July 21, 2020
Day 3 - Volcanic desert solitude
Árbúðir (Kjölur) to the middle of nowhere
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Day 3 - Árbúðir (Kjölur) to a wildcamp in the middle of nowhere - 37 miles
A very good night sleep, I could get used to these! Usually the low tempratures or uncomfortable ground wakes me up, but here it never gets chance to freeze with the lack of night. It really is a benefit having these long daylight hours. On my previous tours, I often feel like I want to keep cycling but it's a race against the encroaching darkness. I have the freedom of picking any routine I want and not having to worry about finding camp spots or cooking in the dark, it's very liberating.
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Just past the cafe entrance, the road took a turn for the worst again. Terrible potholes and loose gravel ensured I never got the chance to make it above an average pace of 5mph for the first bunch of hours. Some small sections were completely unrideable and pushing the bike was the only way. Certainly a relief that I didn't go ahead with my initial plan of the Sprengisandur route, it could've taken me all week (although I've heard from a few people on the internet recently that they actually found it smoother than the Kjölur for much of the way). But damn, the view made up for it. Slowly climbing onto a desolate volcanic plateau, encircled by a ring of glaciers and snowy mountains. The vistas went on forever; it was hard to tell where the icecaps finished and the sky began. Despite the rough road, the weather still continued to be in my favour with a gentle tailwind and glorious sunny skies. I'd read that the Icelandic wind can cause an extremely quick sunburn when the sun is out, so packed my suncream as a result. Not so helpful when you forgot to put in on, and my nose, ears and back of the legs were red and sore before too long! After one particularly slow stretch where the flies just would not leave me alone, a small stone pillar appeared, marking the highest point on the road. It felt like a good place to give the drone another whirl but I couldn't find any aerial angles which looked that good- the flat monochrome plateau with mountains in the distance unfortunately didn't translate too well to video footage.
No sooner had I landed the thing (very sketchy trying to get a 250 gram piece of plastic to descend right onto my outstretched hand in strong wind!), when I spotted another cyclist who had just appeared at the top of the climb. He was from Belgium and was probably finding it easier with his thicker tyres and less luggage. Naturally we came together for a chat and also shared a little rant about the flies. The way they swarm you seems backwards- when you're cycling, they'll hunt you down and bounce off your face, but as soon as you stop, they're nowhere to be seen! As always, meeting fellow cycle tourers put me in a great mood and I definitely needed it because the hours of focusing hard on my route through the gravel was starting to grate.
15 miles later and I came across the turning to Hveravellir, a geothermal hot springs area, and one of the main attractions on this route. This is where the belgian cyclist was heading, and there was certainly a temptation to turn off and refill my water bottles or spent the night camping there. In the end, the allure of getting more miles in and camping for free in the wilderness won over and I carried on. There was a very noticeable improvement to the road surface straight away and it made for much easier riding. My average speed even jumped to over 7mph for the first time in many hours. The scenery began to shift once again as blackened desert gave way to crystal clear streams and moorland covered in wildflowers. I'm still so grateful for the clear weather, I can't imagine this sort of view looks nearly as beautiful on a grey murky day.
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Iceland boasts some of the cleanest water in the world and it makes keeping your water bottles topped up really easy. I'm still a little paranoid about drinking from streams without purifying (even if everyone I've met swears it's ok), but here it seemed too good not to. My only slight worry now was the appearance of the odd sheep here or there, and the resulting bacteria getting in the water. I have a large supply of water purification tablets just in case.
With the evening drawing on, I decided to find a place to pitch the tent for the night. There's quite a struggle to be completely hidden in this sort of flat lanscape devoid of any tall foliage, so the best I could do was push my bike 100m behind a small outcrop and try be hidden from the road from one direction at least. I needn't have worried. Every 15 or 20 minutes a car would pass, but this got more and more infrequent, and by 9:00 it felt like I had the tranquil heart of Iceland all to myself.
Today's ride: 37 miles (60 km)
Total: 167 miles (269 km)
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