claire sans plans: the iceland road trip

I've got a new landscape love affair.

They call it the land of ice and fire. The sky stretches on forever. In four days we drive through vast plains of volcanic rock, through marshes, wide stretches of farmland, through fields of purple flowers reaching to the horizon, past high mountain ranges, past lakes, past glaciers, past craggy cliffs striped with waterfalls, along a grey and vicious coastline. This is a landscape like none I've seen before. I have so many takesmybreathaway moments I'm surprised I breathe at all.

There is something beautiful about being alone. I don't mean sitting in a room alone in a flat in west London. I mean standing on top of a bald crest and seeing the land spread out below you and knowing that noone will come this way in the half hour that you're stopped for lunch. I mean hearing nothing but wind and the sound of your own breath. That's Iceland.

This country makes it in to the top ten least densely populated countries in the world. So does Australia, actually, but it's different. Standing in the middle of my sweeping red country feels less lonely somehow. It's dusty and close and covered in roos and emus and venomous reptiles. It feels like there's this steamy, seething kind of life all around you, which I love. But I don't get that feeling in Iceland. There are moments where it's more like being totally alone on the surface of the cold world. For the girl that currently lives wall to wall to floor to ceiling with at least six strangers, in a city of over eight million people, it's such an immense wonder to be alone.

Well, not totally alone. Featuring in this adventure is Candice, longtime friend and firsttime travel companion. She enjoys weetabix and has a good habit of travelling to unconventional places. We have similar views on other peoples' expectations and the dos and don'ts of selfies.

We arrive at Keflavik airport midafternoon. Within half an hour we're on the road in our little white Toyota hire. The last year in London I've missed driving more than I could ever have anticipated. After groping around on the wrong side for the handbrake then completing a few hesitant circuits of the carpark, we pull out onto the highway to Reykjavik and I remember that feeling of being on the road. The thing about it is the potential. When you board a bus, the destination is set and displayed in big, polite letters at the front and rear. When you board a train, there's not even the option of taking an alternative route to the endpoint. But when you slide in behind the wheel of your car, you can start the engine and end up anywhere. Endless potential adventures. So despite spending the whole time feeling like I am driving in some kind of bizarre flipped universe, or else just speeding headlong at a mirror, I love every second of driving in Iceland.

Between the airport and the city, we come to terms with the fact that we will not be able to pronounce a single street name, place name, or person's name for the duration of our stay. Much of the journey is occupied by phonetically pronouncing the exit names, with much amusement at our own ignorance. Luckily, they're numbered too. Having taken the role of driver without leaving room for discussion, I've dumped Candice with the unenviable title of Navigator in Chief. Unfortunately for us, it's not her forte. I can't read a map without devoting my undivided attention to rotating it to match current direction of travel, so with most of my brainpower focused on staying on the right side of the road, I am less than helpful. We drive around the city for a good hour, lost in the narrow backstreets of downtown, with Candice exclaiming heartily that all the streets have the same name, which seems immensely unfair.

We spend the evening sitting outside our hostel in the quiet eastern suburbs of Reykjavik with a large road map and coloured markers, making site-specific doodles of seals and churches and doodles (yes, actually - the Icelandic Phallological museum is on the itinerary). We don't realise it's bedtime until well after bedtime. The neverending daylight of summer in the north catches me off guard. Going to bed while the sun is up makes me feel like a child, but I come to love the subtle changes in the light that mean evening, night, dawn, day.

We set out early from Reykjavik. Navigation becomes less of a chore once we're out of the city. Usually there's only two roads to choose from at any given intersection, and the distance between the intersections means we have a lot of time to mentally prepare. The biggest challenge of driving quickly becomes resisting the urge to pull over at every available shoulder and gaze around at the landscape. We spend much of the first day doing this. We're in no hurry and it's not like we'll get caught out by nightfall. I just can't get sick of taking long breaths of fresh air and gazing around me. The views are constantly panoramic. This is a disgustingly spectacular country. There's always something incredible to look at. It's a feast for your eyeballs. It's landscape pornography. It's like standing right inside the glossy spread of a national geographic photography competition. Alright, I'll quit it. But seriously, it's the best.

One of my favourite things is the sky. It's vast, so vast, and constantly shifting. On our first day there are clouds that fold over each other in layers of blue and purple. Some days its clear blue and striped with white cotton clouds and one one afternoon huge grey stormclouds pile on top of each other on the horizon. And on our last day a dense mist covers the landscape so completely that I strain to see the road ahead, let alone the sky. It's cold, not summer like I've ever known it, but the weather has a wild kind of charm.

I want to tell you about the colours, and the way everything feels prehistoric, and how much water there is. There's so much water. I could go on forever. For now, I'll leave you with some pictures and the promise of more wildly enthusiastic praise of Iceland to come.

above the falls at Skógarfoss