We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
I'm back. What an amazing holiday! The 250 odd photos that turned out the best or most represented the holiday are here, but I took nearly twice as many as that. Iceland is so photogenic that it's hard to stop taking them. I bought a huge book of professional photographs that puts mine to shame and which is inspiring me with destinations for my next visit.
Friday 21st July - Arrival in Reykjavik.
It was about as dark as it gets when we landed. As we left the airport around midnight it was very cloudy and there was a dark blue cast to the lava fields. However it did get very light again very quickly. I was really surprised that nowhere we stayed had proper black out curtains. The Reykjavik apartments had blinds and dark curtains, but weren’t really that effective. I suppose you get used to it. I’d brought an eye mask.
I didn't take much in on the drive to the apartment in Reykjavik because I was so tired and our driver was about the only Icelander we spoke to who didn't speak clear English, although he was still keen to point out things of interest on the drive.
Saturday 22nd July - Akureyri, Goðafoss and whale watching from Husavik
Up excited and ready for adventure, if not actually bright eyed and bushy tailed after not enough sleep, and off to the domestic airport for our flight to Akureyri in the north.
We flew over glaciers and volcanoes, grey and brown barren wastelands, snow topped mountains and green valleys and landed on a runway in the middle of a fjord. At the time the view seemed incredible, but we suspected we were going to find it pretty routine in a few days and we were right! We stopped for a few photos, picked up the car and headed into Akureyri for a quick look round and a snack.
Akureyri is the second largest town in Iceland, outside the greater Reykjavik area (it's the fourth largest overall) with a population of around 16,000. Despite this there wasn't much to keep us in Akureyri so we had a snack, took a look at the Lutheran church (which features stained glass from Coventry cathedral) and headed off to Goðafoss, a fairly small (by Icelandic standards) but beautiful waterfall ("foss") so called because a chieftain threw the statues of his pagan gods into it after the adoption of Christianity.
Then it was onwards to Husavik where we were to be based for the next two nights. We got settled into our cottages and then went into pretty Husavik proper for dinner, a visit to the whale centre and whale watching.
We were lucky enough to see (although not photograph particularly well) two humpback whales and a few pods of dolphins. Apparently we missed a distant sighting of a minke whale when we went below for a few minutes to warm up and have some hot chocolate and cinnamon buns. The whale watching trip was one of the few times I was actually cold in Iceland, even more so than on the glacier.
Sunday 23rd July - Mývatn area ("The Diamond Ring")
This was my favourite day, incredible landscapes, loads of active geological sites and beautiful weather. We went to see the gems in North East Iceland's aptly named "Diamond Ring", which later absolutely blew away southwest Iceland's equivalent, the Golden Circle for all of us.
We drove across lunar landscapes formed by volcanic ash and soil erosion where the only plants were tiny purple flowered arctic thyme. (Iceland smelled wonderful, apart from when it smelled sulphurous, and we even got to like that!) Every so often there'd be huge banks of arctic lupin, looking utterly surreal in the wasteland.
The arctic lupin is extremely hardy and enriches the soil, so they've been planted in large swathes to counter soil erosion. Unfortunately they're taking over and driving out the native flora so sheep are being reintroduced into selected areas of the Skaftafell national park to try to keep them under control. It's awesome to think that any plant can survive in those conditions, let alone flourish and spread.
In Iceland as a whole there were a lot more flowers than I expected. Like Orkney, they were mostly tiny and hardy, the arctic thyme being the most prevalent, but we also saw cotton grass in the marshes, bluebells and many other flowers we couldn’t identify.
Lake Mývatn was an entirely different story, lush and green, it's a bird reserve and also one of the most interesting geological areas. We drove over glorious blue rivers and through green countryside to reach the pseudo-craters of Skútustaðagígar, where we stopped for ice cream and a walk up on of the larger pseudo-craters, then on to the weird lava formations of Dimmu Borgir (dark castles) where we took the "difficult path" and were awarded with the best views, and paid tribute to the other Dimmu Borgir.
We stopped for lunch in Reykjahlíð and then went for a wander round the blue lake formed by the run off from the geothermal plant which powers the Kísiliðjan diatomite plant nearby. It looks a bit like the famous Blue Lagoon, but it was too hot to swim in.
A few kilometres on we had a wander round the Námafjall hverir (geologically active area), full of bubbling mud pools, steaming piles of rock and colourful rocks, then on to the huge Víti ("Hell") crater and the fresh (formed in the 1980s) lava fields at Leirhnjúkur, all from the Krafla volcano.
