It’s been a while since I did an Iceland Itinerary but it’s back! This is my actual itinerary from this summer – and it’s a great example of how not to do the Ring Road. I’ve said it several times but the plan was to spend the week in the north, with a quick rush down to Egilsstaðir. When it came to it, I realised that continuing along the Ring Road allowed for doing a lot more stuff than the original plan of turning back and doing more of the north and so that’s what I did.
Nonetheless, doing a circuit of the Ring Road in eight days means you’re going to miss a lot of interesting stuff. Take at least two weeks. Three if you can. Or do what I’ve done, which is a week or so every summer (give or take plagues) since 2012, which means I’ve covered pretty much everything. I’m not generally a proponent of slow travel. Oh, I like the idea of it and support it very much but in practical terms, I have an office job and I get 25 days off a year. Slow travel is a luxury I can’t afford. But Iceland is definitely worth some slow travel, even if that means you have to do it in five-day chunks over twelve years.
Day one: Saturday 29th July – Keflavik to Þingvellir via Hveragerði
I don’t like driving in cities. Reykjavik may be a small city but it has its full complement of multi-lane roads, complicated junctions, roundabouts and a lot of traffic. It’s very easy to say “Oh, there’s only 380,000 people in the whole country!” but that’s just the people who live there. Surely at any given moment there are at least that many tourists too, and most of them are concentrated in the Reykjavik area. I wanted to head for Akranes on Saturday evening but the only way to completely avoid Reykjavik was to drive along the south coast of the Reykjanes peninsula to Hveragerði and then go cross-country up the Golden Circle. By the time I reached Þingvellir it was getting on for 8.30pm and by that route, I had another hour, maybe hour and a half, to Akranes. I decided to stop at Þingvellir.
It’s Iceland’s heart. It’s where its Parliament was held from 930AD, it’s where major national celebrations still happen and it’s an important stop on a Golden Circle tour. I’ve always wanted to camp there, it’s just never worked out. There are actually four campsites. You pay at the one by the tourist information centre – that’s the one that’s on the junction with the lower car parks, not the shiny place up at the viewpoint – and then you can drive 300m into the valley and pick either side of the road or there’s a fourth one further down by the lake. I picked the one on the left, since there was obnoxious music coming from the one on the right. I used my evening to walk down the road towards the main sites, just until I’d covered my daily 2km and then went straight to bed.
Day two: Sunday 30th July – þingvellir to Akureyri via Akranes
My first plan was to go to Guðlaug Baths on the seafront at Akranes, which is why I planned to camp there. Discovering that it doesn’t open until 10am, though, meant it didn’t matter that I’d stopped short the night before. I took the road over the heath back to the Ring Road at Mosfellsbær, just north of Reykjavik with the intention to shortcut Hvalfjörður by using the tunnel. But as I approached, lights flashed. What did that mean? All the signs immediately visible were in Icelandic. A barrier coming down in front of me made it pretty clear, though. The tunnel was closed. But why? And for how long? Do I sit here at the barrier and wait? I decided to turn around, go back to the lay-by with the tunnel info and see. Checked the internet. No idea. But there was suddenly a lot of traffic coming up and somehow that seemed like a sign that it should be open so I returned. It was! Just as I approached, an ambulance in full lights came flying out but the tunnel wasn’t closed long enough to deal with an incident in there. I can only conclude that they close the tunnel so the fast-moving largish vehicle can’t possibly have an accident with on oncoming vehicle – or to protect drivers from the dazzling blue flashing lights in the dark.
Anyway, I continued to Akranes where I failed to deal with a maybe low-pressure tyre at both the N1 and the Olís, despite help. Akranes is a fairly big place but it was deserted. Nothing opens until 10am on Sunday and so there was no one in the kiosk, no one on the road. Freaky. I found a working machine quite by chance at Orkan. These three are the big fuel suppliers and although you’ll mostly find N1s out in the wilds, any town with more than about ninety inhabitants will have all three stations.
