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Iceland


The old part of Seyðisfjörður. I had expected Iceland's only ferry port to be bigger than this. Seyðisfjörður. The ship and some snow. I didn't really take note of what this monument was. A toposcope. When I was in the Arctic in 2003, I searched in vain for a sundial which showed midnight. Here's one... Children playing a skipping game at a school.... Seyðisfjörður. The only road out of the town. The sign on the hill used to give the name of the town but the first two letters have fallen over. The church. I've edited out most of my pictures of waterfalls. I hope there aren't still too many for you. Icelandic scenery. I think this must be giving the conditions at the top of the pass. I don't know what "N 12"... Hello. The flat green area is a golf course. The skyline. Another mountain stream. A drive-in waterfall. That's its name. Gufufoss. The road continues to climb, with a piece of technology which I can't identify in the foreground. This was the only red rock I saw all day. Looking back down the valley towards the port. I couldn't understand what the inscription on this said, except that it was a monument to one partic... These are the kind of rock formations which I'm only used to seeing inside caves. Final view of Seyðisfjörður. Here's some snow. The yellow post is a "priest". They are all along both sides of the road... Another view. A lake up near the snowline. These pictures don't really convey how miserable, and in fact scary, the weather was up here. I was ... There's the town of Egilsstaðir. I want to get down there as soon as possible and get out of the win... The road zig-zagged down the hillside but with considerably longer straight sections than these. The... Icelandic colours. I don't know what all the pink stuff is about. Snowmobiles. Egilsstaðir. The curve on the left is the road which I came down. An odd statue... ... and another. This must be one of those notorious Icelandic banks. I used the cash machine in the vestibule. It wa... Today's ride was very short. My hotel is only about half an hour's ride from here but the earliers c... I realise that I haven't actually done much cycling yet and thought that was about to change. This s... Rock formations. Scenery. The flat fields seem to be mainly used for growing grass for animal feed. I don't know what's sacred about that tree. Bales of grass. This is route 1, the "Ring Road", which does a complete circuit of Iceland. It's the most ... Icelandic horses are a very pure breed. No horse has come to this island in 1030 years. Even Iceland... This looks like an antenna for transferring data either in or out of these woods.... My hotel. My room wasn't ready when I got here but I was allowed to sit in this room, with free coffee, and do... I like this view now. I'm inside in the warm, the Sun has come out and the mist is hiding the snow a... This is the communal area outside my room. I was a little concerned about this hotel when I noticed some of the literature on display at recept... Something tells me I don't have the most appropriate footwear for Iceland. Here's some typical Icelandic weather: bright and sunny on the left, raining on the right. A couple of years ago, I bought a pair of gloves with "BIKING" written on each one. The ot... Scenery. The dam at this end of the lake is 3MW hydroelectric power station. Icelanders use more electricity ... Another gorge. Trees! There's a novelty! This kind of illusion has caught me out a few times already while I've been in Iceland.... I wish horses weren't quite so inquisitive. It's hard to get a picture of them in profile because by... The "F" roads are serious mountian passes. I'm not intending to use any. It says "Hello", although this is only the proper spelling in you are addressing someone m... The road passing a lake. I'll just mention again that this is Route 1, the main road for the whole of Eastern Iceland. The on... I believe the patterns here are caused by wind erosion. Looking back down to the lake which appeared a few pictures ago. Ever since deciding to come to Iceland, I had been wondering which way it would be best to go at thi... Scenery. Scenery. A mini-waterfall. Interesting colours. Here comes one of those showers and I'm high enough for it to be hail. It's nowhere near as bad as y... One of many cairns. A weather station. I was right about the weather forecasts. The Icelandic Met Office website has ver... It's hailing again. Ice is piling up on the windward edges of every little stone in the road. The wi... This road does seem to plunge into nothing though. The water down there is Berufjörður. Once I get down to there, my route will pretty much follow the ... A similar, but slightly different view. I should be getting down off this hill to the relative warmth of the coast but I just have to keep s... A waterfall. The same waterfall from a different angle. This isn't Route 1; it's Route 939, the short cut. From what I saw, I think it has more traffic than... Peakiness. Buildings on the other side of the fjord. I