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Hi all,
Some months ago I asked about others experiences of campervanning/motorhoming in Iceland before our own trip in June.
We have now returned and I thought I would share some thoughts.
I am not going to go into the whys of going to Iceland. If you read up on the country you will know whether you think you would like the experience or not.
We did the following:
UK (Harwich) to Hook of Holland - Stena ferry day time arriving in the evening and camping in the site in Delft. We then drove north mostly on motorways stopping in a autohof (German Aire) overnight north of Hamburg and then driving on the Hirtshals and camping there one night before checking in for the Smyril Line ferry the next morning. You arrive in Iceland after two nights on board in the morning.
The ferry was full to capacity I should think and the loading and unloading process takes a LONG time - so be prepared. Our crossings seemed to include a vast number of motorhomes/campervans and I began to wonder where they were all going to go when we got off, would we all be going around in a vast convoy - in short, no, when we arrived in Iceland we hardly saw any other vans apart from on campsites overnight and at the major tourist spots.
We spent three weeks on Iceland and then came back the same way with a two night stopover in the Faroes.
Iceland Camping Card (http://campingcard.is/) We bought one of these on the Ferry for 105 Euros. It gives you free camping at 42 sites around Iceland. At the sites you pay extra for EHU/showers etc and a tax of 111IKr. We used it quite a lot and it was worth it we reckon as it paid for itself after just a few night even with only two of us on the card. If you were a family of four for instance it would be even better as the card is per unit not per person. The sites it covers are quite varied many seeming to be local community sites. You get a booklet which tells you what to expect.
Icelandic campsites are many and varied. Apart from the 42 listed for the Camping Card there are many others dotted around the country and listed in tourist books and on maps. The facilities can be very basic but most have access to water and toilets and EHU, but not all. One noticeable difference between Icelandic sites and ones in UK is that there are rarely any designated pitches. Often the site is just an open field or series of fields and you park where you like. As a consequence of this, and we never figured out why, units (campers, tents and caravans) tend to all cluster together. We are early arrivers and often arrived at a site when no one else was around. We picked our spot with care and then as others arrive we tended to find they clustered near us even when the rest of the site was nearly empty. We had other vans pulling up so close so as you could see what they were having for dinner, tents pitched so you could not move the van without giving them a good blast of exhaust or running over guy ropes etc. With long summer nights people would still be arriving at 10 or 11 at night so by the morning we could be surrounded. Having said that most sites were not full apart from at weekends (Friday and Saturday nights) when Icelanders get away with their own tents, caravans and motorhomes/campers and head for the wilds.
Wildcamping. People, and this included me, often ask whether it is possible to Wildcamp in Iceland. I think the answer is a definite Yes. Although you must not wildcamp in national parks outside the parks there are many places such as view-points, car parks, lay-bys and pull offs where you can park for the night.
Electric Hook ups. I asked whether it was necessary to have a continental type plug for EHUs in Iceland. Most sites with EHU have 16amp round/blue plugs like UK sites but a couple had only 2 pin continental 10amp plugs so the answer to that one is yes. With the fact that there are no pitch markers on most sites EHU points can be a long way from where you want to park up. Most Icelanders have a large real of cable much longer than most of the ones used by UK campers and will unwind right across a field to a hook up if necessary. We carry two 25 meter cables and used them both on a couple of occasions so we could hookup.
Fuel. Fuel stations are generally only found in the larger towns so we took to filling up when the tank reach half empty rather than let it go down much further. Fuel pumps are completely self service and you need a credit/debit card to use them. If you don't have one then you will be stuck.
Tarmac/dirt roads. The majority of the main road (Route 1) around Iceland is tarmac and good quality. There are some of the more minor road and those into the interior that are dirt/gravel. We did a little gravel road driving to reach particular places but found that we could do most places we wanted to see without. Incidentally if you hire a camper/motorhome in Iceland I believe the insurance goes up a lot if you take it onto gravel roads.
As others have said eating out in Iceland is expensive so we only did it a few times but the fish is very good. We tended to buy in supermarkets and cook for ourselves.
Faroes. As I said earlier we spent a couple of nights on the Faroes on our way home. It is illegal to camp anywhere in the Faroes apart from in official sites. The two sites we stayed on and others we saw are very different from those in Iceland. They are more like car parks than anything else. They are gravel all over (no grass), have designated pitches and are not very picturesque at all. If you were in a tent I am not sure what you would do. One good thing about both the sites we used was that they were all inclusive (Showers, wifi, electricity etc).
I have tried to cover the main points in the above but any questions please ask.
Post last edited on 22/07/2015 15:50:38
Post last edited on 22/07/2015 15:50:55
Post last edited on 22/07/2015 15:57:20
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Topic: Iceland experience
