idea #4, Lord of the Ring Roads

Iceland.

Now I’ve been to Iceland once already so I finally have a blog post where I can actually post photos to break up the waffling a bit – let me go find some of those.

2013! I just looked in October 2016 to find these images before thinking that of course it wasn’t last year but I didn’t expect to have to look for pictures on the detachable hard drive! Anyway, here are some from that trip – starting with the capital, Reykjavik (got it right first time!).

We start with the Sun Voyager, an oft photographed sculpture found near Reykjavik harbour that, according to visitreykjavik.is, represents ‘a dream boat and an ode to the sun’ – taken with the pocket rocket Sony rx100.

Proudly presiding over all of Reykjavik is Hallgrimskirkja Church (googled that one). While the church itself is a pretty stunning building (and somehow in keeping with Sun Voyager) the views from the top are even better.

There are even some road names that old-school gamers would enjoy.

Obviously I’m building towards the grand finale of the Northern Lights so I’m going to make you wait a little longer with a couple more photos from Reykjavik as it really worth leaving some time to explore the city if you’re planning a trip to Iceland.

They’re only little though.

I visited Iceland with my Dad and we thought it best to book a couple of sightseeing tours rather than hire a car as we were only there a few days and wanted to learn a bit about the country from the guides – a Reykjavik recce if you will.

So out we headed on our tour of Thingveller national park.

Now it really is hard to do Iceland justice with words and even the photos (mine at least anyway!) struggle to convey the raw power that seems to emanate from the country.

That might need a little explaining.

Not sure if that helped.

The little white pole you can see in the photo is where the original Icelandic parliament would meet as a natural auditorium had formed in the rock. Now while that in itself is an interesting little titbit it’s the formation of the natural auditorium that really holds the ‘raw power’ wow factor. Thingvellir National Park sits upon the boundaries of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates and what you can see as you look out upon the park is the ground, quite literally, being torn apart.

In itself this makes for staggering viewing but naturally, Iceland can do better (naturally because, you know, Nature….no?).

This is Gullfoss waterfall – or bullfrogs waterfall if you’re WordPress spellchecker.

And this is Geysir, the first recorded geyser that gave it’s name to a whole family of natural phenomena (Old Geezer included for comparison purposes only – not included with entry ticket).

Now Geysir is fairly inactive (too easy) but it’s little brother Stokkur is a real show off with eruptions every, if I can remember correctly from 4 years ago, 11ish minutes.

To have these natural phenomena as merely ‘added bonuses’ to a trip to Iceland seems completely wrong but on our trip we saw the Northern Lights on both evenings and it really is impossible to compete with.

We’d been stood out in the (very) cold for over an hour when faint hints of colour appeared streaking across the night sky. Now we were pretty happy with this show but very few people stirred from the warm comfort of the cafe off to the right of shot which we thought was ridiculous until this happened.

And we come to the point of this post.

These photos do so little justice to the Northern Lights as to almost be embarrassing – there really is no way of showing off the Northern Lights in their full glory through photos – but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to go and try again.

For more photos check out https://douglonghorn.smugmug.com/Family-Events/Iceland-2013/ – please note that I’ve taken over 20,000 photos since this trip so hopefully I’ve improved a tad!

So the idea. Iceland has a ring road.

I want to spend a couple of weeks driving around it chasing the Northern Lights and hiking to remote beaches and waterfalls to try and better capture Iceland’s raw beauty.

Those who know me will be quick to point out that I don’t drive.

Fine.

I want to spend a couple of weeks being driven around it chasing the Northern Lights and hiking to remote beaches and waterfalls to try and better capture Iceland’s raw beauty.

Happy?

Doug