Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [65]
But personally, if I'd discovered the place in winter, I'd have gone for Darkland. Whereas the rest of us live through a year of alternate days and nights, Iceland effectively has just one of each and they're both very long. This may go some way to explaining why all the locals were a bit squiffy. In November the sun doesn't come up until gone 10 o'clock, and then only just, and five hours later it's gone again. If, like us, you can't afford to go to the pub, you end up back in the sack by nine.
It's a great excuse for not getting up early and it's a pity the traffic warden didn't see it that way. It's as well that a parking fine is one of the few things that could be considered good value in Iceland, with what would be a £40 or £50 ticket in London weighing in at just over a tenner. This seemed a trifling amount by local standards, so I threw it in the Reykjavik municipal bin. Bloody Vikings.
We needed a plan. A glance at the map showed that there is a road running all the way around the periphery of the island, Route One. There is no Route Two. From Route One various unmade roads, marked in brown on the map, lead off to what might be termed areas of outstanding natural beauty. We would complete a lap of the ring road, absorbing local culture as we went, and peel off occasionally to bring you pictures of the new Range Rover with a famous waterfall, geyser or whatever. This would give a thorough on- and off-road assessment and allow me to draw fatuous parallels between herring smoking and the workings of the transfer box. Job done.
And so we left Reykjavik. After about 500 yards we were stopped by a Land Rover enthusiast in a Defender fitted with balloon tyres that would refloat the Titanic. I outlined our itinerary and he looked at me as if I'd come outside without my coat on.
'These roads are closed,' he said, dismissing two thirds of the map with a sweeping gesture. 'These hotels are not open in winter' – that was most of the north and east. 'These are not the right tyres. You must drive in pairs. You need radio and you must tell police. You will need,' he said, tugging at a giant puff a jacket stuffed with albatrosses, 'proper clothing.' So these people inherited dour logic as well as hairy faces from the Scandinavian settlers of 1,200 years ago.
'We do not like it when the tourists die,' he said kindly. He had a point. Perhaps if I actually bothered to read The Vehicle-Dependent Expedition Guide, a gift from Land Rover and about as subtle as a deodorant at that, I would be a lot better at this sort of thing. Instead, I've resorted to things like DIY in a bid to put it off and remain, as a result, a complete off-road bonehead.
Still, as Magnus might say, we'd started, so we'd finish. If we could just reach the tip of the famous glacier at Myrdalsjökull in the south we could still feel pretty chuffed with ourselves. To begin with, though, we'd make a brief and exploratory foray to the Blue Lagoon geothermal power station and hot tub complex.
Occasional breaks in the all-enveloping fog revealed a landscape in which one wouldn't be entirely surprised to see a dinosaur. Volcanic activity has much to do with it. Iceland is something of a geological upstart at a mere 20,000,000 years old and is to the planet what an especially angry spot is to your nose. One day it, too, will erupt but in the meantime it provides limitless free energy. There's so much of it tapped at the lagoon that there is enough left to create a giant outdoor spa. It smells a bit eggy but it's hot enough to poach you while, absurdly, your exposed hair freezes into a single solid entity like the clip-on hair of one of those Lego people.
This is hardly intrepid stuff. Back aboard the Range Rover I located, amongst a lot of buttons that at first didn't seem to do anything, one that made the steering wheel heat up. This was most welcome, as it was a bit parky and I hadn't felt the benefit of my coat when I went outside after my bath, as my mother would say.
We drove through the troll-infested darkness towards