Tyres sorted, I parked outside the sports centre, which Google Maps advised as the closest point for cars to get to Guðlaug. It’s then quite the walk around sports centre land to the seafront to the concrete tube that houses the pool. The top “floor” is an observation deck. Second is the hotpot itself and third, at beach level, the overflowing water falls into a second pool. Now, I didn’t try out the second pool. But I did see one of my fellow bathers go and try it out. He made noncommital noises and gestures and returned fairly soon to the main pool, so I assume it’s not great for sitting in. The main pool is! I think it might be better when the sun’s out and maybe the tide is a little further in but the pool itself is glorious – and for 500kr! For context, you know by now that Iceland has ten geothermal pools/spas/tourist experiences. The cheapest of those ten is the Secret Lagoon, which was 3,300kr when I looked it up in August. Ok, you only get one small hotpot instead of two large ones and a social pool with a bar (she says, comparing it to Vok) but it’s still quite the price difference!
After my dip, I had a quick sandwich in the car and headed for Akureyri. Nothing to say here. It was some five hours of driving with stops only to stretch out my leg, get fuel and to go into roadhouses in search of interesting crisps and chocolate. The scenery is more varied than I expected and you spend the last couple of hours making your way through the mountains but you only really realise you’re up in some quite high land because the length of the marker poles suddenly triples, indicating that the snow gets fairly deep here.
I actually camped outside Akureyri at a campsite called Systragil. It’s only 15/20 minutes outside the city if you use the tunnel. I opted to save myself some money by taking the old road, adding half an hour to my journey. Put up my tent, stuffed some food in my face and then returned immediately to Akureyri for my 6pm appointment with the Forest Lagoon (via the tunnel this time; I wouldn’t be able to get there on time otherwise and after the long driving day, my knee was not up for having another hour added to the round trip).
Well, I’ve talked about the Forest Lagoon by now so if you want to know all about it, run off to that post. Got back at maybe 11pm, straight into my tent and straight to bed.
Day three: Monday 31st July – Akureyri to Myvatn
I got caught by the owner in the morning. She was cleaning the toilets at 7.30am – it’s nice that they’re clean but when there are only two toilets for the entire campsite, rush hour isn’t the best time for it. She collected my payment, accepted my compliments on the site’s setting and recommended that I scramble up to the far end of the site to see the waterfall, which I did. I actually had a really lazy morning and still managed to set out by 9am for Myvatn.
It’s only an hour or so but it was slowed up a bit by roadworks. Lots of roadworks within a couple of hours of Akureyri. I stopped at the supermarket for a better breakfast than star-shaped crisps, noticed that the campsite I stayed on in 2013 is actually still open, and got my tent up by 10am, on exactly the spot I camped on in 2013, only with the tent facing the view. Then I thought I’d spend my birthday – my birthday! – exploring the Myvatn region. That meant Hverir, the hot springs area on the other side of the boundary mountains, and Leirhnjukur, the lava field opposite Hverir. I love Leirhnjukur. It was a hot day so I was in shorts, a crop top and sandals, although I’d knew I’d be a while on Leirhnjukur so I took an open flannel shirt just in case. If you’re in the area, it’s worth taking a peek at Viti, popping into the Krafla power plant and looking for Grjotagja too. Climb Hverfell if you’ve got time.
I spend the mid-afternoon reading and eating in my tent, this being the first bit of downtime I’d had, and then in the evening, I headed for Husavik and Geosea, the next geothermal pool. Well, you know how that one goes too. I spent the evening of my birthday in hot water, drinking a pink slushie with the sunset trying to blind me.
Day four: Tuesday 1st August – Askja
This was the only day of the trip that didn’t start with me packing up my tent! Instead, I packed up all my stuff and drove a mile or two down the road to be picked up for my Askja adventure. I’ve written up that one too so suffice it to say that forty-odd of us got on a modified coach with high suspension and headed out into an extremely inhospitable lava field to walk on a volcano that’s having a tectonic moment.
We got back earlier than planned. Previous trips have delivered me back to Myvatn around 11pm but it turns out both of those had good reason and we actually returned by 7.30pm, giving me time to spend three hours in the Nature Baths before going to bed.
Day five: Wednesday 2nd August – driving to Egilsstaðir and Vök Baths
I was quite looking forward to today. I had a drive forecasted to take two hours (it took three!) to cross the Desert of Misdeeds to Egilsstaðir, the capital of the east. I didn’t rush it. I got my tent up, did some shopping, did some eating, strolled the town for the sake of my daily mileage, replaced the nice black ink pen I lost the day before and then went to Vök Baths for the evening. I’ve talked about that too.
