I stayed on four campsites in Iceland this summer and I thought I’d do you a little review of each of them. I spent two nights at Hveragerði because I wanted to see the volcano but also have options beyond Reykjanes when the weather was bad, moved up to Laugarvatn, stayed in the hobbit house at Hverinn and spent my last night under canvas enjoying the hot tubs at Gesthús Selfoss.
Hveragerði
I picked Hveragerði because I wanted to see the volcano, which is out west near the airport but on my first day, the weather was too bad so I opted for some Golden Circle and some hot water. Hveragerði was a good compromise, halfway between the two – easy to get back to on Wednesday evening but equally easy to get back to the volcano on Thursday if the weather improved, which it did.
It was a very good start to my camping experience. I believe it’s 1750kr per person per night – all prices in this post are what I paid as a single person in a tent. I don’t know if that price is actually per person or if it’s per tent and I think it costs more for a campervan.
Hveragerði’s campsite is at the quiet side of town, a 300m walk to the pool and the park where the lower part of the hot river flows (it’s cold by the time it gets down here. I stuck my hand in to check). You park behind reception and then you carry your stuff to the tent area or you park your van in the van parking where you get your own designated space, so no one’s going to park so close to you that you can’t get your door open.
I was very impressed with the cooking facilities and astonished that some reviews think it’s not good enough. I’ve never seen another campsite where they provide communal gas cookers! There are also shelves packed with food, basics and gas canisters that departing campers have left behind, so you don’t need to worry that you’ve forgotten to buy salt to put in your pasta, for example, or to spend money on a brand new gas canister for your five nights under canvas. It’s also a plastic-roofed eating area which makes it very warm inside and there are sinks for washing up, with warm water. In the UK, warm water for washing up is unusual and worth remarking on but it’s very unusual for it to be lacking in Iceland because of the plentiful natural hot water. No, reviewers, this was a very good kitchen for a campsite.
There’s free wifi which stretched as far as my tent, there’s bike storage, laundry facilities, picnic benches outside with steel panels for putting your gas stove on if you prefer to cook in the open air. My only criticism is the bathroom facilities.
In reception, there are three bathrooms. I didn’t see inside the men’s or the disabled but in the women’s there was one toilet and one shower and that was it. On my first morning, the shower flooded and I had to get dressed with an inch of water underfoot. So on my second night, I used the swimming pool facilities and – let’s be brutally honest – I went down to the shopping centre before I set off for day three. It’s a really nice campsite and I’d stay there again but it does need to extent its bathrooms.
Laugarvatn
I’ve stayed at Laugarvatn three times now. It’s in the middle of the Golden Circle but it’s not one of the big three so it’s usually pretty quiet. I’ve never seen more than half a dozen fellow campers there and I’ve also never figured out how/who to pay because there’s no reception. You just turn up, pitch up and sleep. In fact, I’d think it’s permanently closed if not for the well-maintained bathroom block and the hot water in the washing up sinks.
But this time it was a little different. About 8 or 9pm, the manager appeared and went tent to car to van to tent collecting our fee for the night with a wireless card machine. This one was 2000kr, which is only about £12 and definitely cheaper than finding a solid roof but it was more expensive than Hveragerði for fewer facilities.
It’s quite a back-to-basics campsite. A big field, a large portacabin with chipboard doors on its (non-flooding) showers and toilets, an entire row of sinks and a proper hand dryer. Outside is a wooden cover on a platform where you can eat and there are two sinks with hot water for washing up. And that’s about it. Very functional, and as I said, it’s the third time I’ve camped there so not only would I come back, I have come back.
It was also a lot busier than I’ve ever seen it before. I could have done with the campervan next door to have parked six feet further away; it’s not like there wasn’t space in the mostly-empty field when they arrived to spread out a bit. I believe there was also at least one other field beyond the toilet block so we could have spread even further. I was the third vehicle to arrive and by bedtime there were at least fifteen of us, so it seems everyone arrives here pretty late and leaves pretty early and no one really spends longer than a night here on their Icelandic adventure.
(I didn’t take many photos but I filmed a bit and when I’ve finished the vlog series, I’ll pop episode four in here – the campsite features in the first couple of minutes.)
Hverinn
The second time I’ve camped here. Hverinn is in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny hamlet in west Iceland called Kleppjárnsreykir which Google says is home to 46 residents. Its claim to fame is that it’s the village nearest to Deildartunguhver and Krauma. I paid 2000kr to camp here.
The campsite is tacked onto the back of a restaurant where the food revolves around what they’ve grown in the greenhouses. On a group in 2012 or 2013, we stopped here on the way home, bought juicy tomatoes from the honesty box and got a cup of coffee.
In 2017 I camped here in my campervan and my two main memories are of the man with the massive knife (he was returning from washing up after dinner and I eventually realised I also had a knife. Mine was smaller but a lot sharper. We chatted like old friends, both holding these knives) and of the van that left its engine running and its lights on all night. Oh, and the person who locked the entire women’s toilet section instead of the individual cubicle.
This time the field where we’d all parked was in the process of being re-landscaped and the campsite had relocated to the left. That toilet block was just hard enough to get to that I was the only person who went there – well, there was a mini laundry in there and someone was clearly using it because there was a different set of washing hanging up to dry every time I popped in.
