I woke to a fine morning and for a change managed to cook and eat breakfast sitting outside. The amount of bird life around here is amazing. I will try to recall their Latin names later… But in the interim I’ll be using my usual very poor but knowledge, there was the dive bomber bird, that made the most amazing noise as it swooped down (it’s the wind rushing through its feathers apparently), big brown geese – taking off and flying over making a real good noise and seagulls, more of which later.

While it started out nice, it was clear that it wouldn’t last, there was a chilly wind and rain was in the air. I packed up and dressed with the conditions in mind. My plan was to cycle to the Lava Caves, but by taking an interesting route on the road 360 (which was shown as “many steep and short hills”) and the 435 before cutting back west on the 1 ring road (which is shown as being hazardous due to narrow shoulders, but only for a 10km stretch – the iceland tourist board cyclists map is really good to help these decisions).

After washing up, I chatted to the Ukrainian guy for a while. As I walked back to my tent a seagull poked it’s head from behind the bags that I’d been using as a windshield around my stove, and flew off. I knew exactly what it had been doing, the only question was whether I had any food left….

My banana chips were the only casualty with a big hole in the bag but it had still left plenty for me, so it could have been much worse. Especially as there are no shops enroute today. I packed up pretty quickly, for me, and I wished the Ukrainian guy well, and headed off (in the wrong direction). I’d headed back down to the gorge, by the time I’d turned around and got back to the campsite I knocked up my first 7km of the day. Eventually I got on the right road, which was showing Reykjavik as 35km. Easy – if only I knew how the day was going to pan out.

The first thing I came to was a little wooded glade, it’s a statement about the deforestation by the original Norse settlers, this glade was visited by the Queen in 1990, and since then many world leaders have been here.

Apart from the weather, as the rain had really started now, the 360 road was a dream, lots of short sharp climbs and descents along the side of a big lake. This is clearly the area for really posh weekend houses (I’m guessing weekend, based on the total lack of activity around the area – I was passed by maybe 20 cars all morning), with some really modern architectural buildings – some of them good! The climbs got progressively harder needing to get out of the saddle to haul my heavy bike over the short summits. There was only one that I needed to get off to push the last 10 metres – it was a really good workout. The descents were a bit sketchy in the wet, further hampered by my front disc starting to “grab” if I put it on too hard. It would be a really great ride in the dry.

The story changes a bit once I turn off on the 435, the gates across the road indicating it was a high mountain pass ahead. Because of the heavy rain I couldn’t get a good look at my paper map, or my phone – so I pushed on.

A big gripe for me is the lack of bus shelters or any other form of shelter in Iceland. On these long rides, you have to deal with long distances between any sort of service, which is acceptable, but in between there is absolutely nowhere to get out of the weather. Just a bit of shelter to eat, put on more clothes or whatever. In nearly all countries I have cycled in the bus shelter is the most welcome sight. However, while Iceland has a well developed bus service, which appears not to be widely used (on the websites for some attractions, options to get a bus is referred to but they specifically don’t recommend using it). I think the biggest issue is that bus passengers are unlikely just to wait for a bus unprotected, in the type of weather I’ve seen in Iceland and therefore don’t. It’s a spiralling problem which will damage the bus service, and must be lifeline in the remote areas. It wouldn’t cost much to put in bus shelters – hopefully those with the power are reading this! Bus shelters are common in remote parts of Finland, Norway and the Faroe Islands – so there is no excuse! Rant over.

Anyway, on he road 435 the first sign I was greeted with was a 1km at 15% climb up a series of short hairpin bends. Straight away I had to walk but it was only a short distance. As I was walking up a wet road cyclist came down very slowly, with terrible squealing from his brakes on aero wheels. This gave me hope it wasn’t too bad ahead and there may be civilisation ahead. In fact the first bit was the worst, but I had to push up another three sections (and one section so steep I had to walk the descent). This area is very strange geologically, incredibly steep hills, and obviously a big geothermal area with steam rising all around and a heating pipeline following the road. Without shelter I had to eat some sandwiches huddled as best I could behind my panniers in a car park. A few tourists were around (all Americans), giving unhelpful comments from the warmth of their cars. To be fair, a lot of the locals would check you were ok, with a thumbs up as they drove past and I’m sure would have stopped if I indicated I needed help.

Eventually I made it to the top (400m), and the wind was really getting up. I’d had the wind on my shoulder all morning, but now it was gusting and a tailwind. The gusts took the edge off the benefits of a tailwind as you never knew what was coming next. The road dropped out of the hills onto a massive flat plain and a completely straight road following the pipeline. The wind was more of use here, blowing me up even modest inclines.

I stopped to investigate the pipe, it was cold to the touch and was some sort of plastic outer cover. I expect there is a much smaller well insulated pipe inside carrying something very hot indeed. I was surprised to see that the pipe was not protected anywhere with crash barriers. Even around hairpin bends where it seemed really exposed to cars coming off the road.

Eventually I made it to the N1 Ring road. At this point I had two choices. Either battle the headwind to the Lava Caves, and further to a campsite (the weather app was showning over a 50kph windspeed), or the only other choice 14km into Reykjavik. I took the latter option as battling into the wind on the main road was very unappealing. All this was from memory as I was still unable to look at a map.

Once I had decided, it was an easy run on a wide hard shoulder, and once closer into the suburbs I spotted a cycle lane down an embankment, which I jump on. This also lead me to an under bridge, which provided my first respite from the weather all day. I was able to eat some food, and check the map. It turned out I was very close to the Green Cycle route right into the city centre.

It was a lovely ride, the biggest issue being too many paths, especially around the horse riding centre, where there were horse, cycle, walking and running tracks. At one point the route was through a nice woodland area, with a river down one side and large numbers of rabbits (looking like domesticated ones, and certainly tame) all over the place. They had a fenced off area, with the fence to stop humans going in rather than holding rabbits. There seemed to be rabbits everywhere.

It was a nice ride into Reykjavik and quite easy to find the campsite. It was the most expensive site yet, but has good facilities and very central to the capital city.

It was a busy site, the main thing being plenty of sockets but no where to leave things charging. So I sat in the kitchen for a slight top up. I found a nice pitch under a tree and waited for the weather to improve. I discovered a serious disaster, where a can of the cheap 2.25% beer got punctured in my bag. I was lucky on two counts as I have a rule never put clothes in the same pannier as liquids and no full strength beer was damaged! I needed to wash the pannier out, and I now have a sticky spare tyre, inner tubes and other stuff that was lurking in the bottom of the bag. It does prove the waterproof capabilities of the Ortlib panniers. I drank my remaining full strength beer to avoid it happening again!

Eventually, I headed into town, just following my nose (battery power was low on phone/battery packs) rather than navigating. Initially headed to the Concert Hall, which is really the only new building I could see. The city is a nice mixture of old and newish buildings and all quite low level.

I found myself in a square with the football on a big screen. There was not too much interest in England Vs Belgium. I grabbed a bite to eat, and went to find the art gallery. Surprisingly it was open (late night on Thursday), and the ticket lasted for 24hrs for entry to two others galleries (which don’t have late night). It was very good contemporary art – with a theme of No Man’s Land – the Highlands and Kjolur, which was excellent as I had just come through the Kjolur route. There was lots of really good stuff, but the photos of the Kjolur and the installation of Lava, and another of Glass were striking.

I rode around a bit and I found the Cathedral which is really modest, and the massive church that I thought was the cathedral – but it isn’t (I think).

Went back to the site, which was very busy but quiet and well ordered.