think there's a feint rainbow too, about two thirds of t... Just a bridge really. I'm not quite sure what the bottom sign is meant to represent. Does it mean we can sit at a table an... Fish farming: you're doing it wrong. The baled grass seems to have started to grow again. The road cuts through a rock formation. I don't know what that construction is. Strange plant. Djúpivogur, the town where I will be staying tonight. I haven't come very far but I wanted to allow ... People in this town seem to have difficulty disposing of their old reindeer heads. If you look very closely, you might see a row of three tiny red model houses in the middle of this p... A bust, and a less conventional sculpture. This sign implies that one of the main tourist attractions in Djúpivogur is something to do with sto... Another tourist interested by discarded antlers. Djúpivogur. The building at the junction is my hotel. It used to be a shop, then the post office. Djúpivogur. The view from my window is a little uninspiring. It seems to have become the convention this year for hotels to give out their WiFi passwords on tiny... Here's a proper rainbow. I was alarmed at first that this fast food restaurant come supermarket had all its sweets behind the... Slightly odd decor in my hotel's restaurant. Given how many tourists I have seen around here, and th... The corridor outside my hotel room. My room itself had become something of a drying room now. I wasn... Djúpivogur the next morning. The weather forecast for today was right in both important respects. As... It's eleven degrees, which feels warm after the last two days. At times, I would even consider takin... A tractor and some mountains. Scenery. Scenery. Colours. A beach. I think the orange colour is being washed down from above. The next waterfall along, just a few metr... The colours are amazing today. It's just a shame that the wind is makeing progress so difficult. Look how clear the water is. This water is Hamarsfjörður. That's Djúpivogur, where I was last night. It's only 7 km away but I've had to come 17 km round the ... Yet another waterfall. I'm afraid I don't know enough about birds to say what these are. I know that's a sheep though. Most of the sheep in Iceland have watched me attentively, even when I ... Another amazingly clear river. The church is the little white speck in front of the mountain in the distance. Here's another view of it. Iceland. Iceland. More sheep watching me. This swan was prowling around like a cat. I don't know what it was trying to catch. Sometimes the view becomes quite empty. I've passed the last of the Eastern Fjords so now the water is the open Atlanic Ocean. A monument marking 1000 years of Christianity in Iceland. The country was declared Christian in the ... Breaking waves. My bike is parked in that rest area by the information boards. The road ahead. The coast. For the next few kilometres, the road would be crossing this scree slope. There were thick barriers ... The road crossing some kind of beach. I don't know if it's made of lava or some other kind of black ... This giant cable was lying on the stones. For scale, the shadow of my helmet is at the bottom of the... It seems that here, the highways people have given up trying to find a stable route across the scree... Icelandic sheep don't seem paricularly bothered about being where there's grass. Up to this point, it had been travelling West that had given me the strongest headwinds. This wind m... The Lón lagoon is home to a lot of swans. A farmer in the process of baling up his grass, although he actually appears to be on the phone just... The flat plain just inland of the lagoon. Just a rock. There was no particular reason for this picture. I was just enjoying having sunshine an... I've just come past all that. More information boards giving the history of this area, going back to the 9th century. The picture ... This board lists the services available in the upcoming settlements, all of which except for Höfn ar... "Thou art here". The Icelandic language has barely changed since the time of the sagas so ... Nothing in particular. This is the first bit of politics I've seen in Iceland. Scenery. One of the peaks with all the scree was called the East Horn. This is the West Horn in the distance. Scenery. Iceland hasn't got speed recommendation signs quite right. With circles like this one, they look mor... A waste recycling facility, with bins for metal, wood, and so on. This seemed like a strange place f... ... and I have no idea what this is. More of that very clear water. The pipes here take the stream under the road. It looks like sheep have been walking on that scree. This is the first time I've seen people riding the horses. This horse was the only one with luggage. There was also a pickup truck trundling along the road keeping level with the horse train. I'm battling the headwind again. I could see the back of this sign from at least a mile away and it ... The pass through the col on the left was often closed by snowfall so the tunnel below it was opened ... Inside the