Over the past number of years I have been immersing myself in Icelandic culture. After my first trip coming to this cold volcano in the North Atlantic in 2014, my partner and I have hitchhiked and driven around the country several times in every road condition imaginable. Stayed for months at time, through sun and sideways rain, in a tent far too small for two tall adults. We have made dear friends of locals, made and shown artwork in galleries, and enjoyed hot pools in the most remote of locations. However, even having climbed to the top of several mountains I have never done more than a day hike into the wilderness.
As an avid cyclist I’ve noted many people cycle touring the Ring Road of Iceland. I first thought that that may be a great idea; but then after watching the weather, the lack of shoulders on the highway, tourists driving giant SUVs for the first time ever out of the city swerving in all directions and kicking up rock missiles directly at head level, I thought there may be a more enjoyable way.
In the last few years gravel touring and bike packing have taken the cycling world by storm. Someone had ridden and mapped a route splitting Iceland in half North to South. Having not done any distance touring that has brought me away from the comforts of the modern world for more than a day, this looked very intriguing. Seeing that others had ridden it and survived made it an easier sell to convince someone to do it with me. (See bike packing route here.)
After a number of friends being interested but finding the trip impractical in the end and a partner that has smarter things to do in life I finally recruited Ben and Kai. Neither had been to Iceland before. So besides the bike trip, I would double as guide and interpreter. Although my Icelandic is weak at best I can usually figure out what I’m buying at the grocery store, and know my pleases and thank yous. Without any fancy gear sponsors and two old Rollei 35 film cameras rather than drones we were set for an Icelandic adventure.
Once we were all in the country, had a day or so to adjust to a time zone half a world away, we were almost ready. The night before embarking it is once last check of the weather reports. Oh shit. The route is closed. A storm had hit in the mountains. A river we supposed to ford at knee deep levels had swollen into an unsurvivable torrent. Ben, not used to Icelandic weather or Icelanders’ nonchalance of speaking of disaster, wanted to give it a go and see if it was really that bad. When Iceland folk say that the route is not that bad, it is, and if it is really bad, it is best left alone. Also there were police blocking anyone from taking the route.
A quick pouring over of maps found us a new route. Not nearly as far as planned but great nonetheless. Our extreme ten day self supported ride had become a causal five day (still self supported) mountain ride. We headed out the next morning.
We began the journey taking the bus an hour outside Reykjavik, and we started off from a gas station with fresh chocolate bars and cheap roadside sunglasses. On the road and into the wind. So. Much. Wind. Iceland is always windy and always in the direction you don’t want it to be blowing in. Five years earlier I had met some bike tourers from Colorado that had told me a tale of literally being blown off their bikes, and being blown fully across the road. Having to hide in a ditch until a passing farmer rescued them in her truck. It wasn’t that windy this trip.
After the first day we dropped down to two riders as Kai deemed the ride not in the best interests of her well being. She turned back and spent the solstice with my partner in Reykjavik. We camped, saw the last big tourist hotspots and left the paved roads behind. Off the pavement and on gravel didn’t seem to drop the traffic for the first 30kms. Constant buzzing of tourist buses with monster truck tires kept us from getting really relaxed. Occasionally some of these beasts would slow down and wave, but mostly just dodge us and leave us with a cloud of dust. Once the roads were calm again, with all the monster buses turning off to drive over or through some nearby glacier, we began to really take in the view.
The interior of Iceland is a desert, vast, mountainous and mostly empty. The most we saw of human existence was the rough gravel road we followed, maybe five off road vehicles and a couple of German cyclists that we frightened while we hid (troll like) under a bridge refilling water bottles. Coming from the opposite these two looked worse for wear, ill prepared, and very unhappily informed us that the road was almost unrideable, though they had made it through. They were very relieved to know that they were in reach of restaurants and showers. We were quite excited with their warnings of hardship as we started up the next 1000m vertical loose gravel climb.
We made it over the first big pass. An exhilarating and terrifying descent of 50kmh+ fully loaded bikes and very loose gravel and found camp for the night. Our camp turned out, after misreading the map, to not be the hut campsite we had planned, but an old Lion’s Club cabin that hadn’t been touched in a while. It did end up making a good windbreak. That night I learned that my lightweight, space saving sleeping bag really wasn’t warm enough, and that Ben learned that he could make a nice bed under an old fish gutting table.