We rounded off a hot and dusty day with a dip in the Mývatn Nature Baths, Mývatn's answer to the Blue Lagoon, but so much quieter and in a spectacular setting, with views of the whole Mývatn lake area.
Monday 24th July - Ásbyrgi, Dettifoss and kayaking in Seyðisfjörður
The mists had set in as we were leaving the Mývatn area and hadn't lifted by the next morning so it was a grey drive up to Ásbyrgi, the end of the Jökulsárgljúfur National Park,"Iceland's Grand Canyon". Glacial flooding carved the canyon into a horse's hoofprint shape, said to be where Odin's eight legged horse Sleipnir touched his foot to the ground.
We climbed up the bit in the middle of the footprint for amazing views over the countryside. Then it was on to Hafragilfoss, a beautiful waterfall further up the canyon and a view point from which we could see columnar basalt cliffs, a jewel of a blue lake and rushing glacial river, and Dettifoss, Europe's most powerful waterfall by flow. We had our picnic lunch there and everyone else went paddling. 200-500 cubic metres of water per second and they went paddling. Nutters.
We carried on to Seyðisfjörður through changing countryside and it got warmer and warmer until we spotted a river with a deep looking pool and everyone but me went swimming (there's a pattern emerging here...). It wasn't as deep as it had seemed.
We made it to peaceful Seyðisfjörður in time for dinner before going kayaking on the fjord. Simon, Daryl and I and probably the best meal of the trip, sea trout in a leek and peppercorn sauce with grilled courgettes and rice. Unfortunately Aideen had her worst meal of the trip, a bland veggie burger which overcompensated with too much hot mustard.
The food (for us meat eaters anyway) was mostly better than I expected throughout the trip, although the portions were often very small. The fish dishes I had were, of course, the nicest, even the Italian restaurant we went to one night did a good job of the catfish, which I hadn’t had before and turned out to be a bit like swordfish or shark, which I’m not keen on.
I still don't know how they did it but somehow I found myself in a kayak on a deep fjord just outside the Arctic Circle. There's no way I'd have gone in one on my own, but I was sharing a kayak with our guide, Hlynur. I definitely got the better deal as I had to do very little paddling and got to see puffins from about ten feet away.
We kayaked from ten till midnight. The whole valley had a cloud ceiling on it so it actually got pretty dark by the time we stopped. After kayaking Simon and I went back out to photograph the pretty church all lit up and the Hollywood style Seyðisfjörður sign on the hillside.
Seyðisfjörður is Iceland's main ferry town and on Wednesdays and Thursdays it's heaving when the boat comes in from Lerwick and the Faroes, but on Monday night it was still and quiet.
Tuesday 25th July - The East Fjords, Jökulsárlón and our first glacier
We had a really good breakfast at the hotel (the Hotel Aldan was the best place we staying in my opinion) and hit the road again. We stopped to look back on Seyðisfjörður which was still blanketed in low cloud from a viewpoint above the village. We drove through some of the most intimidating scenery on this leg of the trip, a lot of it on gravel despite being on the main ring road, Route 1. Glacial valleys and skree slopes that looked like they were just waiting for us to pass to come down, and unbridged fjords that the road took us up and down until we finally got our first glimpse of the great glacier Vatnajökull, an offshoot of which we were to walk on in the morning.
But first we stopped at glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón and went for a boat ride among the stately icebergs. (They just drove into the water and then the vehicle was a boat! It was like something out of James Bond, which is appropriate as two Bond movies were filmed there. They dammed the lagoon from the sea so it would freeze over.)
The amazing blue colours are because the ice is so compressed that it reflects as much of the blue spectrum as a large body of water and becomes more or less blue depending on the amount of air its exposed to. The black is volcanic ash and rocks carried down by the glacier. We took about hundred photographs between us, it was so beautiful. Aideen went paddling with the seals which come into the lagoon to catch the herring that are brought in by the tide.
We eventually tore ourselves away and drove the last stretch to the Hotel Skaftafell, where after a meal that was delicious (arctic char for me) but was the most tiny portion imaginably, we took our first unofficial steps on the edge of the Svínafell glacier just a ten minute walk round the back of the hotel.
We couldn't go far without crampons so we stayed on the gritty bit where it dissolved into the moraines and saved ourselves for the morning.
