Iceland – it can be so grey, so wet & so windy!

On Saturday evening, 13 March we had a wonderful dinner at Vox to wrap up the photography course. When we came out of the restaurant there were few clouds and the setting moon looking crisp and clear. The Aurora forecast looked promising.

But Icelandic weather intervened, and clouds came over well before anything else became visible. With 5 consecutive days of rain, snow, sleet, wind and grey skies, this street art reflected my mood!

This morning Sue and I left Reykjavik on our trip up the western side of Iceland to the north coast. Our first stop was supposed to be the "walk Inside the Glacier" at Husafell. But last night Sue knocked on my door soon after we returned from dinner to let me know that she’d had a call from the people organising our tour. Due to weather warnings for high winds and significant rain for Sunday, the glacier tour was cancelled.

And the weather warnings were right – it continued to deteriorate as we drove to the hotel at Husafell. But we were in large Toyota 4WD with massive tyres that can handle the snow and ice well.

Sigi was our driver for the day - he would be changing over with Vidar in the evening - and he really looked after us.  One of the delights of driving around Iceland is the "truck stops" - great for clean bathrooms and fresh lunches. All have been excellent and it has been fun to find yet another somewhere along the roadways.

Our stops included a visit to Deildartunguhver. This is Europe's most powerful hot springs - most of the water is used for central heating in Borgarnes and Akranes. To give a sense of the power of these hot springs that are dotted across Iceland, the hot water pipeline to Akranes is 64 km, the longest in Iceland and the water is about 97 Celsius. We also went to the Hraunfossar waterfall, a complex series of falls that extend for about 500m down the length of the river. Just beautiful.

Finally arriving at the Hotel Husafell later in the afternoon, we ensconced ourselves there with great views towards the snow-covered mountains, the wind blowing the rain horizontally onto the windows and the evening sky starting to darken.

Unfortunately there was no internet access due to the bad weather, and with few people staying there, it was a quiet night. Vidar, our guide for the remainder of the trip, joined us that evening, and we planned to leave at around 9am to drive to our next overnight stop and our most northerly point, Akureyri.