This is a travel blog of my 16-day round trip by land and sea with my sons from The Hague to Iceland in July 2026
Saturday, July 11
Travel time: 2hrs 33 minutes
Distance covered: 228km
Location: Emmen (NL)
In these days of cheap flights, few destinations can still induce a sharp intake of breath when you tell people where you’re going. When a round trip to Istanbul is cheaper, easier and more reliable than a return train journey to Stoke-on-Trent, boasting about your holiday plans is a mug’s game. Iceland is one of the few exceptions. it is hard to reach and prohibitively expensive. Those who visit it mostly do so either as a stopover on their way across the Atlantic, as part of a north European cruise, or by flying in to Reykjavik’s tiny bustling airport and hiring a car.
That’s when I like to drop the second bombshell: “We’re not flying.”
Iceland is, to borrow George Orwell’s description of Jura, an extremely un-get-atable place. Even now Reykavik is a couple of hours’ flight time from most of Europe and America – making it the ideal place to break a transatlantic journey – the sheer expense of spending any time in what, until recently, was one of the northern hemisphere’s remotest outposts puts many visitors off. The overland route is less well known, but for those with time, patience and flexibility to tackle it, it is a more interesting alternative to flying. You can get a ferry from Hirtshals, at the northern tip of Denmark, to Seydisfjordur, a tiny port on the west coast of Iceland. It takes 48 hours and ventures past the Norwegian coast, grazing the northernmost tip of Scotland, with an optional stopover in the Faroe Islands. After watching travel bloggers such as the ferry fanatic Steve Marsh sing the praises of the Smyril Line, I decided to book it.
We are travelling in the peak summer season, but if you’re flexible – and bold – enough to sail in April or May, it’s possible to get a return fare for two people with a cabin, including a car, for around €1,200, or just over £1,000. The sea is at its calmest in spring, the days are lengthening, and as long as you pack enough warm clothes and can cope with single-digit temperatures, it can be a very pleasant time to visit the island. Compared to the cost of two people flying and hiring a car, it’s a reasonable deal, you’re not burning kerosene and you get to spend four nights on board a ship. There is one small sting to be aware of: after you’ve booked your car onto the ferry you’ll receive a tax demand from the Icelandic treasury for around €100/ €85 for the privilege of using their roads. But the upside is that you can pack your own food, drink and other supplies, thus avoiding – or at least offsetting – the exorbitant prices charged in Icelandic hostelries.
The first stage of our long trek into the unknown, alien north was one of the most deeply trodden paths we know: a 200-kilometre trip along the Dutch motorways from The Hague to stay with my wife’s parents in Drenthe, near the German border. It still feels slightly disconcerting, 12 years after she died, to sit in the house where she was born, where the imprint of her breath hangs in the air and vestiges of her are scattered through the house. A sketch of her as a girl hangs in the corner of the living-room, with a searching look that draws your attention at a distance of 30 years. But it also seems a fitting base camp, since Magteld and I had Iceland on our bucket list. At the last minute I bundled her expired in passport with the other five – one for me, two each for her half-Dutch children – as if she is, in an otherworldly sense, coming along for the ride.