This was when I really started to feel that taking the Ring Road at this pace meant I was missing out. I’d walked around Egilsstaðir for an hour but I hadn’t seen or done anything. In my particular case, that doesn’t matter – I camped there in 2015 and covered a lot of the region. I’d done the thing I was specifically meant to do, Vök, and I continued on my way because I now had three days to get to literally the other end of the island. Turning back, as I’d planned to, would mean three days of driving with very little to do. Carrying on would mean three days of driving broken up with things to do.
Day six: Thursday 3rd August – driving to Skaftafell
Another long driving day. I opted to shortcut the east by driving over the Misty Mountains instead of following the Ring Road around the coast. To be fair, last time I was in the region, the mountain road was the Ring Road. Since it’s unpaved, very steep, with hairpin turns and almost-guaranteed appalling weather up top, the roads have been renumbered and heavy traffic like lorries and tourist buses take the coast road. I was nervous about the mountain road but I have driven it before and lived to tell the tale.
Ok, technically it’s not the same road. It starts the same, the 95 south of Egilsstaðir but somewhere up in the mountains, the 95 continues to Breiðdalsvík, which is the route I took last time, and I moved onto the 939 which rejoins the Ring Road north of Djupivogur. That’s why I never quite found that road driving out of the blind horseshoe of mountains – I was driving down a different mountain! It’s quite the adventure. Yeah, terrifyingly steep in places, all gravel, a lot of bare rock, a lot of low cloud. There’s a reason I flippantly referred to it as crossing the Misty Mountains.
Once you rejoin the Ring Road, it’s a mere three hours and change to Skaftafell, driving along the south coast, in the shadow of Europe’s largest glacier. To be fair, you can’t see the glacier for a lot of it. It’s too far from the road for a while and then the ice itself is hidden behind the mountains peaks for another stretch. You do start to spot vast glacial tongues as you keep going, though. Then I spotted one I recognised and decided I’d stop at Jökulsárlón, the famous glacier lagoon. Partly to stretch my legs and partly to take photos while it wasn’t raining. Returning here was first on Friday’s itinerary but it might rain. Better take photos while it’s not, despite it being miserable and cloudy – and ending up raining. I went to Diamond Beach, a name I’ve never seen used by the locals, which is where small chunks of icebergs wash up on the beach after escaping the lagoon and making a break for the open sea.
Then it was time for Skaftafell. I know it’s about forty-five minutes but clearly I didn’t look at the clock. By the time I was halfway there, I was convinced I’d missed it. I’d definitely driven past the end of the glacier, it had rained like the world was coming to an end for five minutes, the turning must have been there. Thank you to the cafe with the unsecured wifi for letting me discover I still had another 20 minutes to go! Cafe built right by an Arctic tern nesting ground, so when you walk across the car park you get dive-bombed! If you want to see Arctic terns up close, stop at Cafe Vatnajökull.
Anyway, Skaftafell has changed since I was last there in 2016. Now there are ANPR cameras to make sure you pay, the car park is literally half a mile from the visitor centre and there’s an entire separate entrance for the campsite, with a hut to pay in when the visitor centre is closed. There’s also something missing from my memory: the fact that the ground is so stony that you need a heavy-duty mallet and storm pegs to get your tent in the ground. I had neither. I had a rock and some 9-inch wire pegs. These had done the job just fine the previous few nights – I shoved the pegs in an inch or so by hand and then used my foot to drive them down. Nothing doing here. Even with the rock, the best I could manage was to get the pegs just far in enough that they could stand up if the wind didn’t get up too much. There was much fury at Skaftafell, actually. At one point, I fell down on all fours and sobbed dramatically into the ground. Yeah.
We’ll skip over that. No hot water tonight so I strolled down to the nearest of the three glaciers that pen the campsite in. It’s a nice walk but the breeze running over all that ice was freezing so I didn’t stay around long. I hadn’t had the sense to bring enough warm clothes. I was also wrestling with my camera, which had 24 hours left in it. Now, to be fair, this is the same camera that was doing the same thing in April 2022, well over a year ago and I had replaced it in February. The replacement had given up the ghost by now so I took the old camera and I did spend a bit of Thursday evening fighting it.
