At the end of our trip we circled back towards Reykavik and found ourselves with some time to cover the more standard day trip tours from the city.

This included a trip to visiting the original geyser, which unsurprisingly stinks to high heaven of sulphur (rotton eggs)

There were plenty of witches cauldron pools on view plus some spectacular high eruptions to be viewed. Just be sure to stand up-wind unless you want to get very wet indeed.

Then of course there is the amazing Godafoss waterfall, with it’s crevasse plunging at right angles.

And last but not least, a trip to the wonderful folk museum to add a bit of context that might have been better understood at the beginning rather than the end of the trip.

It is surprising how very poor Iceland was up to relatively recently with famine an ever-present danger. Even now, the country is rich is terms of hydrothermal-energy and in the education of its people, but poor in terms of land resources. It is still very economically vulnerable to global shocks with it’s main sources of income tourism and fishing still.

For a country dependent on tourism there was very little to see by way of quality service.

Similarly there was very little to be found in terms of excellent food. It is a country that focuses on selling it’s natural features with very little adornment, very little added value exhibit or tourism attractions.

So far, that’s been enough. But the friction that inevitably results from dealing with so many visitors in such a short space of time, to such an empty country are bubbling up. Its history plays out in a very stoic, pragmatic attitude towards life within the people we met but they can see the damage that tourism can cause. How they manage to mitigate that damage will determine whether the tourism industry continues to thrive.

It was an amazing trip to a beautiful unique country, surprisingly different to expectations but well worth visiting.

We headed east from the Westfjords to Akureyri in the north on a mammoth 10 hour drive ending in a lovely airbnb, the only one of the trip.

Given our time again, I’d book more of these as it just gives you that little bit more space as a family.

The fjord that Akureyri sits upon is the largest in iceland and has a resident family of three humpback whales.Although expensive, you are almost guaranteed to see whales and on the flattest calmest water possible.

We headed out on the midnight boat, which is obviously daylight in mid-summer but it would have been more sensible to ask where the whales were being seen before booking.

Whether they’re moving in or out of the fjord impacts where you will meet them and how much extra time you might have to go find some other creatures.

Having enjoyed the whales we decided on a mini-road trip to the trollskagi peninsula.

And despite the mist, we had a great time pooling through tunnels and avoiding the sheep.

It was the first time during the holiday where lunch fell into place: most parts of the world have a standard lunch that people on the move will buy. In Iceland on the road, clearly that was hotdogs which are useless for vegetarians but the other option at lunch in Iceland is soup which came with a tureen on the side of the cafe/restaurant with a loaf of (good) bread to cut and come agin until you were totally full.

Our lunch in the north also came with a piece of cake and free coffee from the dispenser. Decent coffee because people in iceland don’t drink instant.

One of the most obvious features about Iceland, is the sheer wetness of the place. It pushes way beyond Welsh damp and drizzle, even when it isn’t raining, and almost everywhere you look, you find a waterfall.

The Icelandic waterfalls are the tallest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, the most “add your own superlative to fit” and almost the first one we came across was the best.

Dynjandi of Fjallfoss is a truly beautiful set of waterfalls rising from the valley to a truly awe inspiring wall of water. It’s scale also makes it almost impossible to photograph.

To get to it you drive over the mountains from Latrabjarg and across into another fjord. Since just crossing to the other side of our fjord took more than 45 minutes, this made for a day trip on mostly metalled roads with the occasional bone breaking gravel track.

You climb higher and higher, rising into the soft damp clouds where vision disappears except for an occasional glimpse of a deathly fall to the side of the road, usually around a sharp bend as a car comes hurtling down towards you on your side of the road.

Given how few people can be found on a single day driving in iceland, it’s truly amazing how often you come across someone on a hairpin bend.

But then you reach the top, which can be smothered in clouds or bright sunshine, a state entirely unpredictable from the valley floor.

It’s a landscape unlike any other, this wet almost lifeless stretch of terrain, and your car rolls along the watershed, before starting the precipitous climb downwards.



And having parked the car at the bottom, one child retires back to the car daunted by the midges whilst the rest of us climb upwards.

Each of the falls is named, and the walk is not too high before you find yourself dwarfed by the main waterfall

It is truly beautiful, wherever you look. The fall of water is mesmerising (and wet on the face).

The view of the fjord is equally astonishing.

We saw many more waterfalls, but none more beautiful.

And on the way back to the hotel a decision was taken to “nip” to the red beach at Rauthasandur or Red Sands beach a beautiful red beach with a very pretty black church to photograph .

Most beaches in Iceland are black, but the beaches in the Westfjords are golden or pink so it was a one-off iceland opportunity.

