Monday, August 24th, 2026

Distance driven – 358 Kilometres (1501 grand total)

I woke up feeling refreshed. I had expected to feel a bit queasy after all the butter, but I did not. Maybe the phrase “buttered up” works in more ways than one.

I made my self a pot of tea and went to sit in the sitting room, which weirdly had been described by the host as “the party room” (maybe parties are different in Iceland). I surveyed the bay out of the picture window. Outside, it was a little bit dull, but it was dry. Our little Suzuki sat poised and waiting for our last journey in it. I realised that I would be sad to see it go – it was a plucky little thing that had taken everything we had thrown at it in its capable stride.

With no prospect of breakfast, Lucie was keen to hit the (probably unsurfaced) road. While I prudently kept out of the way, she packed the bags. Our fellow guests turned out to be a young Austrian couple who were on their honeymoon. When we told them we had spent our honeymoon in Iceland they seemed to like it. They were on their way to Akureyri too, to go whale watching, the way things seemed to work, we might well be seeing them again.

We departed at 09:00 and left town on Road 68 which we would follow for about one hundred and ten kilometres, all the way to Road 1. Although she admitted to liking the little Suzuki, Lucie declined my invitation to drive. It was dull and rather chilly, only nine degrees C and the wind was whipping the now grey waters of the bay into quite a froth. I was tempted to use the Nordic word “maelstrom” there – but I hate to exaggerate …..

The level of sunlight has a big effect upon what you see in Iceland or, perhaps, just how you perceive it. In the dull gloomy weather, everything looked more harsh and formidable. The wind served only to exacerbate this. It was not really blowing stuff around, nothing was moving so I guess that what would move, had already moved. However, gulls and ravens kept being blown, seemingly helplessly, across our path and there were even roadsigns to alert drivers to this possibility. All the while, in the background, creamy topped waves were running up the shore. The light was so dull that photo opportunities were quite scarce.

When driving, I had to keep a constant eye out for sheep. Despite the uncountable millions of acres of grass, the sheep liked nothing better than to eat the grass at the very edge of the road – and then cross to the other side every time a car came along. Of course, when one does it, they all do it, they are sheep, after all.

What I was not prepared for was when a mother goose and her five goslings did the same trick. Because she was not big and woolly, I only saw the mother at the very last moment and had to brake fairly hard to avoid splattering the road with pate de foie gras. That was a near one !

The all too familiar sign for the end of a surfaced road appeared and the Suzuki dropped into what turned out to be over twenty-five kilometres of dirt (or scraped rock) road. This stretch also involved some quite spectacular, second gear climbs, followed by similar descents. I keep extolling the little Suzuki, but it did do a wonderful job of ironing out the ruts and pebbles. 

Then, it began to rain. Bang went any kind of visibility and a merciful stretch of “real” road also ended with similar suddenness. We were tracking the coast again, driving around the perimeters of the fjords in that child’s hand pattern to which I alluded yesterday. The only difference was that we could not really see much. At some point, we finally passed out of the West Fjords and into Iceland proper but, if there was a sign that said so, we missed seeing it in the downpour.

Finally, Road 68 came to its end when it joined Road 1. We needed to turn North which was left, but first we went right as there was a service area visible and we still had not had breakfast. The services were crowded with people and, even after only three days, such a throng seemed strange and disconcerting. A quick sandwich and a drink and off we went North.

Road 1 at least had a surface, but it also had, by our recent experience, a lot of traffic. The maximum speed allowed anywhere in Iceland is 90 kph, but you would not have thought that. A continuous stream of traffic whizzed by whenever there was the opportunity, all this in very poor visibility indeed. The Suzuki was happy at ninety on the flat, but on the long hills (and there are lots of those) its tiny engine struggled a bit so, a couple of times I needed to pull off into a side road to let the Nordic Fittipaldis go by.

We like to take breaks so Lucie selected a roadside cafe. To say it was packed would have been an understatement. People were milling like a shoal of startled herring and it was hard to find a seat. Then, almost as if by magic, they all vaporised, leaving us sitting practically on our own. A coach party doing the Great Circle, we conjectured, as we munched our carrot cake.

Still in a downpour, we carried on. It seems bad to call it boring, but it did become so. There were still climbs and descents, but they contained no element of drama and, with a good surface, it was easy going. I always say, never relax and the veracity of that maxim was about to be proven. A Dacia car decided to pass me, that was fair enough. However, it was not a particularly powerful car and, although I slowed to aid his passage, it took a while. The driver was, I suppose, watching me and I was watching him. His vehicle was obscuring a lot of my forward vision and he was not looking forward. Three sheep ambled across the road ahead. I saw the first one and, for the second time that day, braked hard. He then saw them and braked even harder before, luckily, passing behind the last one in the line. In the end, no real drama and no lamb kebabs – but it only takes a second.