Wednesday 26th July - a walk on the Svínafell glacier, Núpsstaður and Skogafoss
We were up at what would have been the crack of dawn in more southerly latitudes and off to Skaftafell National Park for our glacier tours. Aideen and Daryl were doing the hardcore 5 ½ hour trip complete with harnesses and ropes but Simon was stuck with me on the more gentle 2 hour trip. But he still got an ice axe. I really don’t think I could have coped with their tour but our tour sped by, full of beautiful views and nooks and crannies in the ice. The crampons took a bit of getting used to but soon I was going up slopes, along and even down again without too much difficulty. It wasn’t even that cold although not quite that warm.
Some people drank from the melting ice. The guide said “there’s a rule of thumb in Iceland. If the water looks good to drink… it probably is”. The tap water was just as nice, and everywhere we ate they brought it without question and sometimes without prompting. No overpriced bottled water here!
After our tour we killed time in the excellent visitor centre where they had an exhibition on the natural history and geology of the area, including a video show about the great jökulhlaup of 1996, when a volcano erupted under Vatnajökull, the glacier above it melted into the glacial lake under the ice and when the water pressure got to be too much, it actually lifted the glacier and flowed under it, bursting out and flooding the land below. 100 tonne blocks of ice were tossed and tumbled by the flood waters, destroying bridges (that one was left as a memorial) and washing the road away. Amazingly no one was killed and the road and bridges were passable again after just 3 weeks of repairs.
We had to really motor to get to Reykjavik by a reasonable hour but we had time to stop off at the picturesque Núpsstaður to see the turf covered church and cottages and Skogafoss, one of Iceland’s highest waterfalls, where Simon got a little too close…
Unfortunately we motored a little too much and we got pulled over for speeding. The location on Daryl’s speeding ticket was given by map co-ordinates because it was so remote.
By the time we got to Reykjavik we were feeling like the best of the holiday might be behind us, and a pretty average dinner in a pizza place with dreadful service didn’t help. We had planned to give the drivers a day off on our first day back in the southwest but we thought some more natural wonders might lift our spirits so the next day we decided to do the “Golden Circle”.
Thursday 27th July - Viking houses, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
First stop was preserved Viking farmhouse, Stong, which was buried Pompeii style under volcanic ash in the 12th century. We also visited the nearby reconstruction at Þjóðveldisbærinn where Daryl and I made a friend and Daryl found the house itself to be most huggable.
Gullfoss was a big disappointment. There were about six tourist coaches in the car park when we arrived and it was too overcast to live up to its name (“gull” means “golden”).
The Geysir hot spring area was much more fun. The granddaddy of all geysers, Great Geysir, no longer spouts, but nearby Strokkur still puts on a regular and impressive show.Aideen, Daryl and Simon got the best view, but paid for it!
After a scary drive down a rough road we weren’t sure we were insured for (we were), the next stop was Þingvellir, not only a continental rift valley where the American and European continental plates meet, but also Iceland’s most important historical site, the parliament met here for thousands of years (the oldest in the world) and here the nation decided to adopt Christianity in 1000.
There was a deep gully just as we entered the area filled with water and coins, and Simon supplemented his holiday fund a little. We marvelled at the clarity and blueness of the water for a while and then wandered over the marshes to the cliffs where three of us went up the hard way and one of us took the road to the top for magnificent views over Lake Þingvallavatn.
Friday 28th July - Reykjavik
On Friday we went our separate ways in Reykjavik after a visit to the top of the Hallgrímskirkja for views over the town. Simon, Daryl and I started off in the Culture House, while Aideen went for a wander, then we met up for lunch and in the afternoon Simon and I did the National Museum while Aideen and Daryl did a walk round the architectural sights of Reykjavik.
I'd have quite liked to get on one of the hydrogen powered buses, but central Reykjavik is so small that it wasn't worth getting a bus anywhere. However we did pass a hydrogen filling station on the main road into Reykjavik, right next to a standard petrol station, and we saw a bus with white steam coming from its roof.
In the evening we went riding on Icelandic ponies, famous for being pure bred with a gentle nature, and having five gaits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Pony
I’m just as wimpish about horse riding as I am about kayaking and climbing and I was soon lagging behind, but one of our guides helped me and eventually I got my horse to do a tölt gait. We rode through streams and over rough country until we got to a lovely little waterfall, Helgufoss, where the horses fed on the grass, mine stood on my foot (luckily it wasn’t it’s full weight so I wasn’t hurt), and we had a little rest before heading back.
