Highlands towards Selfoss
The day starts at 1 am, madam des mobilhomes wakes me up. Look, Look, and yes the first Northern Lights are spotted. No, no photos, it is too cloudy and the slight clearing does not give a nice view of the natural wonder. With this the Northern Lights season has started, now only clear nights when a high KP is forecast. As planned, we enter the civilized world in the morning, and immediately at the first waterfall the Gluggafoss is the dreaded sign NO OVERNIGHT PARKING.
We drive on to the campsite in Hvolsvollur. Where we are told on arrival that the campsite has been rented out for a private event. Oops, can we use the washing machine please? Yes, no problem, but the campsite will only be open for campers again from Monday. The laundry can be done and we are not (may) not spend the night at the campsite. We are happy, and after the wash and dry we drive back into the highlands via the 264 where after about 10 kilometers the F 210 is picked up. For the night we stop at the river Eystri Ranga and have a view of the very small glacier Tinfjallajokul
We drive deeper into the highlands on the F210 in a northerly direction, until a side track that gives a shorter connection to the F225. It would have been shorter if there hadn’t been a snowfield in the road that I didn’t want to cross. The lava field where we could drive around the snow field is too winding and too narrow to continue driving with a bakkie. So, 2 possibilities. 1) shortest way back to ring road or 2) make a detour of 120 kilometers past Landmannalaugar to get to the F 225.
We decide to take option 2 and go back to the F 210 where we turned off 15 kilometers ago, to follow it further towards Maelifell, Raudibotn crater and so on to go back to Landmannalauger. The great advantage of having time.
The weather is fine and the detour of 12O kilometers on roads and along places that have already been visited is used to collect some photo and film material with “nice” less bad weather. After 2 days we reach the F 225 where we turn left to continue towards 26. Before we reach the 26 we go to the raudaskal crater with its very red crater rim. We decide to stay for a day, and this time not because of the bad weather. On the contrary, just to take a little time for us or perhaps better said for me, to rest for a while.
After a well-deserved rest day, it continues towards 26 and 32 to see another waterfall. The Haifoss, with its 122 meter drop, one that can be in the Top 10 of waterfalls in Iceland. Armed with camera and tripod we set off. What according to the arrows is a detour of 200 meters becomes a healthy walk of 2 hours. The 200 meters was only the path above, we went down in the canyon for a while. Magnificent, so grand.
After the walk we decide to install ourselves a few kilometers further on a track for the night, because just standing in the parking lot is not an option because of the NO OVERNIGHT PARKING area where we have arrived again. The next day we continue our journey towards Selfoss with a stop at the Glain. The Gjain is actually a small oasis with numerous rapids and numerous small beautiful waterfalls. We just hang out here for a few hours, just enjoying the sun and the green surroundings.
After that, with a stopover at a campsite in the middle of nowhere, it continues towards Selfoss where we can go to the bonus with great need to do major shopping, because in the meantime the stocks have really been reduced to the minimum. It has therefore been 14 days since we went shopping in Vik. After selfoss we head towards Grindavik and the Golden Circle area. But you can read what we are going to do there in our next blog.