tunnel. Apart from the concrete-lined portal sections at the ends, its walls are just bar... Two tourist buses. Two walkers on the old road over the col. Scenery. This horse isn't looking at me because it's attention was distracted by a boat's horn in Höfn, over ... This lagoon is actually called Skarðsfjörður. It doesn't look much like a fjord to me though as it o... The ice in the distance is one of the tongues of the giant Vatnajökull glacier, which covers 10% of ... A new animal! Another part of the same glacier. At last, Höfn. This has been a very tiring day. Ice. Ice and horses. The first touring cyclists I've seen in Iceland. Mountains. Golfers! My hotel and a glacier. I don't think I had seen any other bikes in Iceland until arriving in Höfn but I've several people r... It's been nearly a week since I booked this hotel so I had forgotten about the strange furniture. The floor is unusual too. I don't think I've seen anything like this indoors before. They do seem to... How busy would you have to be in the mornings to need two electric razors? This hotel has a stash of umbrellas, presumably for guests to use going to the breakfast room down t... The forecast for today had been a tailwind and pouring rain so I was pleased to find that there was ... The breakfast room. This morning was the first time I had turned a television on while in Iceland. Strangely, this was t... The petrol station next to my hotel is also Höfn's busts station. I have read that the buses can car... Although I might have been able to make quite good progress if I had been riding today, my photograp... Höfn. Höfn is known for lobsters. I've seen this character crop up in a few places. A church and a swimming pool. Höfn's main supermarket. Just some houses. There is writing like this across the road in a few places in this town. The building here is one of... The harbour, which is what "höfn" means. Höfn is on a peninsular which protrudes into this sheltered lagoon. While walking past the lagoon, I could hear the roaring of the sea in the distance. I'm now on a sma... More of that mist. A monument, with the town in the distance. People walking around the lagoon. The harbour. The harbour. A toy car. The building on the right is the Post Office but it looks like the cables from the tower go into the... The Town Hall. I have planned a ride of just 40 km today becaue the forecast was for rain and a headwind. In fact, ... Low cloud. I think this is Hoffellsjökull, or ... Hitchhikers waiting for a lift outside Höfn. Bog sheep. A farm. This looks like bad news. The paniers were making an unusual noise and when I checked, the part of t... I came back to Höfn contemplating how to get myself and the bike to Reykjavik. I read what my guideb... An unusual building, with a bit of glacier in the background. Scenery. Within a few minutes, the clouds had blown away from around that peak. Having seen how many vehicles were driving in and out of Höfn, I thought Route 1 to the West of the ... This is Fláajökull, ... More scenery. Another view of Hoffelsjökull. It just looked like it wanted to have its picture taken. There are signs like this all along the road around here. It's not always easy to see where the buil... Sunshine on the glacier. This is the flat plain between the mountains and the sea. A rocky section. More sheep. A farm. Another farmhouse. An ice cream isn't really what I want just now. Another bit of the glacier, probably Skálafellsjökull, ... Scenery. Scenery. It hasn't really come out in this picture but from here I can see my resting place for tonight, 7 km... I've got mountains and glaciers on one side and this on the other. There are also some strange formations near the coast. This is meltwater coming straight off the glacier. Apparently, one evening in 2002 it washed away ab... The water raging past Skálafell Farm. These buildings are the village of Skálafell, ... This is a nice cosy cabin. It reminds me a bit of my first night on land of any of these summer trip... The view out of my window. The valley on the other side of that rock is full of glacier. I don't think that's how earth bonding is supposed to work. This is an unusual mains socket. The cable leads to a trailing gang of conventional European sockets... My dinner. I think it's cod. I've got no idea how much it costs. Almost certainly quite a lot. Icelandic scene with Moon. There's another discarded antler next to my cabin. I have no idea where t... As predicted, it's another sunny day. The wind forecast is looking better than it did when I went to... My mother visited Iceland about 10 years ago and has expressed surprise that so far I haven't seen a... Here's another of those lagoons, with the ocean in the distance. Scenery. A small petrol station. Obviously I don't need any petrol but I'm not sure how this place would work... My local tip doesn't have a bin for dead animals. Scenery. This bird stayed in the middle of the road and just flapped its wings a bit when a car came past. It... Sheep by a lagoon. Scenery. That's unusual: a farm building disguised as a