Iceland

Before Iceland had started causing trouble for everyone's travel plans*, it had featured heavily on ours; we'd booked to go there for the bank holiday and fortunately the ash didn't disrupt us. In fact, we got within a couple of kilometres of the volcano which was an incredible experience - but more on that later.

*including mine - I was stuck in Dublin and took 12 hours, by ferry, taxi and train, to get back to London

We arrived in around midnight, and headed off around 9 the following morning on the Golden Circle tour, led by our able guide Harry (we couldn't make out his actual name, but Harry is close enough...). Harry had no qualms sharing his views with the bus, not just about the scenery and the history, but about whatever took his fancy at the time (at one stage we made the mistake of asking him what he thought about the whale meat for sale in the restaurants around town (which we couldn't bring ourselves to eat) and were treated to a monologue about the merits of vegetarianism). It made for a fascinating ride, and the insights into the Scandinavian politics were priceless.


Our first stop was the Thingvelir (I can't make the runic P-looking character to spell it properly). This is the point where the American and European plates are pulling apart, and where the first parliament in the world was held in 963 AD. It was cool to be able to cross a bridge between two tectonic plates.

The landscape around Thingvelir is littered with crevasses like these, remnants of more violent moves in the earth's crust

That water is apparently over 20 feet deep - but so clear that you can see the coins glistening at the bottom

From there we travelled to Geysir, where one of the largest Geysers in the world goes off every few minutes - check out the video below. There is an incredible moment where the water simply bulges up before exploding upwards...amazing. I hadn't realised how rare they were until we went, either, which made it even more special.

The Icelandic have a very relaxed attitude towards health and safety - check out the guard rail! The water is only superheated...and maybe 10 meters away

If you only click on and watch one video on a blog this year - make it this one

Ponds in the Geysir field - the one on the left is blue because of bacteria and about 40 degrees. The one on the right is about 95 degrees - just enough mixing occurs to keep it that way

Our next stop was the Gulfoss (Golden) Waterfall, which was just amazing. When you first arrive, you can only see the first stage which looks pretty cool, but as you get closer you realise that it simply thunders from there into a deep ravine - spectacular....

Gulfoss Waterfall

The remaining stops on the tour (after a hearty lunch of traditional lamb soup) were the Kerid crater, which is pretty amazing and occasionally hosts concerts (such as Bjork) and a geothermal power station, which was slightly less amazing although still interesting to see (at least if you're a bit nerdy...)

Kerid Crater - apparently the acoustics are amazing, although I will leave it up to you to decide whether it would have improved the performance that Bjork gave from a barge in the middle

Day 2 was spent in and around Reykavik before heading out in a specially modified van with enormous tires (necessary for fording rivers) to go and see what we could see of the volcano with the unpronouncable name. Unfortunately the weather wasn't on our side so we couldn't see the eruption, just hear and feel the rumbling (like continuous thunder)...still a fantastic experience.

Check out the size of the tires!

Behind the cloud is the volcano - apparently this isn't normally a river, but all the melted ice from the glacier has flooded it

The other must-do thing in Iceland is visit the Blue Lagoon, a thermal pool coloured a milky blue by the algae (which is supposed to be very good for you skin) and lined with white mud (which can be used to make a facepack). It is on the way to the airport and after a couple of hours of soaking I've never felt so relaxed for a flight...

Not pictured - Stephen wearing a mud facepack

Iceland is the sort of place that you'd never get to by accident, and you'd never go to if you only had a few weeks in Europe - but you'd be missing out never to see it as I don't think there is anything quite like it!