Naturally, the Dacia raced away – probably to prevent us seeing his red face – but five minutes later, we came up behind him as he was the last car in a line at a traffic light. A huge piece of resurfacing was in progress. When our time came to move forward, we drove for two kilometres alongside a very impressive piece of machinery that was scattering small stones and pressing them into fresh tarmac. The machine was an impressive shade of yellow, too.

On the way down into the vik where Akureyri is situated, we noticed some quite extensive forests of smallish conifers lining the hillsides. We had seen quite a few smaller blocks of trees before on our travels around but these extended over quite a large area. In most cases it had been obvious that these stands of trees had been planted and were not accidental. The internet is a wonderful thing when used sensibly and Lucie quickly ascertained that Iceland does have a reforestation program. In my mind, I had always felt that Iceland, as a volcanic island, had never had trees, so was it not just a “forestation” exercise, I enquired. Do not ever poke a tiger ! Further queries by Lucie quickly revealed that, when the first settlers arrived, eleven hundred years ago, up to 40% of the island had been covered in trees. These were principally Silver Birch. The building of houses and boats, together with the use of wood for fuel, fencing etc., and even some commercial logging had quickly denuded the hillsides and all but wiped out its trees. 

A replacement program is now underway, with birch and selected conifers being the main trees used. The program is being carefully managed so as not to also destroy the areas of harsh, bare scenery that have, very much, become Iceland’s “Trademark”. As an aside, the high winds, poor soil and short growing season means that the trees take a long time to grow and do not achieve great stature. Some conifers we spotted beside the road were still less than ten metres high and they looked otherwise mature.

Now you know.

Akureyri was finally getting close and the port appeared in far distance. By our recent standards, it was a huge place and, like Reykjavik, it had roundabouts. It also had traffic lights where the red light was heart-shaped.

When we tried to turn into the road where our lodgings were, we discovered it was a pedestrian precinct, which was a rare black mark for Mapy. It took a bit of rooting around (should that be routing around ?) before we found a place to park illegally for the few minutes that it took to find our room and leave our bags. Then, we returned sadly to our little silver jeep, as we had to give it back to Budget. This simple act turned into a bit of a fiasco. Sadly, Lucie typed in the address wrongly, but the misspelt road name was a road that existed. When we went there, it was hard to find anyone who had even heard of Budget/Avis, let alone knew where their depot might be. In the end, in a (rare) moment of inspiration, I typed Avis Akureyri into Google maps and it found it in about 1/1000th of a second. It was only a kilometre away but, to the people where we were asking, it may as well have been on the icy surface of Jupiter.

We handed the little Suzuki back, had a last picture taken with it – and walked home to our lodgings.

Our room in the Torg Guest House was one of those well thought out places where everything is carefully shoe-horned into the smallest available space. The bed was actually quite big (and very comfortable) but the bathroom was like one of those puzzle squares where you need to move something to do something else. It was not quite “Ibis Budget” (our benchmark), but it was not far away.

The shower, with both a spray and a rainfall head was powerful. The water had a slight suggestion of sulphur, suggesting it was either thermally heated or piped directly up from Hell. The only fault in the room, to the modern “electronic” traveller, was that it only had two plug sockets – and one of those was, weirdly, so high on the wall (almost at the ceiling) that it was impracticable to use it.

For our evening meal, we went to Muhlaberg restaurant. This was a scarily expensive place near to the bottom of the steps leading to Akureyri’s distinctive church. For starters we had Char (Lucie) and baked Brie with pickles (me). For our main, we both had pan seared salmon with broccoli and mashed potato. This was, essentially, exactly what we had eaten in the hotel Flokadur, two days previously, except that this was done both perfectly and inventively. The only problem with such an upper echelon venue was that I could not lick my plate ! Strangely, even a half litre of beer (the norm was point four of a litre) only cost the equivalent of three hundred crowns. Despite being full, Lucie could not resist the cheesecake (which provoked a discussion about whey and, regrettably, Little Miss Muffett and spiders). I could not resist the rhubarb crumble, although whether it was a “true” crumble provoked yet more debate. At least it was not de-constructed !

Replete, we walked home. It appears that we visited Akureyri on our honeymoon in 2004 and Lucie was puzzled by changes to its layout. I, quite naturally, did not remember ever being there at all !

You know what I did when we got back to our lodgings ……