I hurt like hell for days afterwards.
Saturday 29th July - viking country
On Saturday we got back in the car and investigated the area to the north of Reykjavik. It was the first time it really rained the whole trip, although it lifted by the time we needed to get out of the car. We took a tunnel under Hvalfjörður and up into viking country. It was pretty boring after the north east, to be honest, acres of gentle green rolling countryside. We stopped off at Reykholt to visit Snorri Sturluson’s bath and secret passage to his farmhouse (which is no longer there). Snorri was a great chieftain and man of letters in the 13th century who was eventually assassinated.
We climbed the largest of three craters and saw what we think were a couple of ptarmigan. We completely failed to find the waterfalls Hraunfoss and Barnafoss, which we thoroughly regretted when we saw photographs of them later. Simon went into Eirik the Red’s farmhouse but the rest of us stayed outside since we really didn’t need to pay a fiver to see another reconstructed viking farmhouse.Apparently there were more kittens though. Damn.
We took the scenic route back round Hvalfjörður, hoping to see the whales the fjord is named for, but it wasn’t to be. We were rewarded with stunning views, and the water was so still it reflected the clouds like a mirror.
After dinner back in Reykjavik Aideen and Daryl went for a sight seeing flight over the town and Simon and I went for a wander and one last visit to Sun Voyager, an elegant sculpture at the harbour by Jon Gunnar Arnason, where a plane went overhead which we later found out was the one they were in!
Reykjavik likes to party and it likes to clean. The “runtur” lasts till well after the sun is high in the sky and then the street sweeping trucks come out. We were staying on the main drag and I was glad of my earplugs.
Icelanders also really like their coffee, and it was excellent. I heard that you would only get a bad coffee from a machine and while I didn’t test this theory by trying it, every coffee I had was lovely. Starbucks hasn’t made it to Iceland yet, but there are coffee houses on every street and some in places where there aren’t really any streets to speak of.
Sunday 30th July - the Blue Lagoon and home
We didn’t have time to go far on Sunday so we decided to kill time in the Blue Lagoon. It wasn’t as good as Mývatn Nature Baths (nothing in the southwest was as good as anything in the north east) and it was pretty busy, but we had a pleasant soak in the hot water while it rained gently above us. A relaxing end to a brilliant holiday.
Friday 21st July - Arrival in Reykjavik.
It was about as dark as it gets when we landed. As we left the airport around midnight it was very cloudy and there was a dark blue cast to the lava fields. However it did get very light again very quickly. I was really surprised that nowhere we stayed had proper black out curtains. The Reykjavik apartments had blinds and dark curtains, but weren’t really that effective. I suppose you get used to it. I’d brought an eye mask.
I didn't take much in on the drive to the apartment in Reykjavik because I was so tired and our driver was about the only Icelander we spoke to who didn't speak clear English, although he was still keen to point out things of interest on the drive.
Saturday 22nd July - Akureyri, Goðafoss and whale watching from Husavik
Up excited and ready for adventure, if not actually bright eyed and bushy tailed after not enough sleep, and off to the domestic airport for our flight to Akureyri in the north.
We flew over glaciers and volcanoes, grey and brown barren wastelands, snow topped mountains and green valleys and landed on a runway in the middle of a fjord. At the time the view seemed incredible, but we suspected we were going to find it pretty routine in a few days and we were right! We stopped for a few photos, picked up the car and headed into Akureyri for a quick look round and a snack.
Akureyri is the second largest town in Iceland, outside the greater Reykjavik area (it's the fourth largest overall) with a population of around 16,000. Despite this there wasn't much to keep us in Akureyri so we had a snack, took a look at the Lutheran church (which features stained glass from Coventry cathedral) and headed off to Goðafoss, a fairly small (by Icelandic standards) but beautiful waterfall ("foss") so called because a chieftain threw the statues of his pagan gods into it after the adoption of Christianity.
Then it was onwards to Husavik where we were to be based for the next two nights. We got settled into our cottages and then went into pretty Husavik proper for dinner, a visit to the whale centre and whale watching.
We were lucky enough to see (although not photograph particularly well) two humpback whales and a few pods of dolphins. Apparently we missed a distant sighting of a minke whale when we went below for a few minutes to warm up and have some hot chocolate and cinnamon buns. The whale watching trip was one of the few times I was actually cold in Iceland, even more so than on the glacier.
