The first trip was in April. I went to London to see BABYMETAL at Wembley Arena and decided to go a little farther, spending six days and five nights in Iceland. The route map below shows my overnight stops, numbered 1–5.
My April route
After looking at the photographs from my solo April trip, my wife announced:
"Summer holiday decided! Let's go to Iceland."
There was not much time, but I began making plans. Showing her the photographs, I asked:
"Where would you like to go?"
"Everywhere! Can't we go all the way around? The driving looks tiring, and finding all the sights would take ages. Let's join a tour. Isn't there some sort of small-group adventure? It would be fun talking to the others, like in the Galápagos. Find something for us, please!"
And so, using a week's summer holiday, we visited Iceland in August 2016.
At the time, partly because of my work, using a travel agent seemed quite normal. With little time to prepare, we took HIS's recommendation and booked a seven-day Ring Road tour with the local operator Nice Travel.
There were eight of us in the group: an American family, a Chinese woman traveling on her own, my wife and me, our Spanish guide and our Polish driver. This is the group photograph we took at the end of the trip. Even the Nicetravel.is logo on the Mercedes minivan made it into the frame.
Although we were on a tour in August, we visited many sights across most of Iceland and had numerous opportunities for photographs. I therefore based the structure of this Iceland Photo Journey on the August route and photographs. April, however, had much more lingering snow and a very different atmosphere. As I was driving a rental car myself, I also stopped for many photographs along the way. Adding those images has, I think, given the series greater variety.
Looking Back on the Trips
When I tell people I have been to Iceland, they often ask, "Which place did you like best?" There are so many that I find it hard to choose, but if I had to pick three, they might be these.
The Svartifoss Loop comes to mind straight away. It was not just the waterfall—the scenery all around it was wonderful too. Then there is Dettifoss. What can I say about that power, except that it was incredible? For the third, I would choose Jökulsárlón, famous though it is. I still clearly remember how hard it was to leave, with the scene changing all the time.
Svartifoss Loop Trail
Dettifoss
Jökulsárlón
Writing the Travelogue
Ten years on, I had to dig through what remained of my itineraries, flight-ticket records and the EXIF data in my photographs to piece my memories together. I also asked ChatGPT and Gemini to help find information about the places. It was a lot of fiddly work, and has taken more than two months. Still, it brought back so much: where I went, what I saw, and how I felt at the time. I am glad I wrote it.
I wrote the travelogue in the order of my April and August 2016 journeys, including the scenery and things that happened along the way. With more than 300 photographs, it became quite a long account. I did not mind the length, but it made finding a particular place difficult. After thinking about how to solve that, I reorganized the material into Iceland Photo Journey, with an index and separate pages for each place. I also kept the original account as the Complete Travelogue.