giant set of encyclopedias. I think that's the island of Hrollaugseyjar. There were very few hills today. Glacier with birds. Glacier with helicopter. Icebergs! The first suspension bridge I've seen in Iceland. Oh, quite a lot of icebergs, and tourists. Ice. A tourist. These are called the Jökulsárlon Floating Icebergs, although I don't know what other kind of iceberg... They break off the glacier a few kilometres from here and float down this river to the sea. This bit must have been scraping against the side of the valley. I'm not sure why these tourists are dressed like that. I'm in my teeshirt today, although I never qu... This one has nearly reached the sea. This is still all part of the Vatnajökull glacier. The end of a glacier. Meltwater. Scenery. Scenery. There's a hole through that rock. The glacial meltwater has a distinctive grey colour, unlike the water in the foreground. This looks like morraine left behind by an earlier glacier. The interesting thing about this view is the waterfall at the bottom... ... which is producing multicoloured steam. The colours could just be a raindow effect but from the ... A mirage. Those first couple of days had made me think that Iceland could never be this warm. Reflection. Another hamlet. A mast on a mountain. I saw a few of these caterpillars today. Two more touring cyclists in the distance. This is a notable point in today's ride just because the road turns a bit of a corner here. This looks almost like some kind of wheat. Having seen grass being harvested and baled, I had assume... Sheep in a trailer. You might be able to make out a string of pylons marching off towards that glacier. The local flora. That looks like a school. Scenery. Me in a rest area. I wouldn't normally expect to be able to hear a plane at this height but this place was so quiet tha... My bike. This bus offers trips to the glacier. The village of Svinafell, or ... Water cascading into Svinafell. A little waterfall. This is a proper petrol station, where I bought some sweets and a drink. The flag shows that the win... I had intended to stay in that hotel two nights ago but had to cancel it when I felt unwell. After t... Skaftafell Airport. A german tourist on the remiains of the old road bridge, which got swept away in the flood which res... Now I start to cross a large expanse of this black volcanic sand. The road across the sand. The black sand. Now the landscape takes on a scrubby Wild West appearance. The only plants I could see off the road were the yellow moss, whereas these spikey things, and a ve... The moss. Here, some wheat has taken root in the black sand. The leaves sweep out arcs in the sand as they blow around. There weren't really meant to be two pictures of this. There doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between the paved road and the surrounding sand. The boundary between Iceland's East and South regions. A slightly different type of plant. These bridges are quite funny. The surface is planks of wood covered in sheets of wire mesh. My bike... Scenery. More boulders. Cows. Cycling seems to be becoming gradually more popular as I head West. These bikes are parked in front ... The view from my room. This is the busiest hotel I've found so far in Iceland. It must be one of the newest too. It confuse... Several of the reveiws of this hotel mentionned that there were no television sets in the rooms but ... I don't think I've seen cod liver oil on a buffet before. The tailwind is back, there are now three sheep and the coach party is leaving. Here's another variation on the landscape: boulders ... I don't know if that was left behind by a glacier. It looks a bit big. The two white stripes on the rock beyond the car are part of the waterfall. This waterfall is like a flight of steps. The village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. The landscape is now just starting to feel a little more inhabit... Kirkjubæjarklaustur. Lumpy. A farm, a cliff with grass-covered scree, and some big antennas on the hilltop. Pipes! This is what grows along here. Sorry it's not a very good photograph but I tried to take it in what ... An old alignment of the road. It had bridge supports across the river but no bridge. I don't know if... Water flowing across the black sand near Vik, with a pattern of standing waves.... When I arrived in the village in the rain, I initially saw only the sign with the hotel's English na... The cliffs above the hotel are teeming with birds but I don't think they're puffins. Vik. The name just means ... This is a fairly ordinary supermarket except that it has quite a large selection of socks and gloves... Hvolsvöllur is where I will be going tomorrow. It's only 80 km away so tomorrow's ride will be an ev... The region around the main road looks completely different to how it did when I arrived earlier, mai... The inland end of Vik. Footprints in the black sand. Near the beach. The statue is one half of a piect of art called ... By the sea. These birds are remarkably tame. I walked past this one with a rustling carrier bag and all it did