10:15 AM Heimaey was almost abandoned in 1973 after an unexpected eruption formed a brand new volcano, destroyed half the town and almost sealed up the harbour. It was one of the reasons that I wanted to come here in the first place - not only to see the result of a recent eruption but to see how the town had avoided near disaster. I also wanted to climb a volcano at some point, and it helped that the two on this island were nowhere near as big or challenging as Hekla and some of the others on the mainland. After we had dropped our supermarket supplies back at the hostel, we took a walk up a small, grassy trail towards the back end of the harbour. The grass soon gave way to great mossy rocks, ... read more

The ‘Þ’ character in Icelandic, used in places like Þingvellir and Þorlákshöfn, is pronounced like a ‘Th’ is in English, as in the word ‘Thing’. In fact, to avoid confusing tourists, the ever helpful Icelandic people often write those place names down as Thingvellir and Thorlakshofn, rather than use the extra character in their own language. The ‘Þ’ symbol was actually a letter in the English language until the middle ages, with both Icelandic and Old English largely deriving from the Old Norse language of the Vikings. In the end, England scrapped the extra character due to German technology, maybe the original cause to use the phrase ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’. Through the middle ages, the English started to write ‘Þ’ without the top curve, so that it basically looked like a backwards letter ‘y’. When the ... read more

Gullfoss is where the Golden Circle gets its name from, literally meaning ‘Golden Falls’. It is also the furthest inland we can get along this road; Route 35 becomes Route F35 from here, and while I have no idea what the ‘F’ stands for, it basically means if you’re in a minibus with a bunch of other tourists the only way is back, come back another day in a souped up 4x4. As we pulled up onto the car park, the weather looked worse than ever. “I normally give people a good half an hour to look round here, but because of the weather I’ll say 20 minutes”, said Herman. “You’ll be back in ten”. Herman had a point. We stepped out of the minibus and the howling wind very nearly blew us over, while the ... read more

1:00 PM We were warned before we came that the weather in Iceland was changeable, and in our first three days we’ve seen pretty much every season. Today is by far the warmest it has been since we arrived, which sounds silly when the temperature boards on the roads out of Reykjavik are reading -1°C, but with the sun shining and the Atlantic (or possibly Arctic) winds having subsided, it feels relatively warm. It could be that it just feels warm because we are now used to the weather here, or it could be that we are comparing it to yesterday, which, at times, felt pretty extreme. Reykjavik was pretty dull and miserable first thing yesterday morning when the bus for the Golden Circle arrived. The bus was a few minutes late picking us up from ... read more

5:25 PM I found out while shaving yesterday morning that the Canadian bloke is called Joe. He was also a man without anything particular to do, so he joined us for the day while we perused the sights of Reykjavik. We decided to take a walk along the bay towards the city centre, the same route that we had started but given up on the night before, except that this time I had a fleece, John had a woolly hat and Lyndsey had a thermal vest. With those, there was no stopping us today. Joe didn’t seem so bothered about the cold, although he did wear a hat, but that is probably because he was much taller than the rest of us and it gets cold at those higher altitudes. Before heading for the city, Joe ... read more