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Iceland tour 2009

The 'Baptism of Fire for a Lightwave' Tour

Norwegian flag

Although we had toured in Iceland for the last 2 years will still had several places we still wanted to visit. Our plan was to visit the Snæfellsnes peninsular, þingvellir, go over the Kaldidarlur route, cycle over the Arnavatnsheiði, cycle into Askja and swim in Víti and lastly to go back to Kerlingarfjöll. We certainly managed to complete all of our wishes and we had a a wonderful time and were certainly fortunate with the weather. Iceland is such a fascinating country we are sure we will be back at some stage.

You may be wondering about the title of the tour. This is due to the tent we took with us, we decided that we needed to buy a smaller and lighter tent. We have always preferred a geodesic style tent and came across the Lightwave g2 ultra XT, it was very light, had a large vestibule which we needed and was designed for wilderness 4 season camping. We decide it ticked all the right boxes so we bought one. It stood up well to the high winds we had at Kerlingarfjöll but unfortunately the material seams stretched too much and having no tape on the seams it leaked like a sieve. We sent it back to Lightwave and this is a quote from the designer:

Iceland is a real baptism of fire for a tent – there are very few places on earth with such consistently wet and windy conditions. (Being a New Zealander, I have encountered weeks of non-stop rain where maintaining even a manageable level of dampness was considered comfortable, and this was no fault of the tent – when it is really wet, and endlessly so, one must bear in mind that tents are ultimately only temporary shelters).

I will give Lightwave their due, they did give us our money back!

You can read more about our Iceland travels and the saga of the tent in our travelogue pages using the links below:

We have outlined the route that we took on the map below:

Iceland Tour 2009 Route Map

 

Outlined below are the statistics of our tour:

Day
Start Finish
Distance in miles
Time in Saddle
Average speed
1
Keflavík Reykjavik
41.86
3.5
8.3
2
Borgarnes Eldborg
24.5
3.46
6.5
3
Eldborg Langaholt
35.2
5
7
4
Langaholt Arnastapi
20.2
2.33
7.8
5
Arnastapi Hellessandur
29.6
3.46
7.8
6
Hellessandur Ólafsvík
9.7
1.29
6.5
7
Ólafsvík Setberg
22.8
3.05
8
8
Setberg Stykkishólmur
25.2
3.07
8
9
Reykjavik þingvellir
39.1
4.16
9.1
10
þingvellir þingvellir
3.2
0.22
8.5
11
þingvellir Húsafell
42.7
6.42
6.3
12
Húsafell Norðlingafljót
16.7
2.46
6
13
Norðlingafljót Álftakrókur
5.9
1.13
4.8
14
Álftakrókur Laugarbakki
45
5.24
8.3
15
Laugarbakki Hvammstangi
7.1
0.53
7.9
16
Siglufjörður Siglufjörður
2.7
0.24
6.4
17
Siglufjörður Ketilás
13.55
2.23
5.6
18
Ketilás Dalvík
35.35
4.08
8.5
19
Dalvík Akureyri
30.8
3.06
9.8
20
Junction of R1 & F88 Herðubreiðarlindir
38.4
6.12
6.3
21
Herðubreiðarlindir Dreki
21.4
3.34
5.9
22
Dreki Herðubreiðarlindir
31.9
4.01
7.7
23
Herðubreiðarlindir Grimstunga
43.4
3.21
6.8
     
    Total distance cycled 586.26 miles
    An average of 25.5 miles per day