SPOILER: Iceland Road Trips are NOT cheap!

Iceland, a land of fire and ice. A land blessed by nature in so many incredible ways it's impossible to describe. But don't worry I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes doing exactly that. Iceland is well known as a winter destination to enjoy the breathtaking northern lights when the sky is dark for much of the day. But if you visit during the summer you can experience the opposite. The midnight sun, almost constant light and there's just so much to see. It might not seem the most obvious place for a road trip from the UK. It's certainly not the cheapest but it is definitely one you will never ever forget. So sit back, relax and join me as I share one of the most incredible places I've ever had the good fortune to explore. All right you got this. I don't, I don't, I don't got this. Hi I'm Kat and I run the motorhome and travel website Wandering Bird. This is a speech that I did at the NEC motorhome and caravan show in October 2023. I know there were lots of you who couldn't get tickets because the show sold out. So for those of you who really wanted to see a Iceland trip this is for you. Now I quit my job as an air traffic controller a few years ago when I toured and lived full-time in my motorhome. Usually this is my rig, a swift escape, but on this particular trip up to Iceland I was lent a Bailey Adamo 69-4 from Bailey of Bristol and they said take it somewhere fun. So we pitched different ideas around and we eventually landed on the idea of taking their motorhome up to Iceland. Now small confession, when I suggested the idea of Iceland to Bailey, knowing that I was going to be doing the trip by myself, I thought that there was a ferry from the north of Scotland and I thought I could drive up to Scotland, get on the ferry, go around Iceland, come back again and that on my own was doable. That's not too crazy in terms of mileage. Spoiler, there's no ferry from the north of Scotland. In fact the only way that you can get a vehicle from the UK, from Bristol in fact, up to Iceland is to drive it across to France, then through Belgium, then through the Netherlands, I did stop for a couple days at Amsterdam which was amazing, then through Germany and up to the very tippity top of Denmark where you get on a ferry or technically a cruise and you take two days cruising across to the east coast of Iceland with a short stop in the Faroe Islands. 3,000 kilometres later it was quite a long trip but it was definitely definitely worth it. Now the ferry at the moment, there is only one boat that goes, it goes once a week, it's called the MS Nerona and it is much more plush and luxurious than your usual ferry boats that go from the UK to France. You've got several restaurants on board, there's an indoor swimming pool and a gym, there are even hot tubs that you can hire, the cabins are lovely and there's even your very own helipad should you wish to fly in on your private helicopter. One thing to mention whilst I think about it, you can take dogs into Iceland but they do need to go into quarantine for two weeks now considering I was only there for three weeks. I wasn't going to do that to Mac so I ended up with Crossfield who is a Mac replica and he's the one that you can see here in the picture. It's not actually my dog. Now the biggest question I get asked and I have been asked about this a lot, I have actually done a video on this, is how much should the ferry from Denmark to Iceland and back cost? So for one seven meter motorhome, I believe the Adamo 6.9, one person, that's me, all food and non-alcoholic drinks, I'm not a big drinker anyway and on a crossing where I was going to get rough, definitely not going to drink alcohol. I did pay for a minibar each way, that was non-alcoholic but it did include some soft drinks and bottles of water and crisps and snacks and actually when you tot up how much that would have cost apart from the minibar if I'd bought them individually on the ferry, it was a lot cheaper to get the minibar. So I did do that and all of that came to a grand total of around £4,000 for just that ferry trip. That doesn't include the ferries to get to and from the UK, I will at the end of this give a total for everything, but that was just the trip for the ferry. It is expensive, however if you check out my earlier video, which I will link to around here somewhere, you can see the breakdown I did and the comparison between what it's like to fly and hire and what it's like to actually take your own vehicle and when it becomes more cost-effective to do so. So I'll leave that video link for you so you can watch that if you would like to. So eventually you will end up on the east coast of Iceland in a little place called Seydisfjordur, which is amazing. It's on the end of a fjord, so the cruise ship goes down this fjord and you end up there and you you all get kicked off. Now to go around Iceland on the ring road is basically a circle, so you can go clockwise or anti-clockwise. On the ferry they gave a small talk and they suggested that we go anti-clockwise, but