Tomatoes, torrents and trolls

We woke up in Thoranna’s family’s summer house and realised we were surrounded by mountains, snow and the clearest, most crisp air. It’s always rather intriguing to arrive somewhere when it’s dark, only to discover what it actually looks like in the morning. 

We had left over pizza for breakfast and were on the road by about 10.30am

The Icelanders have definitely worked out how not to be slaves to the horrors of the natural world.  Broadly speaking, this is achieved by working with and harnessing nature instead of trying to defeat it. What they don’t know about driving in the snow, for example, probably isn’t worth knowing. In fact, I learned today that the first team to drive across the South Pole did so in a vehicle designed by an Icelander. 

The snow is far dryer and more powdery here than the sloppy stuff we get in the UK, but all the roads are quite comprehensively covered in the stuff and the cars just keep on driving. I’m told it’s largely to do with decent tyres. 

We drove along the “Golden Circle” today which is Iceland’s preeminent tourist circuit. It takes in some breathtakingly spectacular locations, so I thought it was going to be utterly thronged with tourists, but it was really rather quiet. 

The Golden Circle takes you through the mountains and, what I think the Icelanders might consider to be woods. The trees here don’t grow very tall, so when they’re clustered together they can look a little pathetic. Before the Vikings moved to Iceland, the place was apparently highly forested, but, after they’d chopped everything down, it apparently proved fairly difficult to bring them back. There’s a joke over here which goes, “what do you do if you get lost in a forest in Iceland?” “Stand up!”

Our first major stop was at the Gullfoss waterfall. I have no idea why this beast of a waterfall isn’t every bit as famous as Niagra or The Yosemite Falls. It’s on a scale so epic, I’m not sure I can quite do it justice by trying to describe it! The falls are incredibly wide - surely far wider than Niagra. Water thunders down in two stages and disappears deep, deep down into a ravine. The sheer volume of the water kicks up so much spray that you can’t see the river underneath. You literally can’t see where the falls end. 

The water which pours down the hillside is a somewhat mystical greeny-yellow colour: a little like oxidised copper mixed with chalk, but what is most thrilling about the waterfall at this time of year is that a lot of it has frozen solid. Huge towers of icicles cling to the sides of the ravine. It’s almost impossible to comprehend that such fast-flowing water would ever be able to freeze over, but the temperatures were astonishingly cold. I could feel my ears burning to the point that I felt if I’d bashed them too hard they would have shattered into a thousand pieces. 

From Gullfoss, we went to an area of great tectonic activity where a real life geyser called Strokkur spurts columns of boiling water thirty meters into the air. There used to be two geysers right next to each other, the first of which was considerably more impressive. That geyser was actually called Geysir and was the geyser which all other geysers were named after. Sadly, an earthquake in the 1970s brought Geysir’s work to a close and he’s remained a dormant, hot, sulphurous pool ever since. 

When you walk around the area, you encounter scores of circular pools surrounded by rocks shimmering with multicoloured minerals, none of which it would be wise to touch because they’re full of boiling water. People cook eggs there! They bubble restlessly like curious cauldrons and it’s of little surprise that Icelanders are so obsessed with trolls, witches, ghosts and folklore. 

We tore ourselves away from the geyser for the next adventure in our Icelandic saga, and saw scores of horses galloping along the side of the road. They’re smaller than ordinary horses but what apparently separates them from all other horses is a fifth gait called “skeith” which is somewhere between a cantor and a gallop, but an unbelievably smooth variant: so smooth, in fact, that the jockey doesn’t bob up and down as he or she rides. No other horse in the world possesses that particular ability. Or so I’m told. 

We had our lunch in the most peculiar setting, namely a geothermally-heated greenhouse where they grow tomatoes all year round. There are tables set up within the tomato vines and all the food served is based on tomatoes. Bumble bees live in the greenhouses all year round. The waitress told us that they’re a little quiet in the winter months but they were certainly still buzzing around. It was all absolutely fabulous. And the food was delicious. 

The last part of our glorious day saw us driving through the mountains as the sun melted into a peach-coloured light, which made the snow-covered mountains glow magically. 

As we made our way through the stunning countryside - tall skies, 360 degree panoramic views - we listened to ABBA. That’s about as good as it gets, in my world, particularly when everyone sings along in harmony. 

The sun set as we climbed a hillside overlooking a wide, wide river, silhouetted against the tangerine sky as the evening winds began to strengthen. To make matters perfect, we’re predicted more Northern Lights tonight. How lucky do I feel?