Dad’s gone to Iceland: Day 8

Saturday, July 18

Travel time: 6 hours 20 minutes

Distance: 485km

Destination: Vaðnes

We set off back on the road for the second of three long drives. The road winds up from Dalvik, around the north-west coast, sometimes with nothing but a sheer cliff between you and the sea far below. The blue skies are covered by a blanket of cloud, but only light rain falls and the wind is still. We pass through long, straight tunnels blasted through the rock; in between are narrow valleys with clusters of houses packed into the bay. You wonder what a revolution it must have been for these places when the roads and tunnels came. Some of the tunnels are single carriageway with short passing places that look like a complicated negotiation if two caravans ever meet head-on.

Once we get back inland the road levels out, taking us across flat moorlands with the occasional twist around a crag. It feels more like a trek through the Scottish Highlands, especially with the heavy grey clouds hanging over the mountains. We stop for sandwiches at a spot that makes me think of Corrour station, the spot where Renton delivers his famous “It’s shite being Scottish” monologue in Trainspotting, and again at a bend in the road just north of Reykjavik where a river meanders lazily through a broad valley and the traffic is starting to build.

We are making good time. The guide books and websites warn you not to try to “do” Iceland in a week, but we only have a week. It’s true that you can’t cover everything in seven days, so I made an alternative plan of not trying to see the entire island, but picking three spots and bypassing everything else. One of the wisest pieces of advice I ever received on my travels came from a man on a bus near Harare, as I was heading out to see the balancing rocks. He asked what I hoped to see in Zimbabwe and I replied: “I want to see everything.” He burst out laughing. When I asked why he said: “I asked what you wanted to see, and you said ‘everything’,” stretching the word as wide as the corners of his mouth. I took the lesson on board: if you want to see things properly on your travels, you have to make choices.

So today’s second leg takes us to Selfoss, which will be our base for exploring Reykjavik and the geyser country. Altogether we are on the road for seven and a half hours, arriving just after 3.30pm. The owner of our cabin tips us off about a true Icelandic miracle: a budget supermarket, or the closest Iceland gets to affordable prices. The Bonus store at Hveragerdi looks like an Aldi, but everything costs about three times as much (which, as I said, isn’t bad) and keeps the meat, milk and vegetables in two giant cooled sectioned off areas, so it feels like you’re shopping in a semi-refrigerated maze. It also appears to have imported its automatic checkouts from the same company that supplies Tesco and Morrison’s in the UK, so as I was packing away my mjölk and skinka I was startled to hear a woman with a home counties accent firmly instruct me to place my items in the bagging area.

Our cabin for this leg is a step up in class from the static caravan in Dalvik: a beautifully finished pinewood cabin with a garden that has been carefully allowed to grow wild. A path lined with brambles, violets and buttercups leads down via a small arched bridge to a secluded grove with a bench half-reclaimed by the undergrowth. The house is stocked with books, games, atlases and a high-specification set of binoculars; everything indicates it is the domain of a nature lover. There is a huge luxurious sofa and a proper hot tub. But best of all, it has a separate one-bedroom cabin away from the main house, so the boys and I will have our own space for three nights. I tell them to make the most of it, because the last leg is going to be a lot more, for want of a better word, cosy.