it occurred to me that if we all got off the ferry and all went around anti-clockwise, we'd end up in all the same places at the same time. So I decided to be different and go down south or clockwise for a day then turn around and go back again. And I did do this for one very specific reason which I will get to shortly, but a question that I've been asked a lot is does it matter which way round you go? The answer is no, not in the slightest. I suppose if you are going anti-clockwise you're on the outside lane because they obviously drive on the other side of the road, which means that you will be closest to the sea and the scenery, but it really doesn't make all that much difference. So you'll arrive in Iceland and you will do two things on day one, especially if you're treated to such a wonderful weather as I was for the first few days. First thing I'm going to do is go, I'm in Iceland, everybody does and it's fine, you can do that as many times as you like. The second thing you're going to do is stop and take a ridiculous number of photos. So my top tip for you is to make sure that everything is charged before you get off the boat. Make sure your phone is charged, your drone if you've got one, your GoPros, anything that you use to take photographs, make sure they are all charged because you're going to take a lot of them. I'm sorry, was I not stroking your tummy? The other thing, you don't get this on the stage, the other thing that you will realise on day one is the roads. Now I will talk about the roads a little bit later, but on day one was when I realised something really, really important. Don't follow your sat-nav. I was actually using my phone, not the proper sat-nav on this trip because I've been told there were no low bridges to avoid and that's true, there aren't any low bridges or particular roads to avoid if you stick to the ring road. But my phone had decided that don't go that way, that way goes this, you could just go straight down. Turns out it put me on something called an F road, which is really, really bad. If you don't have a four-wheel drive, make sure you avoid these like the plague. It took me about three hours to do a couple of miles because I was going so slowly, so, so slowly. There were potholes and there was gravel and the whole time I was thinking this isn't my van, oh my goodness, it's a hire van, I don't want to damage it. The views were stunning, but make sure you avoid the F roads, they're not worth the drama that they cause. Now on the first night I obviously had to find somewhere to sleep. Now I didn't book anywhere on my trip in advance with the exception of the very last night. Obviously I knew what day I was going to get the ferry, it only comes once a week and I knew I wanted to be at the campsite next to the port because the ferry was quite early in the morning. That's the only one that I booked up in advance. I went in June and July, which is peak season for the travel, and I didn't have any problems whatsoever. The campsites are easy to use, in fact they work beautifully because they almost work like airs in Europe, which means that you can turn up outside of normal campsite hours. You can turn up at 10 o'clock at night, I even turned up at one at two o'clock in the morning. Obviously there was no one there to greet me, but the way that most of them work is they're independent anyway, so you can turn up, find a pitch, if you want electric hookup and there's one available you can plug in, and then you just pay the next morning. They sometimes have QR codes which you scan and pay, or someone will come around and knock on your door, or if there's a reception you just go there and pay. Really, really straightforward. There is a scheme called the camping card, I believe it was about 180 euros to join, and that gives you access to reduced rates at several campsites around the island. My experience having done some research on that, and I didn't actually use it, is that some of the campsites that you might want to stay at, like this one on the top left, is at Skogafoss Waterfall, and you can actually camp right in the grounds of Skogafoss Waterfall, which was amazing, but that's not part of the camping card scheme. So if you want a little bit more freedom and flexibility, and also don't forget that the campsites that are part of the scheme are going to get busier because everyone's going to head there, so if you want to be able to make it up as you go along and not worry too much about any scheme, I would suggest you don't do it. However, if there are three or more of you in the van, you'll probably save quite a lot of money, especially if you're there for several weeks, so you might want to do your own research and decide whether it's right for you or not. And the reason that I had gone down south for the day was because I wanted to visit the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon. Now going to the Glacier Lagoon had been an ambition of mine for years, and I was so excited to be able to do it. And because the weather was so lovely when I arrived, I decided