The showers were next door and the main toilet block was in the communal lounge/kitchen. I went in there in the morning – half the building is a greenhouse full of unhealthy-looking tomatoes and the other half has corrugated iron covering it. It’s hot. I brought my swimming stuff and my sleeping bag in and draped them over hot pipes and within half an hour, they were bone dry and I was about to die of dehydration. There are tables and leather sofas, a couple of sockets and some very basic kitchen facilities. The kitchen isn’t as good as at Hveragerði but you can’t put a price on a very warm seating area in a country like this.
But let’s mention my camping experience. “Would you like to camp in the greenhouse?” asked the young man at reception in the restaurant. I dithered. I dithered! Yes, of course I want to camp in the greenhouse! Greenhouses are an emblem of Iceland, of harnessing what’s good and usable on this cold wet explosive island to make it work for them, to grow food that otherwise couldn’t be grown. This village has hot rivers and streams meandering through because of the colossal hot spring half a mile away and they use that heat to grow things. Hence lots of greenhouses.
This greenhouse, billed in 2017 as “the hobbit house” and presumably no longer because of copyright, is actually a polytunnel, and a slightly disreputable one. The plastic is torn in places and there’s a broken pet carrier and chainsaw dumped in there but it has new-looking wooden doors on each end and it’s an amazing place to shelter from Icelandic wind and rain. Unfortunately, I think this was the one night while I was camping that I didn’t experience wind and rain, and not just because I was effectively inside. But the novelty! The experience!
The experience was, though, that without fresh air, the condensation was epic. That tent is not particularly breathable anyway and I always woke up with it damp, even on rare occasions when it hadn’t rained. But that night in the greenhouse, I woke up with the tent and the sleeping bag so wet a bucket or three of water might have been poured over me in the night. What was more revolting was the gradual realisation that if this was condensation, that meant all this moisture had been inside me the night before. That’s the insides of my lungs coating that tent! That’s disgusting!
Gesthús Selfoss
And another campsite I’ve stayed at before! Twice, again, although I’ve always managed to pay here. I camped here in my van in 2017 and I have a sticker still on my tent’s ropes that says I’ve camped here in a tent before. 2016, I think, on my way east.
Notice this is a gesthús, rather than a campsite. This one has lodges. Well, it has a lot of “bungalows” and two luxurious “summerhouses” but they’re hidden among the trees, Centerparcs-style, whereas the open bit you see immediately on arrival is definitely a campsite. The main field is for campervans of various sizes and then the tents cluster around the lake, which is a green and not very decorative pond. I can’t help feeling like putting the people who are most likely to wander down to the buildings next to a pond isn’t the greatest idea.
There are two main buildings. The first one you’ll encounter is both restaurant and reception, where you hand your money (2500kr for me) to a man who smelled like he smokes far too much. Last time I was here there was a very friendly campsite dog who makes your acquaintance first but no sign of the dog this time. You can also have a buffet breakfast in here and they sell a few snacks and drinks.
The other building houses the main showers/toilets and a big communal room with a kitchen. I didn’t go in there this time but I do vaguely remember it having gas stoves and you can pick up a half-used one outside the door, where you leave your shoes – this is a barefoot building, please. The toilets are far too small for the number of people camping here and the showers are communal. I don’t think there’s a single private cubicle, even with a curtain. I used the small toilet block in the van field which was generally a lot quieter, but it had no shower. There are laundry machines just inside the back door of the main building.
The campsite is nicely positioned, with the sports centre next door, the pool a five minute walk away and the campsite just sort of melting away into the countryside at the back. It’s at the back of town so you just don’t hear the Ring Road, which runs right through the middle of Selfoss.
But what makes it worthwhile for me is the hot tubs! You can be completely oblivious to their presence. If you look at the sign above the entrance, there’s a little blue icon for all the services and there’s the hot tubs. If you read the website, there’s the hot tubs. But that’s it. It doesn’t get mentioned when you check in, there are no big signs saying “HOT TUBS THIS WAY!” and you could easily miss them. I’ve never used them before but I knew they were there from previous trips so once the tent was up, I went hunting for them. They’re more or less hidden behind a fence behind the reception/dining building and really, I found them because 1) I was actively looking for them and 2) I followed two girls carrying towels.
There are two hot tubs. The two girls took one and I took the other and was later joined by the sort of couple who whisper together. I think I tweeted quite a bit about what they were obviously hoping to get up in the hot tubs. The thing was, because of the position and the weight of it, I couldn’t get the cover off that hot tub so I only had half the tub to sit in, which made it quite crowded with three of us. I think another couple of people joined the girls in the other one, so that made seven people on this entire quite large campsite who made use of the hot tubs that evening. Everyone else was either hiding in the kitchen, or in their tent, or just didn’t know they were here. I stayed in until the owner came by at 10 or half 10 to tell me he’d turned off the water and the tubs would soon get cold. I’m always in the mood for hot water and the local pool closed before I arrived in Selfoss – whether that’s because it was a Sunday night or because it’s just an early closer, I haven’t bothered to look up.
So again, not only would I stay here again, I have stayed here again.
Which was the winner?
It’s not a competition but… probably Laugarvatn is bottom of the four, just because it has so few facilities. Nice position, extra nice to get it for free if you’re not there when the manager comes by. Hveragerði’s bathrooms pulled it down a lot because otherwise, that’s a good contender for the winner. Same with Selfoss, although the hot tubs push it up a lot. And Hverinn had the novelty of the greenhouse plus the really warm communal area. Oh, they’re all good. I’ve stayed at three of them before and I would stay at all four of them again if I was in the area again.