Iceland road trip - Day 1 Wrecks and Rocks

[sam_b]

This was a DIY trip for me and DH. I have been to Iceland once before on a weekend break with my sister 13 years ago and DH (Si) has not been before, but is our chief travel planner.

We booked all accommodation in advance using hotels.com and we booked a 4x4 car with Thrifty.
Knowing that Iceland is really expensive, we booked a mix of self catering accommodation and standard hotel rooms.

This was our route.

We left home at 10am and headed to Manchester airport. Our Icelandair flight was at 12.55 and took off around the right time.
The flight was uneventful and pretty quick - around 2hours 15mins. We landed at Keflavik at around 2.30pm local time.
We took a shuttle to the car hire site (about 200 yards away as it turned out - we made a mental note not to wait for a bus on the way back!) and then sorted out the paperwork for our Ford Eco Sport. They strongly encouraged us to take out the top up insurance ( Si has already got a worldwide policy). To reinforce that, along with the dire warnings about excess charges, when we went out to get the car, this is what it was parked next to ...

When we finally figured out how to open the boot (it wasn’t obvious) and loaded up the car, we left - pausing to admire this parking...

We headed out and skirted around Reykjavík heading out towards Borgarnes and a Bonus supermarket! At the supermarket we bought some essentials (bread, cheese, remoulade and crisps) for a picnic tea and then carried on to our first hotel which was 17km down a gravel track in the middle of nowhere. (Kirkjubol)
We checked in just after 6.00pm and I promptly locked us out of our room! There were two very friendly sheep dogs running around and gazing into our room. We were the only guests until another family arrived an hour later.
The room was basic, but fine - no tv, no kettle but luckily we had our own.
We settled down to cheese and remoulade on polar bread with yoghurt and cookies for pudding!
We crashed out fairly early.