Mostly the gravel roads were fine (though bone shattering) in a 4WD car but the hairpins on the way down to the beach were a bit hairy.

Both the beach and surrounding scenery was beautiful, but the weather was neither warm nor sunny which did take the gloss off the experience somewhat.

Latrabjarg Cliffs are one of Europes biggest, tallest cliffs, home to thousands of birds.

It’s the westernmost point of Iceland, and Europe as a whole, really a line of several sea cliffs, 14 kilometres long and up to 441 m high.

It offers stunning photographic opportunities from close range: bird photography for dummies.

& best of all, the puffins are especially tame and are the ones to be found at the the grassy, higher part of the cliffs. it is worth looking up the times of year puffins roost – apparently they all disappear in August.

The edges of the cliff are fragile and loose and the fall is a long way. Mostly iceland seems a bit low key on health and safety barriers, but they do tend to give fair warning. People with young children should keep them close.

Látrabjarg is the most visited tourist attraction in the Westfjords, especially in the evening when the birds come home to roost. The cliffs are easily accessible by car along an okay gravel road or track.

It’s enjoyable even if you’re not very knowledgeable about birds but if you have a quick guide to birds, plus some binoculars or a long lens and can do some spotting, it definitely adds value.

Plus keep an eye out for seals basking on the rocks below – they set up a nursery when we were there, but as always you have to look quite hard to find them.

From the Snaefellsness Peninsular and Stykkusholmur, we took a ferry across the water to the Westfjords.

Not the brightest of days, and more than a little bit rough around the islands, the hours were livened up by listening to the conversations of an American group next to us. It seemed to be a party of well-to-do young families ravelling escorted by both an American organiser, and a couple of Icelandic guides. There was also a French woman that initially appeared to be part of the group but with hindsight was probably a member of staff.

One of the fathers piqued our interest when talking to one of the kids, his son (apparently) who he called “bear”. He talked of respecting his 6 (?) year old son  whilst talking over him and then disappeared off for a break leaving his even younger daughter to hold the ferry seats. The boy kicked off. The girl kicked back. There were tears all around until the mother a rather beautiful Chinese American lady arrived.

Unfortunately she had decided to share her anger at the length of the journey – she felt misled by the tour guides who whilst they had given her a written itinerary, hadn’t actually verbally read it out to her and stressed the time involved.

There was lots of chat around emotions and validations and respect, all whilst being hugely dis-respectful.

After about 10 minutes of ranting at one of the Icelandic staff, she ground to a halt. & then her husband started up. Putting up his hand to shush her and telling her to listen to him since he’d sat there listening to her complaining.

He talked about the importance of the kids living in the “real” and experiencing the holiday through physical activities, going fishing, visiting real factories etc. rather than just looking at things and places.

And it left us all feeling that no matter how crap our family dynamics might appear at times, they could be a lot worse: I could have named my child “bear” and insisted they visit a fish factory on holiday. We could have lived their childhood in the “real” as opposed to just living. I could have spent my energies filling all of their hours with organised activities, with other people whilst telling them that I respected them (but not enough to actually engage with them myself).

& obviously they had more money than sense, and were easily enough distracted when the Icelandic tour guide suggested stopping off at a hot spot (thermal pool) on the way to their next hotel. No doubt their family will be fine and their parenting techniques aren’t bad just different and considerably more stressing for everyone involved.

Still, listening in managed to pass about an hour with sighs and eye rolls across the table before we rolled off the ferry in our hired car and started to drive towards Patreksfjord. It’s difficult to either explain or capture just how big the landscape was and how high and cold the pass up and over the mountain turned out to be.

Driving twisty roads in the fog, with a drop that could kill you on one size did not add to the enjoyment.

We thought we’d passed the worst and then hit the gravel roads. With a £3000 excess on the car. the idea of gravel kicking up and damaging the car was not restful.

Still, it was extraordinarily beautiful even on a dull and dreary day

& eventually we arrived.

Planning a trip to Iceland was a strange business. Everyone who has been raves about the place and about the ring road, but when you drill down, none of them seems to have completed the entire circuit around the island.

It seemed logical to plan a round trip by looking at the ring road and any detours, setting aside 2-3 nights at each stop, and trying not to end up with too many all-day drives. It helps to focus on what you regard as the highlights of a visit, which for me is always about the photography, which roughly translates as landscape, animals and city scenes.

Hiring a car in Iceland seems ridiculously expensive, especially if you plan to include any gravel roads or a trip to the Highlands interior which requires a four wheel drive vehicle. We end up paying around £3,000 for 20 days.

The Summer weather isn’t great even by UK standards so I expected rain and around 15-20C but it could be worse: it was worse.

