Today we had much more leisurely start to the day not meeting for breakfast until 9am. The plan afterwards was to drive the famous Golden Circle to see the best landmarks that Iceland could offer up for us.
Now perhaps I should have done research but the name inferred to me that it was a circular route which I realised later was why Barry was surprised when I asked which way round are we doing the trip. It turns out the quickest way and the one most tour buses follow is not a circle at all. In fact, if you do it as a circle you add a few hours of driving for no additional benefit. It is just a marketing ploy in my opinion.
We were on the road by 10am and soon headed east out of Reykjavik. The driving was easy until we were on the top of the first mountain range. Despite perfect sunny weather the temperature was not predicted to rise above -3c today. The road across the mountain plain was still covered with ice. Now I hate driving on ice almost as much as I hate and fear walking on it. On unfamiliar roads in a manual car with a right-hand gear stick, I was not enjoying it. Nor the idiots hurtling up behind me and then flashing me because I was not driving faster than the speed limit. I was feeling stressed as I knew I had hours of driving ahead of me and I was worried it would all be like this or worse.
We had a quick stop in a layby to look at a view and the ground was perilously slippery underfoot as we carefully walked about. I always feel like Bambi on ice when faced with these conditions and fear in my dotage that if I was to come a cropper that I could do some real damage to myself.
We moved on and eventually to my relief the ice-covered roads became much clearer and the driving was much easier. We came to the first of the three main stops today which was the Thingvellir National Park. After looking inside, the first visitor centre we drove onto the first proper car park below Oxararfloss waterfall.
We all set off up the hill towards it with Barry & Ellie going ahead. We followed carefully behind but when we got to the first set of steps allowed those coming down to go first. The ones we saw had extreme difficulty in attempting the steps down and 3 sets of them resorted to sliding down on their behinds rather than attempting them on their feet . We had no desire to even try that and turned around and waited at the bottom for Barry & Ellie to return.
Once we were all back together, we decided to walk towards Law Rock which is where the oldest Parliament in the world first convened. It was not especially inspiring as a rock but obviously very important to the Icelandic nation.
We carried on to the top vantage point overlooking Lake Thingvellir. The view made the effort very worthwhile. After admiring the view, I spotted a café and secured us all a table. We had some drinks and Barry bought himself some sandwiches for later. To show the importance of the place there were pictures of when the Pope and our old Queen had visited here as well. We had a decent sit down before heading back to the car after Barry correctly pointed out how much further we had to drive today.
Our next destination was Geysir. This place is where that name Geyser comes from. It took another 50-minutes to get there. We almost became blasé to come of the place names we passed on the road direction signs.
The Icelandic language just seems to consist of loads of long and what appear to completely unpronounceable words. Some have far too many vowels in a row coupled with letters that do not feature in our alphabet. I had mused yesterday how the Icelandic version of Scrabble must be challenging as you probably all need about 12 letters on your rack to spell anything. However, I then saw a Scrabble game for sale in a shop window but it seemed to show that each player only had 7 letters each. What I didn’t check was if they had the strange additional letters, and if not did it then rule out those words in the game.
The Geysir Springs car park was busy but we found a free slot and made our way to the area where we could see steam oozing out of the ground. There was water coming out of the ground at a temperature between 80 – 100c.
The original Geysir after which the place was named was now dormant. The nearby Strokkur geyser was though erupting every 6 – 10 minutes. As we approached it and walking on some sheer ice it went up and as we were in the wrong place at the wrong time and it showered us. Ellie turned to try and avoid the water and went over on the ice but fortunately did so very gracefully and suffered no damage.
We stood and watched a couple more eruptions which were spectacular before heading carefully back to the car. It was all very impressive if somewhat smelly of sulphur.
Then we drove the short distance to Gullfoss after which the Golden circle is named. I knew it was a waterfall but hadn’t expected anything of the size that greeted us. It was large and impressive with vast torrents of water hurtling through. It was also bitterly cold standing there admiring it. I now rank it in the top 3 waterfalls I have ever seen.
After a quick whizz round the gift shop and using the facilities, we started the almost 2-hour drive back. I had been hugely impressed with what we had seen. In my mind I thought it the Golden Circle might be overhyped to get tourists to visit and that I would be underwhelmed by each stop. It was though the opposite and we had all had a great day despite the icy roads. The roads were slightly better on the way back and it helped that there was far less traffic. We were back in our rooms by 6.30pm.
Barry & Ellie headed off on their own for a ‘date night’ meal. We were tired and wanted something quick so went back to Hlemmur Market and had Fish & Chips this time. I resisted asking if an English trawler had caught the fish and although £20 each, they were quite acceptable.
With that we headed back to our room for an early night. Again, we had walked miles today without realising it and so were soon sound asleep after a glass of wine.
