B2Reading and Use of Englishส่วน 6
Gapped text
You are going to read an article. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
The bus driver looked at my bicycle, then at the sky, then back at me. “You know there’s nothing out there?” he said. I told him I knew. That was, more or less, the point. I had spent months planning a ride across Iceland’s interior, a vast highland of lava fields, black sand and glacial rivers where nobody lives and the few roads are open for only a couple of months each summer.
The first day was easier than I had feared. The track climbed gently away from the last farms, and by the afternoon the green fields had disappeared completely.
I stopped several times just to listen. There was no traffic, no birdsong, not even the sound of wind, only the ticking of my bike as it cooled in the sun.
The silence did not last. On the second morning, I woke to the sound of my tent being shaken violently.
I packed up as quickly as I could, but cycling was impossible. Even pushing the bike, I was moving at walking pace, and twice the wind blew me off the track altogether. It took me nine hours to cover thirty kilometres. By evening the wind had dropped, and I fell asleep without even eating.
The rivers were the part of the trip I had been most nervous about. Before leaving, I had read endless advice about crossing them safely: unclip your shoes, face upstream, and never cross alone in the afternoon, when the water from melting glaciers is at its highest.
It was knee-deep, freezing and moving much faster than it had looked from the bank. Halfway across, I lost my footing and nearly let go of the bike.
I made it to the other side, shaking, and sat on a rock for a long time. A little later, a jeep appeared from the opposite direction, the first vehicle I had seen in two days.
They gave me hot coffee and a bar of chocolate, and when I told them about the river, the driver laughed and said it was “a small one”. I decided not to ask about the rivers further on.
After six days, I rolled down towards the north coast, and the first patch of grass felt almost shocking. I had expected to feel proud, and I did, a little.
For a week I had thought about nothing except water, wind and the next few kilometres of track, and my mind had become wonderfully quiet.
Would I do it again? Probably, although next time I’ll take a friend for the rivers.
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