to make the most of this weather window and head down that way. I'd also been told that if you go first thing in the morning on the very first trip you can get a seat on, something about the light makes the lagoon this incredible blue colour. I've not enhanced these photographs, it's genuinely what it looks like. It was absolutely amazing. So I went on the very first rib ride, beauty of travelling solo, you can often squeeze in if there's a spare space, and it was just us and our sister rib out at 9am. Go on the ribs, don't go on the bigger boats, it means you can get closer to the ice. And also you get to see incredible experience like this, we saw a seal, he was just chilling out on his iceberg, he hadn't been disturbed by anybody else on the lagoon yet, there were no canoeists or anybody else around, and it was just so peaceful and wonderful watching the wildlife out there. It was really a highlight of the trip for me. Now when I put this presentation together initially, it was about three and a half hours long, because I was talking about all of my favourite places all over the island, and frankly it's impossible to squeeze into a small amount of time. So what I've done is I've put together lists, I've separated by region, and some of my favourite places in each region. So whether you're going to go around the entire island, or whether you're just doing certain parts, you might find these useful. At the end I'll give you a link, you can download it and you can actually see more about where they are and some of my favourite spots. But here are a few of my favourite ones in southeast Iceland. Now as you move back, so obviously at the Glacier Lagoon I turned around and went back anti-clockwise again, and you head in then to the northeast, which would be the first section that you came to if you went straight there from the ferry. And I have to say I think if I went straight there from the ferry I'd probably have been a little bit disappointed, because the northeast is wonderful in a very barren, rugged, bleak sort of way. There's not a lot going on for the first few hours, in fact make sure you fill up with fresh food and with fuel at the town called which is the first town you come to when you get off the ferry. And that's also a fuel stock for a long while, so make sure you fill up there. And my advice for you as you go around the island is fill up when you get to about half full, because the fuel stations are further apart than you might be used to. But like I said, there's not a whole lot going on in the northeast, but eventually you'll come to central northern Iceland. And here you'll find some of the really famous waterfalls like Góðafoss and Dettifoss. And one of my absolute favourite places which was Húsavík. Now if you've seen the movie Eurovision Fire Saga, Húsavík is where it was filmed, and actually there's a cafe there called the Yaya Ding Dong Cafe, if you've seen the movie you'll get the reference. But one of the things that Húsavík is most famous for is whale watching. It's one of the whale watching capitals of the world, and especially in June and July they had something like a 98% success rate of seeing the whales. It was incredible. So again I went out on a rib boat in the morning, they give you a warm suit, make sure you wrap up so you're almost uncomfortably warm before you go out on the water, because it was chilly when we were out there. But I was lucky enough to see three whales when I was out there. The first was a minke and then we saw a fin, and then the last one, I got the guide so excited he could barely remember how to speak English, it was a blue whale. And obviously we only saw the back and then it was diving when we saw it, but less than one percent of the population of the planet have seen a blue whale. So I was really quite excited and humbled to be able to see that. The other thing that Húsavík did was made a massive dent in my bank balance, because Húsavík was where I discovered hot spring spas. Now there is a spa in Húsavík called GOC, that's the one here on the top right, it's like an infinity pool, it looks out over the fjord where I had been whale watching earlier that day, and it was just incredible to soak in the warm water, you can have a drink if you want one, and you can watch for whales. They see them all the time, I didn't see them when I was there, but apparently they see them all the time, especially during the summer, and in winter you can relax and stare at the northern lights. It was just one of my favourite, favourite places. If you are travelling solo like I was, it's not weird at all to go to these spas on your own. Plenty of people do it, it's not seedy or creepy, nobody really talks to each other unless you look like you're open for conversation. It was just wonderfully relaxing and I did then navigate my way around most of the rest of Iceland by the hot spring spas. They also have several natural ones all over the country, and they have some that are just like sort of muddy puddles, but they're warm water, and they had a couple of campsites that had those