Sunday 23rd July - Mývatn area ("The Diamond Ring")
This was my favourite day, incredible landscapes, loads of active geological sites and beautiful weather. We went to see the gems in North East Iceland's aptly named "Diamond Ring", which later absolutely blew away southwest Iceland's equivalent, the Golden Circle for all of us.
We drove across lunar landscapes formed by volcanic ash and soil erosion where the only plants were tiny purple flowered arctic thyme. (Iceland smelled wonderful, apart from when it smelled sulphurous, and we even got to like that!) Every so often there'd be huge banks of arctic lupin, looking utterly surreal in the wasteland.
The arctic lupin is extremely hardy and enriches the soil, so they've been planted in large swathes to counter soil erosion. Unfortunately they're taking over and driving out the native flora so sheep are being reintroduced into selected areas of the Skaftafell national park to try to keep them under control. It's awesome to think that any plant can survive in those conditions, let alone flourish and spread.
In Iceland as a whole there were a lot more flowers than I expected. Like Orkney, they were mostly tiny and hardy, the arctic thyme being the most prevalent, but we also saw cotton grass in the marshes, bluebells and many other flowers we couldn’t identify.
Lake Mývatn was an entirely different story, lush and green, it's a bird reserve and also one of the most interesting geological areas. We drove over glorious blue rivers and through green countryside to reach the pseudo-craters of Skútustaðagígar, where we stopped for ice cream and a walk up on of the larger pseudo-craters, then on to the weird lava formations of Dimmu Borgir (dark castles) where we took the "difficult path" and were awarded with the best views, and paid tribute to the other Dimmu Borgir.
We stopped for lunch in Reykjahlíð and then went for a wander round the blue lake formed by the run off from the geothermal plant which powers the Kísiliðjan diatomite plant nearby. It looks a bit like the famous Blue Lagoon, but it was too hot to swim in.
A few kilometres on we had a wander round the Námafjall hverir (geologically active area), full of bubbling mud pools, steaming piles of rock and colourful rocks, then on to the huge Víti ("Hell") crater and the fresh (formed in the 1980s) lava fields at Leirhnjúkur, all from the Krafla volcano.
We rounded off a hot and dusty day with a dip in the Mývatn Nature Baths, Mývatn's answer to the Blue Lagoon, but so much quieter and in a spectacular setting, with views of the whole Mývatn lake area.
Monday 24th July - Ásbyrgi, Dettifoss and kayaking in Seyðisfjörður
The mists had set in as we were leaving the Mývatn area and hadn't lifted by the next morning so it was a grey drive up to Ásbyrgi, the end of the Jökulsárgljúfur National Park,"Iceland's Grand Canyon". Glacial flooding carved the canyon into a horse's hoofprint shape, said to be where Odin's eight legged horse Sleipnir touched his foot to the ground.
We climbed up the bit in the middle of the footprint for amazing views over the countryside. Then it was on to Hafragilfoss, a beautiful waterfall further up the canyon and a view point from which we could see columnar basalt cliffs, a jewel of a blue lake and rushing glacial river, and Dettifoss, Europe's most powerful waterfall by flow. We had our picnic lunch there and everyone else went paddling. 200-500 cubic metres of water per second and they went paddling. Nutters.
We carried on to Seyðisfjörður through changing countryside and it got warmer and warmer until we spotted a river with a deep looking pool and everyone but me went swimming (there's a pattern emerging here...). It wasn't as deep as it had seemed.
We made it to peaceful Seyðisfjörður in time for dinner before going kayaking on the fjord. Simon, Daryl and I and probably the best meal of the trip, sea trout in a leek and peppercorn sauce with grilled courgettes and rice. Unfortunately Aideen had her worst meal of the trip, a bland veggie burger which overcompensated with too much hot mustard.
The food (for us meat eaters anyway) was mostly better than I expected throughout the trip, although the portions were often very small. The fish dishes I had were, of course, the nicest, even the Italian restaurant we went to one night did a good job of the catfish, which I hadn’t had before and turned out to be a bit like swordfish or shark, which I’m not keen on.
I still don't know how they did it but somehow I found myself in a kayak on a deep fjord just outside the Arctic Circle. There's no way I'd have gone in one on my own, but I was sharing a kayak with our guide, Hlynur. I definitely got the better deal as I had to do very little paddling and got to see puffins from about ten feet away.
