I can already hardly remember what I did today. I started at Hverir, the campsite on the tomato farm with the greenhouse-common room and the polytunnel tent shelter. I knew I wanted to wend my way north, to arrive in Akureyri either Wednesday evening or sometime on Thursday, and take a bit of time to explore the north instead of ploughing my way straight across it, so the original plan had been to go to Blonduos, which is a bit of a service centre with a river flowing through it. However, that was only two hours away from Hverir and there wasn’t a whole day’s worth of interesting things to see on the way.

Interesting thing number one was Grabrok a trio of roadside volcanoes. Stora Grabrok has steps and a boardwalk around it so you can walk up to the crater and then all the way up and around the rim. I’ve done it twice before but the novelty of casually climbing a volcano by the side of the road doesn’t wear off.

Stop two was at Thingeyrar – there are benefits to typing this on an actual keyboard but I can’t make the special characters, like the thorn that Thingeyrar actually begins with. Once upon a time, the bishop promised God he’d build a farm and a church here if He’d end a famine and when the famine ended, the bishop built a whole monastery. The monastery isn’t there anymore; only a black basalt 19th century church, which is usually locked (the key holder was lurking outside last time I was here but not today). However, monasteries being historically centres of learning and intellect and whatnot, this is allegedly where a lot of the sagas were written. Written down, I should say. They were passed on in the oral tradition for hundreds of years before being written down, apparently by these monks (and Snorri Sturluson of Snorralaug, which I mentioned yesterday, who was definitely not a monk).

Third stop was indeed at Blonduos. I’d run out of juice and plastic cheese slices and I needed more cheese before all my bread goes out of date tomorrow. This was lunchtime. No point in stopping yet. I carried on, the long way round, to Varmahlid. Not much to say here, it’s a little junction of the Ring Road with the road that heads up to the fjord, but it’s another small supermarket if you need one. I bought chocolate here once. I continued up the fjord. I had a plan by now. I would go up to Glaumbaer, a traditional Icelandic turf house and farm. These things look a little bit ridiculous – a row of pointed houses built out of turf with wooden fake fronts on them, like life-sized elf houses, but this genuinely was how they were built. Iceland has been short on wood ever since the first Icelanders came over in the 10th century and cut down all the trees for houses and boats and discovered too late that they don’t really grow back in these conditions. So turf houses. This one dates back to the 18th century but was used up until the 1940s. Some of the doors open onto small self-contained rooms – the smithy, store rooms etc, but the last door hides an entire house, connected by dark turf corridors.

I’d been thinking that ever since I left Hverir and the valley between Borgarnes and Husafell, the tourists had basically vanished. There are “undertaking” lanes at junctions and down south, these have “do not stop here” signs on them to tell clueless tourists not to park in them because they’re not stopping places. Those signs vanished ages ago. Well, it turns out all the tourists are at Glaumbaer. I want two seconds in each room to take a photo of the room but you can’t get it clear of tourists for long enough. I stood in the Back Door (mill/store room etc) for months as first the Polish tour group milled gormlessly around, then the Italian one (who grabbed everything hanging from the wall, despite the two rules being “don’t touch anything” and “don’t take flash photos”, and then the French. Two seconds.

My plan was to drive up to Saudarkrokur, which is the next biggish town, up to Grettislaug for a dip in a Saga pool and then back to Saudarkrokur to camp but as I made my way up, I realised there’s no point. I spend my days realising I don’t need this much time to get to Akureyri so why not save the 20km drive for tomorrow and just camp at Grettislaug?

Grettislaug, as I said, appears in the sagas. Grettir the Strong was on the island out in the fjord, for reasons I’m unclear on right now. He swam the 7.5km back to the mainland and was so exhausted he needed to sit in the hot pool to recover. My kind of Saga hero. The hot pool is now two hot pools and there’s a campsite right there, with a little cafe/indoor space that’s open until midnight. So I sat in the pools for an hour or two, went for my walk around the cliffs to see the black sand beach and now I’m taking advantage of the wifi to write this. I might go back in the hot pools later on (although it’s 9.30pm right now) or I might go in them early in the morning.

Actually, let’s write it. I found a space. I climbed into the back and read a book and had an early dinner of bread and cheese. Then a van pulled up next to me. In a large field with less than a dozen vehicles parked in it, it parked six feet away. Are you joking? I said. But I ignored it. Then the next time I looked up, they’d put up an awning and were pitching a tent underneath it and the guy ropes for that awning were literally under two feet away from my van door. What I should have done was stumble out and accidentally trip over them all. What I should have done was drive away in a fury ensuring that I snagged their ropes on my wing mirror as I went. What I actually did was employ my best bad language and slam all the doors pointedly as I left the van, went round to the driver’s side and removed myself to the other side of the field. I do make a point to head for the cafe via the path right next to them and literally step over their ropes to get there, though.

I don’t know exactly what my plans for tomorrow are – to Akureyri or near Akureyri, depending on what it’s like at Hauganes, I think.