We left at 9:30 the following morning for the long drive to Landmannalaugar. We had to go past the best known Icelandic volcano, Hekla, and the road went within a few km of the base of the mountain. At one point the ground at the side of the (gravel) road was covered with off-white pebbles, which turned out to be pumice lava from Hekla - as light as a feather but extremely dusty. Eventually we made it up to the big artificial lakes on the river Thorsa and took the F208 for Landmannalaugar - still 40Km away. The going was dry but dusty and stony in places and I was glad not to be paying for the tyres on the car. We came to the edge of a dramatically swollen glacial river, the Tungnaa, which we were glad not to have to cross, since it seemed somewhat larger and more ferocious than the Congo in flood. Shortly afterwards we drove up to a crater lake on the left called Hnausapollur (or, equally unpronounceably, Blahylur) which was a few hundred feet above us and marvelled at the blue water within it, the burnt rim around it and the coke-like rock under foot. Lucas decided to climb up for some better shots and while he was away, another car drew up - with swiss plates - and the driver turned out to live not more than 2km from Lucas and Brigitta in Bern. This guy was seriously out for self-sufficiency - he had a huge homemade roof-rack frame through-bolted at the waist of his 4x4 with second spare tyre, extra fuel, spade, etc on top, while inside he had a bunk, loads of water and food, a kitchen and shock cord holding everything in position over the bumps. He was a keen photographer and was planning to go further into the uninhabited middle of Iceland to take shots of the flooded craters in that area.
By about lunchtime, and after visiting a second flooded crater called Ljotipollur (”ugly pond”), we arrived at the final fords before the campsite where the saloon cars had to stop. The site itself was under improvement and there were certainly a lot of people there to enjoy it. New showers and toilets were being installed, heated throughout by the continuously running hot spring and being considerably better than what must have been there before - much overloaded at the weekends and holidays. The campsite consisted of some quite flat rocky earth about 2 acres in size, with portable rocks in wooden boxes around the edge of the site in lieu of tentpegs. One of the main attractions (the main attraction for us, anyway) was the little river with hot springs along it, which is just right for bathing. This was a bit smaller than I had imagined it to be, and since walking on the grass and flowers around the river was discouraged, one was supposed to enter the water from the changing platform and wade along the pebbly bottom to the place where the hot taps were. In fact, if you moved the pebbles of the bottom aside, the ones underneath were really hot, enough to burn your fingers in places, so the thermal springs were not entirely localised to the main outflow. It was a strange sensation reclining in relatively cool water 2ft deep, with a shallow layer around your neck almost too hot to bear, and you had to stir the water together to get a comfortable mix all the way down. However, the water was beautifully clean and clear and didn’t smell of bad eggs or anything else, so apart from a bit of pondweed it was a very pleasant experience. The Icelandic coach driver next to us said it was better in winter, when the cold flow was less, and you had to cool the water down by scooping snow into it.
We had a picnic around the back of one of the huts which turned out to be the one for the Iceland Touring Club working party, and as luck would have it, their president came and sat next to us, so we were able to ask him some beginners questions about the geology of the place (he was a professional geologist). The yellow coloured lava of the mountains surrounding the area was due to the high silica content of the eruption that had built those mountains, whereas the black lavafield behind us was a more ‘basic’ composition with a different melting point coming from a different volcano - or was it the same volcano at a different time? Anyway, the black lava was only 600 years old or so, while the yellow stuff was several thousand years old and was now weathering into 1000ft high heaps of yellow sandy aggregate. It was just like a giant builders merchant’s yard!
We left the Swiss couple putting up their tent, in the company of the Danish gymnastic team from Vejle, who had also been staying at the Hella campsite, and whom the Swiss couple had been following around the island for a few days.
Having got back on the main road, we headed for Selfoss on the way back to the capital, but got sidetracked by some magnificent-looking control equipment in the river along which we were travelling. At this point we were opposite Hekla again, and a large isolated mountain called Burfell lay between the river Thorsa and the high land to the west. Expecting a waterfall, we found instead that the natural course of the river was dammed and the river disappeared into a canal on the western side of Burfell. We went looking for the river again at the bottom of the hill, but found a hydro-electric powerstation rather than a waterfall. This was a magnificent construction with more brown porcelain insulators in the transformer and switchgear station than I’d seen in a long time. It may have been 6pm on a sunday evening, but I went and rang the bell and asked if we could have a tour of the plant. An engineer came to the door and we went inside - first into the monstrous generator hall where 6 fifty-foot diameter Toshiba alternators were each capable of producing 13,000 volts and 4,000 amps, and then into the control room, where this engineer was in sole charge of the production of 250 MW of power (300,000 horsepower or so!). He explained that the generators were driven by turbines vertically below them, but that visitors weren’t allowed in the turbine hall. Two of the turbines were out for maintenance at the time, so it was a pity we couldn’t have had a look at them. Sulzer were replacing the Japanese wet ends, which had lasted about 25 years in the very abrasive glacial water that they were handling. Our heads reeled from the statistics of the installation, completed in 1969 and the biggest in Iceland. The power, once the capital investment was made, was virtually free of charge: the whole staff for the station consisted of 3 mechanical engineers and an electrician, with other maintenance being done by contractors. On full load, the station could provide about 270 MW, and most of this was destined for the aluminium smelters and other energy-hungry basic industries who had been attracted to Iceland by the promise of cheap electricity. We talked about Hekla, and what happened if the breakers tripped because of storms or eruptions. The two 15ft diameter water pipes carrying 300 tons of water per second to the turbines come down 130m through the rock and could be shut off in seconds. The flowing water not wanting to stop flowing, this would put huge pressures on the pipes, but they were steel lined and able to take the pressure. The diverted water would then flow upwards into vast holding tanks and eventually out over the top of the dam in a cascade until the momentum of the stream had been checked.
Leaving the Burfell power station behind us, we were soon cruising along a well vegetated valley with horse farms and even trees. Selfoss boasted several eateries and we decided to try the famous Icelandic pizza, which was hot and quick, but not especially tasty, despite the interminable variations on offer in the menu. A blue-label Pripps beer tasted good and was less than half the price of the full strength version, but I suppose if you drink too many you get fat rather than drunk. We joined the increasing stream of traffic heading towards Reykjavik on the Sunday evening, and passed by Hveragaerdi, the greenhouse area of Iceland, without stopping. Hotel Lind was soon reached and our last hotel bed and smelly shower were tested.