We kayaked from ten till midnight. The whole valley had a cloud ceiling on it so it actually got pretty dark by the time we stopped. After kayaking Simon and I went back out to photograph the pretty church all lit up and the Hollywood style Seyðisfjörður sign on the hillside.
Seyðisfjörður is Iceland's main ferry town and on Wednesdays and Thursdays it's heaving when the boat comes in from Lerwick and the Faroes, but on Monday night it was still and quiet.
Tuesday 25th July - The East Fjords, Jökulsárlón and our first glacier
We had a really good breakfast at the hotel (the Hotel Aldan was the best place we staying in my opinion) and hit the road again. We stopped to look back on Seyðisfjörður which was still blanketed in low cloud from a viewpoint above the village. We drove through some of the most intimidating scenery on this leg of the trip, a lot of it on gravel despite being on the main ring road, Route 1. Glacial valleys and skree slopes that looked like they were just waiting for us to pass to come down, and unbridged fjords that the road took us up and down until we finally got our first glimpse of the great glacier Vatnajökull, an offshoot of which we were to walk on in the morning.
But first we stopped at glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón and went for a boat ride among the stately icebergs. (They just drove into the water and then the vehicle was a boat! It was like something out of James Bond, which is appropriate as two Bond movies were filmed there. They dammed the lagoon from the sea so it would freeze over.)
The amazing blue colours are because the ice is so compressed that it reflects as much of the blue spectrum as a large body of water and becomes more or less blue depending on the amount of air its exposed to. The black is volcanic ash and rocks carried down by the glacier. We took about hundred photographs between us, it was so beautiful. Aideen went paddling with the seals which come into the lagoon to catch the herring that are brought in by the tide.
We eventually tore ourselves away and drove the last stretch to the Hotel Skaftafell, where after a meal that was delicious (arctic char for me) but was the most tiny portion imaginably, we took our first unofficial steps on the edge of the Svínafell glacier just a ten minute walk round the back of the hotel.
We couldn't go far without crampons so we stayed on the gritty bit where it dissolved into the moraines and saved ourselves for the morning.
Wednesday 26th July - a walk on the Svínafell glacier, Núpsstaður and Skogafoss
We were up at what would have been the crack of dawn in more southerly latitudes and off to Skaftafell National Park for our glacier tours. Aideen and Daryl were doing the hardcore 5 ½ hour trip complete with harnesses and ropes but Simon was stuck with me on the more gentle 2 hour trip. But he still got an ice axe. I really don’t think I could have coped with their tour but our tour sped by, full of beautiful views and nooks and crannies in the ice. The crampons took a bit of getting used to but soon I was going up slopes, along and even down again without too much difficulty. It wasn’t even that cold although not quite that warm.
Some people drank from the melting ice. The guide said “there’s a rule of thumb in Iceland. If the water looks good to drink… it probably is”. The tap water was just as nice, and everywhere we ate they brought it without question and sometimes without prompting. No overpriced bottled water here!
After our tour we killed time in the excellent visitor centre where they had an exhibition on the natural history and geology of the area, including a video show about the great jökulhlaup of 1996, when a volcano erupted under Vatnajökull, the glacier above it melted into the glacial lake under the ice and when the water pressure got to be too much, it actually lifted the glacier and flowed under it, bursting out and flooding the land below. 100 tonne blocks of ice were tossed and tumbled by the flood waters, destroying bridges (that one was left as a memorial) and washing the road away. Amazingly no one was killed and the road and bridges were passable again after just 3 weeks of repairs.
We had to really motor to get to Reykjavik by a reasonable hour but we had time to stop off at the picturesque Núpsstaður to see the turf covered church and cottages and Skogafoss, one of Iceland’s highest waterfalls, where Simon got a little too close…
Unfortunately we motored a little too much and we got pulled over for speeding. The location on Daryl’s speeding ticket was given by map co-ordinates because it was so remote.
By the time we got to Reykjavik we were feeling like the best of the holiday might be behind us, and a pretty average dinner in a pizza place with dreadful service didn’t help. We had planned to give the drivers a day off on our first day back in the southwest but we thought some more natural wonders might lift our spirits so the next day we decided to do the “Golden Circle”.
Thursday 27th July - Viking houses, Gullfoss, Geysir and Þingvellir
First stop was preserved Viking farmhouse, Stong, which was buried Pompeii style under volcanic ash in the 12th century. We also visited the nearby reconstruction at Þjóðveldisbærinn where Daryl and I made a friend and Daryl found the house itself to be most huggable.