t... Vik's sports field. The stripey effect of the surf receeding across the black sand seems a bit spooky. On the beach. Rocks. All the lights in this village have a lovely warm orange colour. It must be a comforting place to co... Here are some of the birds nesting up in the cliffs. They're not puffins. As is becoming normal in Iceland, there are no television sets in the hotel rooms. Strangely, there ... The restaurant in my hotel and this one next door both looked rather inviting but I decided to save ... Vik in the morning light. Vik, seen from the hills to the North. This is today's only hill and the first one I've encountered ... A pretty little valley. A natural bridge. Scenery. The grey curved shape spanning the horizon is the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. This sign looks like it has been caught in a few dust storms. These sheep have just been rounded up. More are making their way across the hillside to join them. Another cove. Scenery. Long grass being blown by the wind. The wind was certainly strong today but not quite as consistent ... There are websites which give data from sensors of various kinds all over Iceland: weather stations,... The strip of flat land between the mountains and the sea is continuing. The infamous Eyjafjallajökull. Scenery. I wonder if these rocks were blasted out in the 2010 erruption. There were some flowers like this today. The plants appear to be some kind of pea. I've since been t... Looking back to where I've come from. I've just crossed an administrative district boundary and imme... More of those plants. Skógafoss. Tourists at Skógafoss. Skógafoss. This was a hilarious scene. Most Icelandic sheep have stood or sat motionless and watched me go past... It seems to have become a standard pattern that the days when I have the wind against me are gloriou... Scenery. I was a bit too slow with the camera here. A few seconds earlier, the three white sheep had all been... This looks like another kind of sensor. I still can't work out what. Eyjafjallajökull. Tourists at Eyjafjallajökull. The name means ... In Icelandic, it's called an uppskerumaður... ... I don't know why there's a film crew in the field with it though. Rocks. Birds flying around the rocks. Filming. Just when the film crew seemed to be packing up, this plane appeared, circled the field a couple of ... More tourists, this time investigating a cave. Apparently, sheds like this were once a common sight in Iceland. They were designed for keeping cans... Geese and what looks like a water tank. Seljalandsfoss. Seljalandsfoss is on the right. Eyjafjallajökull is on the left. Seljalandsfoss is the vertical white stripe on the right. Scenery. I don't know what that is. I don't know if this mountain is a volcano but it looks like one. Another farm. The mast on the left is in Hvolsvöllur, my destination for tonight. I'm glad I'm nearl... The last view of Eyjafjallajökull. These are familiar words. This side of Iceland has a very different feel to the East. There are quite a lot of full-size trees... I just took this picture because it was one of the few moments in the day when it stopped raining. A... Heated greenhouses. I don't know what's growing inside them.... There appears to be some smoke rising to the right of the funny lump. I think that's coming from the... Part of the view from my cabin window. I don't know where any of the actual geysers are but across t... It's raining so hard that I've brought my bike into my cabin.... That certainly is a cheap Jeep. I'm also not really sure about the slogan on the camper van, which s... Just the moon. Clouds over the Geysir Centre. The smoking field at Geysir. More of this later. A troll. This is where I will be having breakfast later. I've got some tourist things to do first though. The buildings look typically Icelandic but there's a golf course in the foreground. The road to Gullfoss. A babbling river. These must be Noah's horses. They're grouped together in twos. There are another two pairs out of th... Geysir, seen from a distance. Swans. It's a bit like the profile of the Malvern Hills, but spikier. A rugged-looking tour bus. There was nobody at all around at the Gullfoss visitor centre and no signs to say I couldn't ride a ... Gullfoss. The bike at Gullfoss. Even this little bit looks impressive. The Langjökull glacier. These are the cataracts which form the upper part of Gullfoss. The main falls are the lower part. Gullfoss. Gullfoss close-up. Another close-up. And another. Gullfoss in sunshine. Cairns and a rainbow. Sun shining through the mist rising from Gullfoss. The gorge below the falls. An erruption of Strokkur, which is now the main geyser at the Geysir site, seen from about 2.4 km aw... Swirling clouds. Geysir. Geysir. There are a few other people here, unlike at Gullfoss. This is the Geysir, from which the word geyser comes. It just means "gusher". This one doe... Some of the boiling pools here are brown, some are grey and some are a deep blue like this one. Strokkur. Strokkur errupting. Another pool. Cold rain falling on