Extended Iceland Ring Road

The roadtrip starts at noon at Athens airport, where you first see the faces that will be your crew for the next eleven days. A flight to Warsaw, a long stop for food and the first conversations, and a second flight north. Just before midnight the door opens and the Icelandic air hits you in the face. Cold and clean. Welcome.

Tonight we are not chasing anything. The road to Reykjavik is quiet, the sky has not fully darkened even though it is midnight (your first taste of what spring means up here) and the hotel is waiting. The first night is for sleep, because from tomorrow morning the whole island opens up in front of us. We owe you a first walk around the city. We are saving it for the end, when we have earned it.

First morning in Iceland and we go straight in at the deep end. A warm-up at Thorufoss, just off the road, and then Thingvellir: we walk inside the rift that separates the European and American tectonic plates, with Oxararfoss falling into it. From there Bruarfoss, with water so blue it looks filtered. At Geysir we stand in front of Strokkur with our phones up and wait. Every few minutes the earth throws water tens of metres into the air. Last comes Gullfoss, the "golden waterfall". You will see a lot of waterfalls today, we are telling you now, and somewhere halfway through you will stop counting.

And do not look at your watch. At this time of year the sun sets close to ten at night in Iceland. The days are huge, and we fill them. Hella tonight, with the south ahead of us.

Seljalandsfoss, the waterfall with a path behind it. Next to it the hidden one, which you can only see up close if you are willing to get wet. No problem. That is why we go. The Solheimajokull glacier, a tongue of ice coming down the mountain, and Dyrholaey, the headland with the stone arch and a view along the whole black coast. The black beach, both from the side everyone goes to and from the side almost nobody does. The little church of Vik high on the hill above the village. Fjadrargljufur (yes, the Bieber canyon), when spring has painted it. Plus a hidden spot or two we do not write down here. Some things you only learn inside the Van.

Sleep in Kirkjubaejarklaustur. By morning you will be saying it right.

Today is about ice. Skaftafell, and next to it a glacier we keep as our little secret. Jokulsarlon: a lagoon full of chunks of ice that broke off the glacier and drift slowly towards the sea, blue, white, clear. Right across the road, at Diamond Beach, the same ice washes up on the black sand and shines in the sun. In the afternoon we head up towards Hofn and carry on a little further, to Stokksnes. First a Viking village nobody ever lived in: it was built for a film that was never shot and stayed there, its wooden houses under the mountain. And then the mountain itself, Vestrahorn, rising straight out of the black sand, with the sea, if the tide allows, mirroring it in the shallows.

We start with a few secret waterfalls. Then, road 939. A gravel road that climbs the mountain in bends and takes us up high, where the whole fjord spreads out behind us. The Van takes the bends slowly and the gravel clatters underneath. It is one of the most beautiful drives of the trip, precisely because it is not convenient. It is not a road for coaches. And if the snow has not opened the mountain yet, we take the coastal fjords instead. You lose the gravel road, you gain the sea.

Then Hengifoss: a 128 metre drop, one of the tallest waterfalls on the island. You count it with your head tilted back. And over the mountain pass, Seydisfjordur: a fishing village tucked deep in a fjord, with the blue church and the street in front of it painted like a rainbow. Sleep in Egilsstadir.

Studlagil: a canyon of basalt columns, dark and straight, as if someone set them up one by one, and between them the Jokla river, which turns blue-green in summer and in spring still carries the melting snow. Then Dettifoss, one of the most powerful waterfalls in Europe: you feel it in your chest before you see it. Hverir, where the earth smokes and smells of sulphur. Godafoss, the waterfall of the gods. In between, a few secret spots we keep for the Van.

In the evening we reach Akureyri, where we stay two nights. The suitcase opens and does not close again until the day after tomorrow.

Reset day. We pack nothing, we load nothing. We head to Husavik, the whale harbour. Whoever wants goes out by boat into the bay to see them where they live (optional). If a tail comes up next to the boat, you will forget you are holding a phone. Whoever wants takes a dip at GeoSea, three pools of warm seawater on the edge of the cliff, looking over the whole bay (optional). And whoever does neither does not sit around: the Van has other plans for them.

In the afternoon, Akureyri at our own pace, and in the evening the crew gets together at a pub in town.

The big day on the road. We leave the north behind and head west to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. At its tip sits the Snaefellsjokull glacier, the volcano where Jules Verne began his "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", and on a clear day you can see it all the way from Reykjavik. Kirkjufellsfoss, with Kirkjufell opposite, the mountain you have seen in a thousand photos, now standing right in front of you. Ytri Tunga beach, where, with a little luck, seals bask on the rocks a few metres away from us. The black church of Budir, alone in the lava. Arnarstapi to finish, with the rocks the sea has carved into arches and holes and the seabirds calling overhead. We sleep on the peninsula.

The road back towards the city. Remember the walk we owed you in Reykjavik? Today. We walk it all together, from Hallgrimskirkja to Harpa and the streets of colourful houses, and then the city is yours: coffee, shops, whatever you like. In the evening we go out to a bar with live music. After a week of villages and gravel roads, Reykjavik feels like a metropolis.

The last day has no rushed breakfast. We load the Van at our own pace and head out to the Reykjanes peninsula: lava that cooled just a few years ago, steaming ground, a wild coast. The finale, where it belongs: the Blue Lagoon, for those who want to end the trip in the water (optional). Warm, set in the lava, with the sky above you and ten days of road leaving your body. We look back on it all together as a crew: what was your moment? Everyone has one, and it is almost never the same one.

From the Lagoon, Keflavik airport is twenty minutes away. The flight leaves just after midnight.

Warsaw in the morning, Athens at noon. Iceland is not easy to say goodbye to. That is why most people come back. Are you in?