We awoke on day three to beautiful sunshine. It doesn’t get dark in Iceland in June, so it had been sunny all night. The views around us were breathtaking. r\Rocky plains, glacier mountains plunging into large glass surfaced lakes, and dehydrated breakfast with coconut milk powder. (Side note: The amount of calories to weight ratio of coconut milk powder is impressive, and I feel you can mix it into almost any food). An hour into the ride we noticed a group of buildings that had not been marked on our (now proving to be imprecise) map. This group of buildings was about 100km from anything in the wilds of the Icelandic Highlands and proved to be some form of infostop/ café. We treated ourselves to hot drinks and freshly baked carrot cake. The host explained that he co-ran this establishment with his mother in the summers and they traded week on/ week off duties so they wouldn’t have to see each other. We asked him for advice of notable places on our route, and he suggested that we check out a remote and aging mountain resort with a hot spring that wasn’t that far out of the way. He said he had biked up to it years ago and pointed to a rusting old mountain bike in the yard as proof that it was rideable.
Roughly forty kilometers of large rolling gravel hills and body breaking washboard roads we made it to the turn off for the Kerlingarfjöll Resort. Our café guide had assured us that it wasn’t that difficult. It turned out to be a crushing climb on hills impossible to keep traction on, but we were lured with the promise of a hot spring. The Kerlingarfjöll Resort is a picturesque little cluster of steep roofed cabins nestled in a tight mountain valley. The place was bustling and we realized that not only was it the summer solstice that day, but there was a wedding taking place. We managed to talk the kitchen into pausing the wedding preparations enough to make us waffles and hot chocolate. We hiked up the valley to try out the hot springs, but “Hot” was a bit of an overstatement. The water (slightly lower than body temperature) and the wind coming down from a glacier above us soon had us feeling less than relaxed. Drained of warmth and wet from a very quick towel off we decided that we should just push on to the next marked camp spot and the promise of actual hot water.
The ride back down the mountain was exasperatingly fast and reckless with top speeds, sliding gravel corners, tire sucking sand, and heavily loaded bikes. We now only had another forty kilometers to go to the campsite. These forty kilometers are probably the least used of this whole road. Calling this a road was debatable for the most part, and the road that existed was one long stretch of washboards. This was also the most Martian area of the whole endeavor. Rocks, gravel, and sand running to the distant horizons where enormous glaciers lurked at the edge of sight. I’m sure we could count the number of plants we saw in this section on one hand. The only other humans we saw were in a single truck that passed us and gave us that wistful look that car occupants give out of place cyclists that says both “I wish I was you” and “I am so glad I’m not you”.
Well past midnight, after watching the solstice sun set do it’s brief touch against the ground, we rolled shaken and exhausted from the road into a vaguely organized campground. There are great hot springs at this site, but they were full of solstice celebrators that were many more bottles of vodka deep than we could handle at that moment. I filled my water bottles with some very hot water to tuck into my sleeping bag, and fell into a very cozy and hard sleep.
The morning brought the same light as the night before, but with fresh eyes. The camp proved to be great. The hot springs were very hot with a pipe marked 80°C pouring into it. Our sore muscles and bones felt great in the hot water, but the sun was coming out in full force and our pale flesh was proving no resistance to it. The information centre supplied us with more waffles and hot chocolate. (I am now fully of the belief that you can have a cake type food at any conceivable place in Iceland). I’m not the nationalist type, and never one to stick a flag on anything I own, but while packing up I noticed a group of people in the camp with maple leaf flags on their gear and figured I should say hi. They proved to be a group of MEC employees on a store sponsored trip with matching bikes and all new shiny gear. They were doing the same ride as us, including the original route and the weather changed route but in the opposite direction as us. We all wished each other good luck and gave warnings that the road ahead was the worst. I feel our warning was the best fit as the road that day, while still very washboard stricken, was improving by the km.
We had now reached the end of the Martian landscape. Grass was appearing and the odd sheep was showing up as a white tuft on the rolling hills. The road had begun to get a lot better. The riding was easy and pretty uneventful for two days. We had nice weather and slow long descent to the northern coast of Iceland. We finished in Blönduós, set up camp, had a freeze dried space bag of chocolate “cake”, and treated ourselves to a pizza in a truck stop diner.
Blönduós is mostly a farming centre of a town with not a lot of tourist interest - though there is a great textile museum and a decent pool. Ben was deeply enthralled by the pool having free coffee to sip while sitting in the hot pool, but was mostly sad that the water slide was closed for maintenance. Probably our favourite attraction was a large inflatable bouncy blob that works like a very uneven trampoline. Ben entertained the local kids with his backflips for a while. We took this bouncy slug monster as a metaphor for the peacefulness of rural Iceland. In most other situations we could only imagine shitty teens or drunks stabbing the thing with a knife and ruining it for everyone.
That was it for our bike ride. As the riding part had been shortened with the route change Ben and Kai headed off to see the country by car and I found a local to show me all the biking around Reykjavik.