Iceland is obviously said to be a landscape photographer’s dream. There are glaciers, ice flows breaking up in the bay, moon-like lava fields, beaches with black, red and pink sand, geysers and hot springs, and an over-abundance of waterfalls almost everywhere.

When it comes to animals they have puffins and whales. There’s only one city, Reykjavik, but I was hoping for some wonderful modern architecture combined with some more traditional buildings.

It’s also worth remembering how expensive food can be in Iceland. A simple bowl of soup for lunch (or sandwiches) with tap water to drink, ends up costing around £15 per head. A rather unimpressive pizza would cost around £30 in a pizzeria in Akureyri. Whenever we sat down in a cafe (we decided restaurants were just too much) we spent at least £100.

So around half of the accommodation is self-catering. A quick look through receipts suggests a block of cheddar would cost £7, a loaf of bread £3 etc – so also not cheap.

At this stage of totting up the extraordinary costs, I realised that cheaper shortfall flights (around £1,000 for four of us) were not going to offset enough of the living costs – it’s an expensive trip with car hire and hotel bills adding up to around £12,000 for four people. for three weeks. Cut it down to two weeks and you’re looking at around £9,000. To cut it down even further, you could use airbnb accommodation throughout, or even hostels.

Food is taxed quite heavily in Iceland, plus it starts expensive because much of it has to be imported whilst for home grown or made food, labour costs are typically high making production costs high.

So the itinerary ended up looking something like this in my head, amended with strike throughs and italics for what actually happened:

• Arrive Reykavik:  Reykavik Residences £1,600: 2nights, self catering arriving late so really only 1 full day
  • Whale Watching Didn’t happen on a rainy blustery day
  • Modern architecture, cathedral & Harpa Concert Hall & Civic Centre, Old Harbour, basically an excuse to mooch about;
• Transfer to Hotel Egilsen, Snaefellsnes PeninsulaWest Iceland £1,000: 2 nights bed and breakfast;
  • On the way there are some landscape sights to see views of  Vogelmir etc.
  • Saxholl Crator, Gerduberg Basalt Columns (Snaefellsjokull National Park) Stykkisholmir Harbour (ferry)
• Transfer to Hotel Latrabjarg £1,400 bed, breakfast and supper: Westfjords by ferry and car: 3 nights
  • Puffins on the Latrabjarg Cliffs, the most westerly point of Europe. Raudasandyr beach for a walk and seal hunt.
  •  Dynjandi waterfall
• Transfer to Akureyi Apartment, for a full day (7 hour) drive: 3 nights, £550 self catering:
  • Whale watching from Husavik Akureyri, which basically has a family of three humpbacks living in its huge fjord £250 (3 people).
  • Dettifoss  – just had enough of gravel roads by this stage so Dettifoss was out but Goðafoss Waterfall was in, on the route through to the Eastfjords..
  • Lava castles at Myvatn
  • Trollskagi drive & views
• Transfer to Fosshotel, Eastfjords £1,300 3 nights bed and breakfast;
  • Puffins at Borgarfjorddur – just too long a drive on gravel tracks, so abandoned this in favour of a smaller route closer to home
  • Seydisfjordur – which turned out to be a very pretty town on a sunny day.
• Transfer to Fosshotel Glacier, South East Iceland £1,100 2 nights, bed ad breakfast;
  • Stopping at Hofn for lunch –  note that food in Iceland is not one of its selling points but soup and bread for lunch became a mainstay of our trip.
  • Jokulsarlon lagoon & glaciers, Fjallsorlan
  • Lakagigar Laki Visitor trail
  • Fagrifoss waterfall
• Transfer to Hotel Skogar, South Iceland: 2 nights self catering £1,000;
  • Vik beach & puffins
  • Skogarfoss, Seljalandsfoss – no gravel roads, but after this number of days, who needed another waterfall.
• Transfer to Hotel Stracta, South West iceland £1,300 : 3 nights bed and breakfast ;
  • Gullfoss, Geysir & other bits and pieces within distance of Reykavik including possibly the Blue Lagoon –  by this stage of the holiday, we’re all basically retreating into our wifi and trying to do as little as possible.
  • Brief trip into highlands Kjolur Route – just not going to happen at the end of the holiday 
  • Anything left over from the initial day in Reykavik e.g. Arbaer Open Air Museum which turned out to be a perfect, very undemanding visit, just right for the last day.
• Transfer to Reykavik Airport and fly home.

And quite a few of the people who have been to Iceland and loved it, still add up the number of days and shake their heads at three weeks worth of holiday there. I just can’t see how to cut it down further without skimping on something.