Iceland in a camper van, with a toddler: the first problem was getting the rental company to part with a vehicleIceland
My girlfriend and I chose Iceland for our holiday because it seemed like a nice , yet slightly adventurous destination. Crucially, getting there involved a manageable flight of about 2½ hours from Dublin, where we live. This was important because we were travelling with our 1½-year-old son, Abe, who does not enjoy long flights. After the unforgettable disaster of our last trip to Slovenia, we knew that connecting flights were also a no-no.
So, when the manager told us we couldn’t drive off into an Icelandic storm in a vehicle that looked like it was made out of billboards, we had to trust his knowledge. Instead, his staff prepared a smaller, sleeker van for us, whizzing in their handover through a nerve-racking galaxy of on-board buttons and switches: here’s the gas, here’s the battery, here’s the water tank, here’s the other battery.
Campsites in Iceland, especially those that remain open outside of the peak summer season, tend to offer few frills but plenty of parking spaces. Uthlid, when we arrived, gave off a sort of The Shining vibe, as if it had just cleared out for the off-season and was now deserted. Still, the hot tub behind the empty visitor reception was on. In Iceland, you get the impression that the hot tubs will be the last thing they turn off.
Iceland: Sculpted icebergs floating in Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. Photograph: Beata Whitehead/Getty Images It would have been tempting to continue east from here and follow the Ring Road as it looped its way around the rest of Iceland, but Jökulsárlón was the last stop for us. On the journey back to the camper van centre in Keflavik, we parked for a night at the sleepy inland town of Hvolsvollur, where the big draw is the Lava centre.