in, and then there was also this waterfall which I saw which was incredible. The water's warm, I'm not being all brave sitting here, and it was like a 100-150 foot drop over the side of the cliff down into the fjord. I sat there for half an hour and had it to myself. It was magical, absolute magical, so yeah the hot spring spas don't miss. My least favourite one I have to say was the Blue Lagoon. It was too crowded, too touristy and too expensive. If you are in Reykjavik and you want an alternative to the Blue Lagoon, I really recommend Hvamsvik, the one here with the pools. It's got pools where they have varying temperatures and you can, if you're feeling really brave and want to be truly Icelandic, you can hop over the walls into the cold waters of the fjord. I did do it, it lasted about 0.2 milliseconds. It was very, very, very cold. This is stupid, this is utterly, utterly stupid. Now if you just go round the ring road, you will miss out a section in the northwest called the Western Fjords, and they are totally worth detouring to if you've got enough time. They're Iceland on steroids, which I know sounds ridiculous, but the mountains are bigger, the scenery is bigger, it's absolutely incredible. They've got glaciers, they've got the biggest fjord in Iceland there, they've also got several waffle houses and they've got a couple of big towns as well if you feel like you need a little bit of civilization. The West Fjords are also the only place in Iceland where you can get white sand beaches, unlike the black sand beaches that you get elsewhere, so they're just a really lovely detour. Now the West Fjords also did teach me a little bit more about the road system. So up to this point, most of the road on the ring road had been paved, really easy to drive. You drive obviously on the European side, so not on the side that we do here in the UK, but it's really straightforward to navigate. Just remember that the ring road isn't a straight road, you do have to follow the direction, so you'll probably want some sort of sat-nav even if you just use it on your phone, but make sure you do pay attention to the turns, otherwise you could end up in all sorts of crazy places. But like I say, the roads are paved and very easy to drive, and the sections that aren't paved yet are again, they're a little bit slower, but they are working on paving the entire thing. Now I'm not a particularly nervous driver, I've driven all around Scotland, I did Applecross, Balloch, Nabar, I've been through the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland and did some crazy, crazy roads in Ireland, but I managed to get through it fine, so I'm not particularly anxious. This road in the West Fjords made me incredibly anxious. It was raining, it was gravel which was basically just mud, it was a sheer drop, there were no safety barriers, and then I realised it was a two-way road and I was on the outside. I could not wait to get down this hill. Don't let that put you off the West Fjords, but my advice would be to stick to the paved roads only, and if it looks like it's not a paved road, or there is a website you can check which will tell you if it's a paved road or not, I would avoid it like the plague, because it was really quite scary around that section. I think maybe because it is so much more remote, they're not quite so geared up for tourists doing crazy things in their motorhomes. Now the southwest of Iceland is wonderful, I could talk about this for an hour just on its own, there's so many beautiful places to see. Don't miss Reykjavik, it's actually a really lovely city, got a fantastic vibe, there's all sorts of things to do in there. Make sure you go to the church and go up at the very top, you can see incredible views from there. Rainbow Street is always good fun and definitely lots going on, and you can hire the little scooters that you can scoot around the city on. The other thing that was worth going to, maybe less so if you're male, is the phallus museum, which is exactly what you think it is, and there are various phalluses, phalli, whatever the correct plural for phallus is, various animals. It's quite macabre, it's quite random, but you're in Iceland so just embrace the crazy. There are a couple of things that I really want to draw your attention to in the southwest that were just highlights of the trip. The first is Silfra. Now Silfra is amazing, it's the only place on the planet where you can dive or snorkel between two tectonic plates. So the plates in Iceland, they're slowly drifting apart, it's made a big crevasse and that's filled up with pure and very very cold water that you can now dive or snorkel in. You can see the sort of trench there in that picture down in the bottom. Now the company that you go with will give you a dry suit, you think oh that's not so bad, they'll then give you a neoprene hood and gloves, which seem to serve no purpose whatsoever because they don't keep you warm or dry. They will give you a snorkel but then you realise that your face is left utterly exposed to the water, which is about one or