the surface of a boiling hot pool. Another pool with a deep blue interior and mineral deposits around the edge. Somebody getting ready to photograph Strokkur. I have read in several places that it errupts about o... Strokkur errupting. The beginning of another erruption. This is Little Geysir, which is just a constantly bubbling rock pool. At this end of the Geysir site, the whole field just seems to be steaming. The steaming field. In the distance over on the left, it appears that a little model house has been built over one of th... I don't know why the Geysir Hotel has this statue. The heated pool. A friend keeps recommending that I should go in one but I haven't yet. For a start,... Part of the breakfast buffet is in a longboat. I was so interested in that that for a while I didn't... As I showed earlier from the outside, the dining room had a good view of the geyser field, although ... The smaller steam vents seen from across the car park. These model houses are by the hotel's reception. I've seen horse paths like to one on the right in several places. Where there is a hill which the ro... A little church. I don't know this code. The steam was visible a long way off. I thought I might find out what it was for when I got closer b... The town is the spa resort of Laugarvatn, literally ... There were about 20 sculptures like these in a plot of land which didn't seem to be attached to any ... Laugarvatn. Apparently, the lake is always at about 15°C because of geothermal hot springs. This is the long grass which you could see forming the yellow strip along each side of the road in p... Looking back down to Laugarvatn. Not quite Gullfoss but still pretty. A couple of days ago, I found a website with pictures from lots of webcams along the main roads, whi... Today's weather is like Tuesday's, and the complete opposite to Monday's and Wednesday's. It's sunny... I was looking at this for a while wondering what it was before realising that although I can't expla... Shadows of clouds on a mountain. The lake is a remarkably deep blue colour. Apparently, it's perfectly drinkable. The flora has changed again. This vegetation allows buildings to hide for the the first time. Thingvallavatn. One of the cracks formed by the two continental plates moving apart. Thingvallavatn. Oxaráfoss. The big cliff is the edge of the proper North American plate and the whole valley floor where I now ... Another crack in the ground. And another. This is the Silfra rift. From what I've read, this seems to be the current position of the fault lin... The water is very clear. Everything in this picture is underwater. I seem to have left my bike on the other continent. That wasn't part of the plan. While fiddling with my GPS logger, I heard a noise which sounded like a little yapping dog. When I l... The divers wondering where to pose for a photograph. Tourists admiring the view from the edge of the North American plate. Way back in picture 642, I mentioned Iceland's adoption of Christianity in the year 1000. That decis... Iceland's parliament, the Althing, met here every Summer from 930 to 1798, although its importance s... Looking down from near the Law Rock. There are two car parks at Thingvellir, with roads coming in from different dirtections, in fact fro... The walkway to the Law Rock. Rocks on the tectonic plate edge. Scenery. A feint rainbow. This is probably one of the devices for counting how many vehicles use the road. It probably doesn't... Reykjavik! I hadn't expected to see it today.... Strata in a hillside. Reykjavik, with sunlight both behind it and reflecting off the water in front of it. I haven't seen a road like this since Denmark. Another rainbow. After nearly two weeks of tiny towns and quiet country roads, it's something of a shock to suddenly ... These cars belong to the hotel. After I had locked my bike in the most sensible place: the sign at the entrance to the car park whic... A few things have surprised me about this hotel. The first is that it does breakfast. The web page s... The room also comew with this mains adaptor, which allows normal European plugs to use a socket whic... I've just noticed this on the hotel information sheet. I haven't noticed any cattle or cubs in my ro... This doesn't look much like Iceland any more. Buildings on the approach to Reykjavik. The main roads have become quite busy so I'm taking some little paths instead, although I didn't act... Golfers. A little bridge which I used but which seems to also be part of the golf course. Coloured flats. One of many good paths in the Reykjavik area. This golf course seems to be interwoven with the town. Every few minutes, I come round a corner and ... There are a lot more plants growing here than there were in the East. Neat bungalows. Reykjavik suburbs. Reykjavik suburbs. More coloured flats. The periphery of the city. A marina. The footpath of a bridge. Under the bridge. The pastel colours remind me of Essex. An interesting-looking machine. Blue water and a pipe. Here, the pipe goes through another pipe. A tip. I wonder where the dead animals