Thread by @TJQPNI

As soon as we finish in Theatre we have planned a little jaunt to see an actual live volcanic eruption. Nothing out of the ordinary to see here! 🇮🇸 🇬🇧 #nerves&volcanoes

Off to see the 🌋 🎉. 😀🤩

So… I want to tell you about my experience of seeing a real volcano. It feels a bit indulgent to go on but I can’t fit this into one tweet- Today I saw a volcano. …

I knew this wasn’t going to be an everyday event, it was to be something special, and I was super excited. It was though totally different to how I had imagined it…

So my Host Ingvar drive us the 40 mins or so from his hospital In Reykjavik. It was raining (the Saúld that is everywhere) but as we climbed a ridge over the lava flow the clouds parted a little and the orange glow just jumped out. It is a living colour deep intense and vivid…

The lava is visibly churning bubbling and throwing out chunks and lines. I can only describe it as similar to pictures of the sun with solar-jets of thick colour spraying out. But on a mountain too a few hundred yards away from me…

Not only is the lava bowl visibly mixing and bubbling it runs down the mountain side- these flows look like they are running like a conveyors belt. Not slow creeping flow but heat haze shimmering running fluid. This even from this distance was shining bright against the volcano..

To get a better view we hiked over a ridge 3K. On the way the clouds came back in and the volcano even with its glow became lost. There was no doubt which way it lay though…

The noise! I never imagined a noise like this. Waves crashing, a train hurtling by, gusting wind all combined. Not a roar so much but an urgent vibration it’s like a dragon waking, a giant coughing; something as unreal as that, reverberating across the valley…

The valley (and a number of others around this growing new mountain) is filled with lavaflow. This is like the cracked burnt top of a brownie. But there is square miles of it poured out thick to set. The top cracked and pouring out steam and glowing hot.

These are fragments from that lava flow that were hot to the touch when I cracked them free from a flow months old but with new lava likely flowing under its crust keeping it still steaming hot. Porous rough and peaked it sounds like glass when hit…

Then the radiating heat: on the ridge as we descend in drizzling rain & 20mph winds it is warm - like a hot summer breeze -when it blows from the direction of the lava. Climbing down you feel the radiating heat on your face and see the haze. Spurts of steam vent across the valley

Then the smell - it’s gorgeous, not eggy but like a mix of every bonfire memory and the biggest ever party popper, kind of burnt and ‘gunpowerdy’ and yet powerful in its intent. Like the pungent aroma of volcano on date night!..

So that was it- my date night with a volcano. It sounds too much, but it was really moving. That new mountain being spewed out of the deep central core of this world has affected me. Thank you for indulging me if you got this far. I consider my self very luck to have seen it.

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