Day seven: Friday 4th August – kayaking Jökulsárlón and driving to Vik
I had an appointment with a kayak at 10.30am back at Jökulsárlón, so knowing it was 45 minutes to an hour, I naturally left Skaftafell at about… was it 8:43 or even 7:43? It was early. Somehow I found time for a shower and a proper hair wash – you may have seen my rant about the conditioner at Vök. I’d spent Thursday morning failing to brush my straw-like hair and then been too cold and tired for a shower Thursday night but I did it Friday morning!
I arrived at Jökulsárlón early enough to sort out my warm clothes, eat, read, get comfy, get parked near the company’s trailer and introduce myself to my guide early enough for him to tell me “come back in ten minutes”. Then we got dressed in waterproof trousers, boots and jackets, popped on buoyancy aids and went out on the lagoon in our plastic sit-on-top kayaks. I wrote about that one a month ago.
After that, I headed for Vik, two hours west. As usual, it took longer than that but I didn’t make many stops. I wanted to get there in time to see the original Lava Show. I hadn’t pre-booked – risky but you might get away with it in a village of 300 souls. And I did! I arrived a little after 3pm and got into the 3.30 show. It’s not all that different from the Reykjavik version except that it’s smaller and there’s much more emphasis on the damage Katla could do if she erupted, plus details about how the locals evacuate in the event of an eruption. Terrifying stuff, actually. I left with a piece of tachylite, which is a very fragile volcanic glass that they create in the process of their show. It’s just grey sand from a nearby beach shovelled into a special kiln and melted. When the show is over, they smash up the lava in a big metal bucket, re-melt it and re-use it, except for the pieces of glass they hand out to the visitors. Very cool.
I camped at Vik, went for a walk down to the black sand beach (the less famous and popular side of the headland) and then realised the local swimming pool might have different opening hours to geothermal lagoons. It did! I ran back to the campsite, ran for the pool and just about squeezed a mile in before it was time to get out. And that was my experience of Vik!
Day eight: Saturday 5th August – back to Reykjanes
My main purpose today was to get from Vik back to a very expensive hotel within a short drive of the airport. My flight was at 7am, which meant getting to the airport about 5am – and I had luggage to check in, which means a whole extra queue that I usually try to avoid. I like to stay in a hotel the last night because I don’t want to be packing up the tent in the middle of the night and I need the room to pack up all the junk that now fills the entire car and give things an opportunity to dry before I do the packing.
So off I went. What did I do on Saturday? Ah, yes. Seljavallalaug. Iceland’s oldest and wildest pool, hidden in the mountains below Eyjafjallajökull. Yes, that was nice. I’m always up for a swim, I’m pleased to have crossed that one off and it was an interesting experience in itself, which is why I’ve already written about it.
For the rest of the day, I mostly just drove. I stopped at the LAVA Centre at Hvolsvollur. The fact that it doesn’t get a post of its own says everything. It’s interesting. I like that it has screens showing live tectonic activity. I like the Fagradalsfjall movie – although there’s very little there I couldn’t find on YouTube and I do like the exhibition that shows how all things volcanic work. But ultimately, don’t make a special journey to this place. If you’re passing it on a Ring Road drive, yeah, stop in.
Then it was just drive along the south coast, along the south coast of Reykjanes and reach the hotel. It took 8-12 trips to bring everything into my room, I put off the packing for hours and I had a proper shower. Of course, there’s a shower before and after every pool trip (not counting Guðlaug and Seljavallalaug) but no matter how carefully and Icelandically you wash – according to the poster! – it’s not the same as a shower in your own hotel room.
Day nine: Sunday 6th August – flying home
Not much to say today. Got up just after 4am, dropped off the car at the airport, got on a plane, drove home from Gatwick via the M25 rather than the A272 because I didn’t set the satnav carefully enough.
See why I feel like I didn’t do much? A trip around the Ring Road really isn’t the best way to see Iceland. You need to think about what or where you’re interested in and specialise. If you drive the whole thing in a week, you’ll only get a matter of hours in most places.
On the other hand, I now have huge swathes of my Iceland Ring Road book to rewrite. I did my three geothermal pools and I got a kayaking trip on the glacier lagoon! I did the things I wanted to do and linked them in the only way that made sense. But a first-timer to Iceland – no, you need to give yourself longer than a week to feel like you’ve even started to scratch the surface of what this country has to offer.