go. It looks like this man is about to throw away a bike. He might not be the only one. Plants. There are still hints of Icelandic scenery under this built-up environment. A major road. The dishes are blooming on that building. That looks like a bike shop, although not the one I had heard about. I'm not really interested in tr... Somebody doing some stretches near a sports complex. The sports complex. A mini skate park. Reykjavik which, I have come to realise over the past week or so, means ... From here on, bikes started to become a common sight. I saw another pair of fully-loaded touring cyc... Buildings. Colourful buildings. I didn't realise it when I took the photograph but the white building is Höfði, where Reagan and Gor... A church. I wouldn't like to be standing under that pipe when it's raining. I mentioned the other day that I had read it was legal to ride on the pavements in Iceland. A lot of... A deco building behind the bus station. Just a building. And another. Some Arctic animals depicted outside the bus station. I don't know how many of these actually exist ... Reykjavik. I would guess that the two posts attached to the horse in that statue are the ones involv... Reykjavik. The fire hydrants look quite American. Sadly, I think this is the closest to america that I will get... Wooden buildings in downtown Reykjavik. A shopping street. I'm considering hiring a car for a day so that I can pack my bike up well in advance of my flight an... Another view. Hallgrímskirkja, the second tallest building in Iceland. It's sometimes mistakenly called Reykjavik ... A view from near Hallgrímskirkja. Hallgrímskirkja. The design is based on basalt columns, similar to those in the Giant's Causeway, which are a common ... The statue is of Leif Ericson, who discovered what he called Vinland, now known as North America, in... Perhaps you prefer the view this way round. Tourists in the belfry. It must be quite noisy up there when those bells chime every 15 minutes. Hallgrímskirkja with flags. The hotel across the road from Hallgrímskirkja rents out electric bikes. I doubt if they would let m... The big cyclinders are the city's hot water storage tanks. The dome on top is called the Pearl and c... Another view of Hallgrímskirkja. This is the first British car I've seen since Esbjerg. Buildings near my hotel. A coffee shop called "C is for Cookie", oppsite my hotel. This will probably be where the bike ends this trip, for reasons which are explained in the caption ... I can just see the top of the church out of my bathroom window. Strange tracks on the pavement. Reykjavik. Transport in Reykjavik. Reykjavik. I thought this looked like an unusually sturdy building. It's the prison. That gate looks like it's been made from a real bike. The Laugavegur shopping street. Reykjavik's new concert hall, opened last year. I'm tempted by the sound of the English-language Ice... I've acheived my main aim of the day and procured the clingfilm which will let me turn my bike into ... Little planes like this frequently buzz over the city centre going in and out of Reykjavik's domesti... Reykjavik Cathedral on the left and the parliament building on the right. These is the East Field, Reykjavik's oldest park. Apparently, sheep still sometimes graze here. The statue is Jon Sigurðsson, the 19th Century politician who started the process of regaining Icela... The Althing, the Icelandic parliament which used to meet at Thingvellir, was disbanded in 1799 and r... Parliament with areoplane. The baby is leaning out of its pushchair to have a good look around. Parliament with flowers. The parliament building's garden, which the public are free to wander thtough. Here's a little peek inside. It looks like there's a stuffed bird at the window. Reykjavik. An old pump... ... and a more modern coffee grinder. There were enticing coffee smells in several places around thi... Reykjavik's oldest building, built in 1762. Steam vents. A transformer tied to a tree. There are streams of water falling from the arch. Reykjavik. Yarnbombing! I have been reading about Guðjón Samúelsson, Iceland's only State Architect. Almost all of the notab... That's a Danish warship. Iceland doesn't have any armed forces. The view across a bay. Buildings. Something industrial in the distance. A car wash, with mist rolling over the mountains in the distance. That building seems to have the antennas off a ship... ... and this hotel has the lifebelts. The harbour. The Art Museum. The building on the right says that it's a restaurant and bar but then advertises "Elves - Excu... This is the Prime Minister's office. My guidebook says that it's open to the public but there's noth... One of the men in the distance is playing a harmonica. Despite how many bikes there are in Reykjavik, this is the first cycle route sign I've seen. I see t... The view from Arnarhóll. The harbour, seen from Arnarhóll. A statue of Ingólfr Arnarson, the first permanent Norse resident in Iceland and founder of Reykjavik... Two pictures ago, this ship was moored in the harbour. Now it's heading