I drove over to Waterlooville and picked up Adam, Marc, Mark and Matt and we headed of to Luton Airport. Apart from me nearly missing the turn for the M1 it was a very uneventful journey thank goodness.
The whole experience at Luton was much the same. Checked-in, got a coffee, had breakfast, got on the plane and took off.
The flight was only 2hrs 25 minutes which was good because it was quite cramped and I hate not being able to stretch my legs out.
When we'd collected our bags and went outside to wait for the car hire company to come and collect us that's when we got our first real Icelandic welcome...by the wind. It must have been gusting up to 50mph and was bitterly cold.
Once in the car our first port of call was the Blue Lagoon, the famous geothermal pool. I'll say it was the most expensive swimming pool I've ever been in at £34, but it was well worth it. Sitting in an outdoor pool while a 50mph wind whistles over your head was definitely a fantastic experience.
Our plan was to get to Kirkjufell mountain for sunset, but we underestimated the distance and the time it takes to get places here in Iceland.
As we were driving along we realised we weren't going to make it but we're still keeping positive that we'd be able to get some night shots and hopefully the Northern Lights.
The iPod was on loud and the banter in the car was brilliant when we spotted a great waterfall by the side of the road. We stopped and jumped out and got all our gear out to set up for sunset.
Once we left that waterfall the weather turned really really vicious. Matt was driving and had to cut the speed down to about 40mph because of the wind. At one point we could see the car was heading left but Matt was pointing the steering wheel to the right 😁
We had to go through a mountain pass and there was ice everywhere. The in-car banter suddenly went quiet!
After a total of 6 hours we finally reached the town of Grundarfjordur where we stayed in a really warm and comfortable hostel.
As for the Northern Lights...all the websites were going crazy saying the lights were really active right above us...but the 100% cloud cover and rain made sure we didn't get to see any of them. We even checked at 3am, 4am and 5am but there was no chance it was going to happen for us on our first night.
The weather forecast for night 2 is looking like a better chance of clear skies so hopefully we'll be able to catch them then.
Want to read more? Here's the link to Day 2
Want to read more? Here's the link to Day 2
No comments:
Post a Comment