home stained in red juice, and with more strawberries then a family could eat. But that was in controlled conditions, all the strawberries were edible. Here, we were in the wild. But Icelanders assured me there are not many poisonous berries here. Just pick purple ones and not red, and you will be fine.

A friend suggested Hvalfjörður was full of berries, so we set out in our old Suzuki jeep for a day in the countryside. Our initial attempts at finding berries by the side of the road proved unfruitful (if you excuse the pun). So we decided to pull down towards the shore down a dirt track. The berries seemed to elude us but we did find a nice beach...

We drove on a little further and remembered a natural hot pot in the side of the fjord, and after a few wrong turns, we eventually found it. I'm afraid I can't reveal the location because I want to keep it a secret. But, once you get in, feeling the warm water and looking over into breathtaking Icelandic scenery, it takes a long time before you can summon the willpower to drag yourself out again.

Eventually some other people discovered our secret spot, which gave us the impetus to drag ourselves out the hot pot. On our way back to the car, we spotted what turned out to be hundreds of crowberry plants (krækiber in Icelandic). They are similar to blueberries, but a bit more tart and smaller. We got to work picking us many as we could fit in our Bónus carrier bag, but soon realised filling the bag would take several hours, so we contented ourselves with about a quarter of a bag full.