two degrees. It is freezing. So you eventually work up the courage, you'll get your way in, you'll put your head under. After the initial gasp of shock at how cold the water is, you will go absolutely in awe of the colours. Again I've not enhanced this video, the blues and the teals and the green was just unbelievable. We spent about 20 minutes in there and don't get me wrong, 20 minutes was about enough. I was very grateful for the hot chocolate but I'm so glad I did it. It was just a really wonderful experience. Talking about places that make you very very cold, the only ice cave that you can see during the summer, again I went in June and July, is Katla. It's actually down near a town right on the south coast called Vik and they have these enormous super jeeps. They drive you out to the glacier and Katla, which is an active volcano, is actually well overdue for an eruption, which they took great delight in telling us. They were all wearing their safety devices and if it buzzed we all had to get bundled into the super jeep and drive like bat out of hell out of there. But Katla is the active volcano, it's underneath the glacier and a combination of the heat of that and also the water on the glacier, it forms these ice caves. They last about three or four months apparently, so this one that I saw in June is probably at the end of its life by now. But it's absolutely fascinating to see how the water had created this this hole in the glacier and we could also see another one that was just starting to form. You can see all the water sort of running through it, so if you do get a chance absolutely go and do that. Now I can't talk about Iceland without talking about volcanoes and the black sand beaches and also lava. Now there's plenty of volcanoes around Iceland, most of them are dormant or dead, and there are a few that are still in fact two days after I left one erupted, so I was quite grateful that I missed that. Well a part of me would love to have seen it, but there are plenty that you can park up nearby and they've got some steps up and you can walk down you can see into the some of them have got lakes that are formed then in the crater and other ones you can just see them how they were. So that's quite good fun to see. A thing that I did that I really enjoyed, you could do them both in Reykjavik and in Vik, is a lava show and this is where they collect up the black sand off the beach, they heat it to a thousand degrees C and then let it flow into the trench in the middle of the auditorium. The heat of it and the smell of it was absolutely like nothing else I've ever experienced. It was incredible to watch it and then you can watch it as it cools down to this bright vibrant pink and as it cools it's the crust that cools first, so the inside is still ridiculously warm and all around Iceland you can get these lava cave networks. I actually got to go into one and this is formed by the crust has cooled down to a point that the inside still moves and it creates these huge caverns and cave networks, so if you get to do one of them as well that's really worth doing. Now half of the initial presentation that I created were photos of waterfalls and obviously couldn't keep them all in, but three of my favourites happen to be down here in the south. Skógafoss, it's really famous, the advantage of having your own vehicle is that you can ideally visit places and everyone else has gone home, so most of the tours go sort of nine to five ish, so if you can arrange, and to be fair the midnight sun helped a lot with this, I ended up getting up at sort of lunchtime and then traveling around and getting to campsites at 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night and if you can do that you'll get some amazing places almost yourself. In fact Skógafoss was where that campsite was, I ended up there at 4am on my own, I had it just to myself, it was amazing. Slanderfoss you can also walk behind, so that's quite cool and eerie, but one of my other favourites is Gvernafoss which is just around the corner from Skógafoss, but no one seems to know it there, it's like this sort of canyon, it's like something out of Lord of the Rings and you walk in and this waterfall just gets revealed, it's amazing, so make sure you add that to your itinerary if you're going. Now in the talk that I did I gave a roundup of my costs for just in Iceland, but I'm actually going to give you guys on YouTube a roundup of my costs for the entirety of the trip, so this is from leaving the UK until coming back to the UK again. I hope you found that useful, if you would like the free mini guide to my trip to Iceland and all the different regions and places that I enjoyed, I'll leave you the link for that and if you want the in-depth itinerary of where I stayed and other places that I recommend you visit and other tips to help you plan your own trip, my Iceland road trip planner is now live, I'll leave the link here with a discount code for you as well. I hope you found that useful, thank you for your time and I'll see you on the next video, take care, bye!