Iceland - The Driving day
Mar. 10th, 2025 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Day four in Iceland was the day with far to go - we went from Selfoss to the far side of Diamond Beach, a four hour ten minute drive. Except we took an hour long detour each way to Gulfoss, which made it over six hours of driving. Plus the time stopping at various waterfalls along the way...
The weather continued its pattern of getting worse by the day. But at least if there's going to be a day with lots of rain, it's not so bad if you're spending most of it in the car driving anyway. I'm not a fan of phone cameras generally, but I took a lot of phone photos that day. It's hard to take photos with a real camera when the wind keeps blowing rain and spray onto the lens. There's an advantage to that tiny crappy lens in the back of your phone sometimes ðŸ˜
We set off from the delightful lamb curry hotel when it was only just light, headed for Gulfoss. We were making good time, until we hit the Bruarhlod Bridge on Hwy 30, when even the non-photographers in the car yelled out, "Look at that!"
The river is wide and sprawls through the valley, but of course the road crosses it at the narrowest point - where the black rocks force the river into a deep channel.
Twenty minutes or so later, after playing dodge the cars and on one occasion a coach on the one lane bridge, we continued our journey to Gulfoss. Which had a large and busy car park.
Iceland - the country of the off-roading coach.
Gulfoss is one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland. It comes in a couple of tiers, and it's huge - it only narrowly avoided becoming the source of a hydro power plant, after a campaign spearheaded by a local woman.
There are many viewpoints over the falls, and none of them really allows you to see the whole thing. (There are also paths that run down close to it, but they were closed due to ice - nobody's allowed to fall in and die!)
Looking out across the top section of Gulfoss.
And the lower section where it drops furthest into the bottom gully.
After Gulfoss, we headed back onto the Hringvegur, Highway one, and picked up a very drenched Dutchman. Of all the places to go hitch-hiking, I would not choose Iceland in winter! But we got him another 50km or so towards his destination before we dropped him off at Hvolsvollur, just before our next stop at Seljalandsfoss.
Farm along the road to Seljalandsfoss. It has the amazing advantage of having Seljalandsfoss basically in its back yard - and also the disadvantage of having a tourist hotspot in its back yard.
This is another incredibly famous waterfall, and it was absolutely pouring with rain. You can blame some of the artificial look of these photos on the choices of my phone camera, and some of it on the fact that it really does just look like that.
One of the famous things about Seljalandsfoss is that you can walk behind the waterfall. And hey, we were already quite wet enough from being out there at all, so why not?
The photo from directly behind was taken on my fully waterproof GoPro that I use for diving. I wasn't going to expose my phone to those conditions!
There's a 1km walk along the bottom of the cliffs that takes you to a couple more waterfalls. We did the walk, and they were nice, but in the conditions and with the angles looking up at them, they didn't make for great photos. But it gave us a decent break from the car before the next stretch of driving.
And what a stretch of driving it was. From that point, Highway one parallels the southern coast of Iceland, with cliffs and mountains on the northern side. And when it's raining like that, every cliff has water cascading down it. There were stunning small waterfalls basically every 50 metres, and very rarely anywhere to pull over and look at them. We did manage it a few times though. Note the barn built into the hillside - there are a lot of those around.
It continued to rain hard, and not everyone could be convinced to get of the car to look at the little waterfalls - here my sister indicates to my niece and I that she's perfectly fine staying where she is, thank you!
The character of the road itself was changing as we drove too. Hringvegur is a perfectly respectable major road between Reykjavik and Hrolsvollur, but after that it gets narrower and narrower, and single lane bridges requiring the traffic to stop and negotiate right of way become common.
Our final planned stop of the day was at Skogafoss, where it was still raining, of course. Another large and dramatic waterfall, but without the spectacular features of either Gulfoss or Seljalandsfoss.
A farm on the other side of the river. This one had the expected red roof :-)
There was a couple having wedding photos take at Gulfoss - she was there in a wedding dress, in the pouring rain, in February. I can't imagine how cold and miserable she must have been, unless she was suitably fortified with booze first!
And from there, we still had another three hours to drive to our next hotel, with a worsening road and worsening weather. But beyond Kalfafell, you're on the approach to Vatnajokull National Park - and that means glaciers.
Our first sight of a glacial finger creeping down between two mountains in the encroaching dusk. We were so excited! A real glacier! We have a few in Tahoma/Mount Rainier National park, but those are small, high elevation ones on the slope of a single mountain (albeit quite a big mountain). A sea level glacier as wide as the peaks it crawls between is quite another thing.
Of course, over the next couple of days we saw a lot more of the glacier, and started to realise just how big it really is - the third largest in the world...
The weather continued its pattern of getting worse by the day. But at least if there's going to be a day with lots of rain, it's not so bad if you're spending most of it in the car driving anyway. I'm not a fan of phone cameras generally, but I took a lot of phone photos that day. It's hard to take photos with a real camera when the wind keeps blowing rain and spray onto the lens. There's an advantage to that tiny crappy lens in the back of your phone sometimes ðŸ˜
We set off from the delightful lamb curry hotel when it was only just light, headed for Gulfoss. We were making good time, until we hit the Bruarhlod Bridge on Hwy 30, when even the non-photographers in the car yelled out, "Look at that!"
The river is wide and sprawls through the valley, but of course the road crosses it at the narrowest point - where the black rocks force the river into a deep channel.
Twenty minutes or so later, after playing dodge the cars and on one occasion a coach on the one lane bridge, we continued our journey to Gulfoss. Which had a large and busy car park.
Iceland - the country of the off-roading coach.
Gulfoss is one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland. It comes in a couple of tiers, and it's huge - it only narrowly avoided becoming the source of a hydro power plant, after a campaign spearheaded by a local woman.
