Making things up since 1837. Contact me at gordonwrotesomething [at] gordondarroch.com
Thursday, July 16 The Svarfadardalur nature reserve. Every turn in Iceland brings a new sensory overload. Travel time: 9 hours (ferry), 4 hours 15 minutes (car) Distance covered: 335km Destination: Dalvik Iceland is a preposterous place in many ways. A huge island thrown up near the Arctic Circle by volcanic ruptures should be bleak and … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 6
Wednesday, July 15 Shetland, brooding in the morning light Travel time: 24 hours (ferry) Destination: Torshavn & Seyðisfjörður It’s not generally a good thing to be surprised by a lighthouse. But when I wake up at 7am and check the ship’s location app, I discover to my delight that we are right alongside the north … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 5
Tuesday, July 14 On the open sea Travel time: 48 minutes (car), 13 hours (ferry) Distance covered: 71km Destination: Hirtshals and beyond I must begin by conceding that air conditioning would have been a blessed relief last night, because the room was oppressively hot. I managed to improvise by wedging a fan in an open … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 4
Monday, July 13 Getting there … in Aalborg Travel time: 8 hours, 18 minutes Distance covered: 758km We set out for the German border at 8.15am, only 15 minutes behind schedule, though it stretches to 25 minutes when I have to go back for my glasses and my eldest son forgets his raincoat. The last … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 3
Sunday, July 12 We're not flying: we're sailing with style. Travel time: 20 minutes Distance covered: 20km I had a private cinema screening today. That’s not how it was planned: one of my sons wanted to watch Toy Story 5 and the film was showing at 11am on Sunday. The cinema in Emmen offered a … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 2
This is a travel blog of my 16-day round trip by land and sea with my sons from The Hague to Iceland in July 2026 Saturday, July 11 We are not in Iceland yet! Travel time: 2hrs 33 minutes Distance covered: 228km Location: Emmen (NL) In these days of cheap flights, few destinations can still … Continue reading Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 1
Garrincha tormented England in the 1962 quarter-final. Photo: Brazilian national archive English football fans tend to assume that the 1966 World Cup win was a confirmation of the natural order. The country that gave football to the world had given Johnny Foreigner a masterclass at the sport’s hallowed cathedral, Wembley Stadium. Football had come home. … Continue reading A brief history of English footballing failures (part 1)
Magteld in 2008, aged 32 Why do we say of people who have died that they are no longer with us? Magteld ceased to exist physically 12 years ago today, but she is still intensely with us – not just in our thoughts, but in the photographs hanging in the house that she chose for … Continue reading With us
The national Covid memorial wall in London on its first anniversary in The outbreak of hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship in the South Atlantic has stirred up painful suppressed memories of the Covid-19 pandemic. The dominant response on social media has been “oh no, not again” or “I’m not joining in this time”, along … Continue reading A week of remembering and forgetting
Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Gothic Arch, from Le Carceri d'Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons), First Edition (1750) In José Luis Borges’ The Immortal, the opening story of The Aleph, the narrator, a Roman soldier, sets out to find the City of Immortals, an abandoned metropolis located across a desert – intrigued by the question: if its residents … Continue reading Borges’ buildings and the prison of the imagination