Gullfoss was a big disappointment. There were about six tourist coaches in the car park when we arrived and it was too overcast to live up to its name (“gull” means “golden”).
The Geysir hot spring area was much more fun. The granddaddy of all geysers, Great Geysir, no longer spouts, but nearby Strokkur still puts on a regular and impressive show.Aideen, Daryl and Simon got the best view, but paid for it!
After a scary drive down a rough road we weren’t sure we were insured for (we were), the next stop was Þingvellir, not only a continental rift valley where the American and European continental plates meet, but also Iceland’s most important historical site, the parliament met here for thousands of years (the oldest in the world) and here the nation decided to adopt Christianity in 1000.
There was a deep gully just as we entered the area filled with water and coins, and Simon supplemented his holiday fund a little. We marvelled at the clarity and blueness of the water for a while and then wandered over the marshes to the cliffs where three of us went up the hard way and one of us took the road to the top for magnificent views over Lake Þingvallavatn.
Friday 28th July - Reykjavik
On Friday we went our separate ways in Reykjavik after a visit to the top of the Hallgrímskirkja for views over the town. Simon, Daryl and I started off in the Culture House, while Aideen went for a wander, then we met up for lunch and in the afternoon Simon and I did the National Museum while Aideen and Daryl did a walk round the architectural sights of Reykjavik.
I'd have quite liked to get on one of the hydrogen powered buses, but central Reykjavik is so small that it wasn't worth getting a bus anywhere. However we did pass a hydrogen filling station on the main road into Reykjavik, right next to a standard petrol station, and we saw a bus with white steam coming from its roof.
In the evening we went riding on Icelandic ponies, famous for being pure bred with a gentle nature, and having five gaits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Pony
I’m just as wimpish about horse riding as I am about kayaking and climbing and I was soon lagging behind, but one of our guides helped me and eventually I got my horse to do a tölt gait. We rode through streams and over rough country until we got to a lovely little waterfall, Helgufoss, where the horses fed on the grass, mine stood on my foot (luckily it wasn’t it’s full weight so I wasn’t hurt), and we had a little rest before heading back.
I hurt like hell for days afterwards.
Saturday 29th July - viking country
On Saturday we got back in the car and investigated the area to the north of Reykjavik. It was the first time it really rained the whole trip, although it lifted by the time we needed to get out of the car. We took a tunnel under Hvalfjörður and up into viking country. It was pretty boring after the north east, to be honest, acres of gentle green rolling countryside. We stopped off at Reykholt to visit Snorri Sturluson’s bath and secret passage to his farmhouse (which is no longer there). Snorri was a great chieftain and man of letters in the 13th century who was eventually assassinated.
We climbed the largest of three craters and saw what we think were a couple of ptarmigan. We completely failed to find the waterfalls Hraunfoss and Barnafoss, which we thoroughly regretted when we saw photographs of them later. Simon went into Eirik the Red’s farmhouse but the rest of us stayed outside since we really didn’t need to pay a fiver to see another reconstructed viking farmhouse.Apparently there were more kittens though. Damn.
We took the scenic route back round Hvalfjörður, hoping to see the whales the fjord is named for, but it wasn’t to be. We were rewarded with stunning views, and the water was so still it reflected the clouds like a mirror.
After dinner back in Reykjavik Aideen and Daryl went for a sight seeing flight over the town and Simon and I went for a wander and one last visit to Sun Voyager, an elegant sculpture at the harbour by Jon Gunnar Arnason, where a plane went overhead which we later found out was the one they were in!
Reykjavik likes to party and it likes to clean. The “runtur” lasts till well after the sun is high in the sky and then the street sweeping trucks come out. We were staying on the main drag and I was glad of my earplugs.
Icelanders also really like their coffee, and it was excellent. I heard that you would only get a bad coffee from a machine and while I didn’t test this theory by trying it, every coffee I had was lovely. Starbucks hasn’t made it to Iceland yet, but there are coffee houses on every street and some in places where there aren’t really any streets to speak of.
Sunday 30th July - the Blue Lagoon and home
We didn’t have time to go far on Sunday so we decided to kill time in the Blue Lagoon. It wasn’t as good as Mývatn Nature Baths (nothing in the southwest was as good as anything in the north east) and it was pretty busy, but we had a pleasant soak in the hot water while it rained gently above us. A relaxing end to a brilliant holiday.