off somewhere. I don't know ... From left to right: the Supreme Court, the National theatre and the Culture House. The Culture House and the National Theatre. Reykjavik. This looks like another of Guðjón Samúelsson's buildings. There is some sort of Asian festival in this park today. It might just consist of those lanterns. The green sign an few doors along says "Global and Consolidated Bank of Inevitable Futures"... A sweet shop, seen through the window. Reykjavik. There's a lot of unexplained art around the place. Back here again. There seems to be a lot less wind in Reykjavik than elsewhere in Iceland. Presumably another of Guðjón Samúelsson's. I don't know. Inside the clock tower of Hallgrímskirkja, the big church which looks like basalt columns. It seems ... To go with picture 54, here's another minute hand, this time seen from the back. The view from the tower. The grey gantry above the road in the middle of the picture is supporting s... Reykjavik's bus station. View from the tower. View from the tower. View from the tower. There's that ship which I watched leave the harbour. View from the tower. The ... The Pearl. View from the tower. This is where I'll have to go tomorrow morning, although I don't really need to know where it is now... Coloured buildings. View from the tower. View from the tower. View from the tower. View from the tower. View from the tower. Inside the church. Inside the church. Inside the church. Inside the church. Inside the church. I was having difficulty not laughing out loud at that poor statue face-down on the ground. Somebody touching up another statue at the same place. A fluffy dog. Guðjón? Near the bus station. You don't normally get this kind of thing at a petrol station. Reykjavik. An unusual game at what otherwise appeared to be just a car boot sale. I'm glad I'm not renting a car from here. The path leading up to the Pearl. More statues. There are some intriguing holes in the ground around the base of the Pearl. I looked down one skylig... A view from near the Pearl. Inside the Pearl. The curved walls are two of the hot water tanks. After I had been in here for a few minutes, this fountain, several storeys high, came on for a few s... The Pearl's observation deck. View from the Pearl. Above some of the tanks are viewing telescopes, whose effectiveness must be reduced by the fact that... This sundial has got a gnomen but the whole thing's the wrong way round. It's not midnight now. The Pearl. An unusual choice in the café. The Saga Museum in inside the tank which is no longer used for storing water. The figures are very l... Wow, a car from what I am starting to think of as Vinland. It's a shame I won't get to go there. Reykjavik seems pretty much nothing like Iceland. The weather, the buildings, the plants and the ani... Probably him again. A big crow which was making a lot of noise. A man on a bike had stopped in the street to point out t... Most of the accommodation in Reykjavik was full when I tried to book something. This hotel was prett... Inside the ... A wedding car. I'll be finishing my journey across Iceland in this. I think this is a bigger car than I asked for. ... Back inside ... There are no performances on in here at this time in the morning. I think everybody in here has just... When I came to disassemble my bike, I realised that I had forgotten to bring a spanner suitable for ... This is the shop where I bought the spanners. I was attracted to it because there's something which ... The bike now safely disassembled and packed up small enough to go on the back seat of a car. A building near Reykjavik's domestic airport and the Pearl. This drinking fountain has two streams of water constantly bubbling away. The silly thing is that it... Excess hot water from Reykjavik's geothermal hot springs is pumped into the sea here so the authorit... I've come back to Perlan, mainly just to wash my hands after disassembling the bike. I'm a little in... This is the rocky promontory of Reykjanes, "... The steam is coming from the Svartsengi geothermal power station, which powers the airport and the s... The steam seen from a bit closer, with the moss-covered basalt rubble which makes up the landscape i... A cave. I don't know how far it goes because I only ventured as far as where it became too low to st... The power station. Pipes. The world's first renewable methanol plant, making methanol from carbon dioxide. I didn't actually go into the ... Blue water. I haven't seen military hardware like this elsewhere in Iceland. This is probably to do with the Ame... I don't know if it's just coincidence but in leaving Reykjavik, I've also left the calm sunny weathe... Mains sockets in the ceiling? that's a new one.... For reasons which I don't understand, almost all of the flights out of Iceland leave within a couple... Keflavik. Cliffs in Keflavik in the early morning. without intending to, I've parked outside a bike shop. Knowing that this was here wouldn't have help... Keflavik airport. This will probably be my last picture of this year. Thank you for following my pro...