Got up early and packed up our rucksacks ready to travel to Reykjavik. The bus picked us up from outside the scout hut. We stopped for lunch, eventually, and had the usual jam and crackers. So, we finished off with a hot dog complete with fried onion bits, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. We stopped at another garage later, and one of the lads bought me a coke.
Arrived in Reykjavik early evening, and the coach took us to the campsite just next to the New Youth Hostel and open-air swimming pool. The bus seemed full of kids and cases. I spent most of the journey asleep, or reading one of the lads’ saga book over his shoulder.
We came into Reykjavik via the coast road, it is quite a large city and after tea most of the group went to look around. Whilst tea was cooking, one of the lads went to book places on the coach trip, and arranged for it to pick us up outside the youth hostel, a courtesy we had got quite used to. It was the last camping night, as we were in the hostel for the last night of the trip before the very early start home.
As I waited for the others to come back, I lay watching the night sky, amazed how light it was.
We got up, had breakfast and took one of the tents down, as it was now empty and no longer needed. Six of us were going on the coach trip. We took all our gear across to the hostel and a coach came to take us to the main coach outside the hotel in Reykjavik, complete with a very trendy guide with his dark sunglasses and blonde hair.
The coach was full, so I sat across the aisle from one of the lads, next to a large man. It was reminiscent of the trip back from Askja. The first part of the journey was the same as Sprengisandur, as far as Selfoss, but we stopped on the way at Eden. A garden centre with greenhouses fed by natural geothermal water, and full of fruit and tropical plants, growing in a sub-arctic climate! After taking photos of onion summerhouses on the hill, we set off again.
The next stop was at a church, the first bishopric in Iceland, with beautiful stained glass windows and sun shining through them. There was also a crypt with a way out beside the church. There was a good view of Hekla over the fields.
We then saw an explosion crater with a lovely turquoise blue lake at the bottom. It was not as impressive as Askja though! We had lunch outside a restaurant, near a statue and flowers.
We then travelled to Gullfoss, the golden waterfall, a very impressive double waterfall. The sun was shining and there were very good rainbows in the spray up from the gorge into which the water fell. We got quite damp admiring the rainbows, and there were also good views of the glacier from the top of the cliff above the falls.
Next we travelled to the Geysir hot spring area. In a blue spring, given its colour by the reflection of light in silica crystals, the water was so clear we could clearly see the caverns below, and how thin the crust was we were standing on!
Old Geysir is now almost extinct, but the active geyser nearby, Boy, went off every three or four minutes, but it was quite irregular and sudden and caught one or two people out, especially when the wind direction changed! We followed the red path, keeping to the left of the white cairns, as the guide had asked at least three times! The area to the far side was riddled with small, unstable springs.
Finally, we visited the Pingvellir fault, where Alping, the first parliament, was held. I had slept from Geysir, and so missed most of the background, but apparently laws were read out from the hill, with the back of the fault as a natural amphitheatre.
We returned to Reykjavik and were dropped off outside the pool in the early evening. We dumped our gear in the hostel, and said ‘Hello’ to the warden from Dalvik. I then went swimming with some of the others. The pool was curved, and had a bridge. It was fairly warm but there was also a jacuzzi, and several ‘hot pots’, 40oC but no bubbles. After a good shower and ‘blow dry’, we went back to the hostel for tea of curry and cake.
Afterwards, I had to go back to the campsite and take my tent down, as those who had used it the night before had just left it there on its own. I was pretty unhappy about it, but some of the others came and helped me take it down.
Later in the evening, everyone went to the far side of Reykjavik for coffee and cake, at the café they had been to on the previous night. We gave a couple of the girls a jumper, and a hat and some gloves, as a present for organising the trip. After several cups of coffee, we walked back to the youth hostel, some of us trying to remember as many Monty Python sketches as possible.
We were woken very early by one of the girls, had breakfast, and took our gear down to the door. The coach came to take us to Keflavik airport. We said ‘Goodbye’ to one of the girls, who was staying on in Iceland for a few weeks with her family, and changed back our currency with her.
There was a beautiful sunrise over the lava fields, and we reached the airport an hour before the flight. We poured away the excess paraffin and checked in our luggage, 3 kg under the total group weight, not a bad guess! After a visit to the duty free shop, and an hour delay, we boarded the plane.
It was a clear day, and there were some fine views of the icecaps, glaciers and mountain ranges across Iceland. After a breakfast of orange juice, cheesy scrambled eggs and ham, a warm roll and cheese or marmalade with coffee, we landed and sailed straight through customs at Glasgow, and onto the coach for Central station, and the train back to Manchester.