There are many viewpoints over the falls, and none of them really allows you to see the whole thing. (There are also paths that run down close to it, but they were closed due to ice - nobody's allowed to fall in and die!)
Looking out across the top section of Gulfoss.
And the lower section where it drops furthest into the bottom gully.
After Gulfoss, we headed back onto the Hringvegur, Highway one, and picked up a very drenched Dutchman. Of all the places to go hitch-hiking, I would not choose Iceland in winter! But we got him another 50km or so towards his destination before we dropped him off at Hvolsvollur, just before our next stop at Seljalandsfoss.
Farm along the road to Seljalandsfoss. It has the amazing advantage of having Seljalandsfoss basically in its back yard - and also the disadvantage of having a tourist hotspot in its back yard.
This is another incredibly famous waterfall, and it was absolutely pouring with rain. You can blame some of the artificial look of these photos on the choices of my phone camera, and some of it on the fact that it really does just look like that.
One of the famous things about Seljalandsfoss is that you can walk behind the waterfall. And hey, we were already quite wet enough from being out there at all, so why not?
The photo from directly behind was taken on my fully waterproof GoPro that I use for diving. I wasn't going to expose my phone to those conditions!
There's a 1km walk along the bottom of the cliffs that takes you to a couple more waterfalls. We did the walk, and they were nice, but in the conditions and with the angles looking up at them, they didn't make for great photos. But it gave us a decent break from the car before the next stretch of driving.
And what a stretch of driving it was. From that point, Highway one parallels the southern coast of Iceland, with cliffs and mountains on the northern side. And when it's raining like that, every cliff has water cascading down it. There were stunning small waterfalls basically every 50 metres, and very rarely anywhere to pull over and look at them. We did manage it a few times though. Note the barn built into the hillside - there are a lot of those around.
It continued to rain hard, and not everyone could be convinced to get of the car to look at the little waterfalls - here my sister indicates to my niece and I that she's perfectly fine staying where she is, thank you!
The character of the road itself was changing as we drove too. Hringvegur is a perfectly respectable major road between Reykjavik and Hrolsvollur, but after that it gets narrower and narrower, and single lane bridges requiring the traffic to stop and negotiate right of way become common.
Our final planned stop of the day was at Skogafoss, where it was still raining, of course. Another large and dramatic waterfall, but without the spectacular features of either Gulfoss or Seljalandsfoss.
A farm on the other side of the river. This one had the expected red roof :-)
There was a couple having wedding photos take at Gulfoss - she was there in a wedding dress, in the pouring rain, in February. I can't imagine how cold and miserable she must have been, unless she was suitably fortified with booze first!
And from there, we still had another three hours to drive to our next hotel, with a worsening road and worsening weather. But beyond Kalfafell, you're on the approach to Vatnajokull National Park - and that means glaciers.
Our first sight of a glacial finger creeping down between two mountains in the encroaching dusk. We were so excited! A real glacier! We have a few in Tahoma/Mount Rainier National park, but those are small, high elevation ones on the slope of a single mountain (albeit quite a big mountain). A sea level glacier as wide as the peaks it crawls between is quite another thing.
Of course, over the next couple of days we saw a lot more of the glacier, and started to realise just how big it really is - the third largest in the world...
no subject
Date: 2025-03-11 08:30 pm (UTC)That wedding couple were insane. Who does that kind of thing?
Off road coaches are thing in Canada too :)
Our first view of a glacier was when we flew south west of Reykjavik to join a day tour. They make them so BIG in Iceland!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 12:55 am (UTC)So you took an internal flight to get closer to the glaciers instead of driving? How did that work out? Where did you land?
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 02:58 am (UTC)We flew in and out of Hófn https://bymyverytoes.quadrumania.net/2013/08/day-three/
Entire Iceland trip posts here, if you want to compare itineraries/photos
https://bymyverytoes.quadrumania.net/2013/08/day-one
https://bymyverytoes.quadrumania.net/category/overseas-travel/scandinavia-ish/page/2/
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 03:38 am (UTC)The water at Gulfoss looks grey in your shots, without the blue-green that we saw. I suppose what we were seeing was snowmelt, whereas you would get mostly rain with soil in it from the ground not being frozen. Though obviously you could go places that just aren't accessible in winter.
I recognise Thingvellir church - and the Drowning Pool, though you didn't label it as such!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 04:03 am (UTC)Yeah, because the weather was atrocious! That shot of Doug is him leaning into the wind and with a little effort, he could have taken flight :) It was raining and cold and generally horrible. Easily our coldest day in Iceland (which was otherwise experiencing a heatwave. It got up to 25° in Reykjavik which at the time was something of a rarity.
You can see the yellowy-green colour of the water which gives the waterfall its name of "Golden Falls" though.
I'd forgotten a lot of this too. I'm shocked to find it was as long ago as all that :)
no subject
Date: 2025-03-12 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 05:00 am (UTC)So you couldn't get your sister out of the car, huh? *snickers* I'm not sure if I wouldn't keep her company as well.
The only glacier I've ever seen was in Homer, Alaska, and it was a small, dirty little thing. Not as impressive as the one in your picture.
I wonder if the bride's dress wasn't made of the same material as your diving gear?
no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 01:53 pm (UTC)That photo of my reluctant sister was only about 20 minutes down the road from Seljalandsfoss - it has to be said that she was just recovering from getting thoroughly soaked when she declined the chance to get out again!
There will be more photos of glaciers, there's no getting away from them XD
no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 06:51 am (UTC)I MIGHT be able to put up with tourists if I had that in my backyard...
no subject
Date: 2025-03-13 01:47 pm (UTC)