The top of Bolafjall mountain has long been an unofficial viewing platform then some hard working chappy from Bolungarvik then decided to make it official so raised some big bucks and built a stunning latticed platform that now walks you out over the edge of the cliff, safely.

The design also included a lovely stone wall to welcome visitors - with my mate Unnstein Elíasson asked to do the work. Knowing my penchant for suffer-missions, he kindly asked me to come join him on the project.

Our rocks were sourced on-site/sifted from a bunch being lorried-up the mountain to build the car park. Then we got to work, a small digger, two iron rods and a chisel our tools. Unnsteinn's got an eye for the gigantic—the base layer of the wall was made up of rocks that would flatten a car. He's a stone-wizard.

There were two separate stretches of the wall, each 15 metres and double sided. We filled the centre of each wall chamber with smaller rocks as we worked upwards, layer by layer. Drystone walling uses no cement and makes only minimal adjustments to the shape of a rock with a chisel. It's a 3 dimensional jigsaw puzzle with no pre-cut shapes.

Some days, most days the rocks wept; there be so much weather atop a mountain! At some point, we did wonder whether the gods disagreed with our work, so appalling were the conditions. Working in thick mist for days on end added a mental toil to the physical toil already demanded.

As we went upwards, the rocks needed to be moved by hand, a herculean task that busted more than a couple of my knuckles. I learnt slowly where to put fingers and where not! I cried, I complained, I thought about quitting, but Unnsteinn was endlessly encouraging.

Then occasionally things would flow. A run of rocks would slide perfectly into place, and suggest my three dimensional reading of the rock was improving, and it was. But fuck, this work is slow, never ending and if you ever want to learn patience . . .